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CHAPTER V

DISCOURSE OF DISCONTENT: A STUDY OF SELECT WORKS OF TAHMINA ANAM,

TASLIMA NASRIN AND MANJUSHREE THAPA

Even though English Writing in Bangladesh and Nepal is largely overshadowed by the

bigger countries of the subcontinent like India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka, there is a steady

surge of writing emerging from these countries. One of the main concerns of writers in

Bangladesh is the 1971 War of Independence. This chapter will examine the

representation of this event in the works of Tahmima Anam, and also explore the socio-

political discontentment and cultural conflicts present in Nepal and Bangladesh as

embodied in the works of Tasleema Nasreen and Manjushree Thapa from Nepal. The

novels that are selected form study are: A Golden Age (2007) and The Good Muslim

(2011) by Tahmina Anam, French Lover (2002) by Taslima Nasrin, The Tutor of History

(2001) and Seasons of Flight (2010) by Manjushree Thapa and Palpasa Cafe (2008) by

Narayan Wagle.

5.1. A Brief history of contemporary Bangladesh and Nepal

The present-day borders of Bangladesh took shape during the Partition of

Bengal and British India in 1947, when the region came to be known as East Pakistan, as a

part of the newly formed state of Pakistan. It was separated from West Pakistan by

1,400 km of Indian territory. Due to political exclusion, ethnic and linguistic discrimination

and economic neglect by the politically dominant western wing, nationalism, popular

agitation and civil disobedience led to the Bangladesh Liberation War and independence

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in 1971. After independence, the new state endured poverty, famine, political turmoil

and military coups. After independence, the Constitution of Bangladesh established a

unitary secular multiparty parliamentary democratic system. The Awami League won the

first general elections in 1973 with a massive mandate, gaining an absolute parliamentary

majority. A nationwide famine occurred during 1973 and 1974, and in early 1975, Mujib

initiated a one-party socialist rule with his newly formed BAKSAL. On 15 August 1975,

Mujib and most of his family members were assassinated by mid-level military officers.

Two Army uprisings on 3 and 7 November 1975 led to a reorganised structure of power.

A state of emergency was declared to restore order and calm, and the country was placed

under temporary martial law, the restoration of democracy in 1991 has been followed by

relative calm and economic progress.

The most horrifying event in the Bangladeshi struggle for Independence and

the immediate cause for it was Operation Searchlight. Operation Searchlight was a

planned military operation carried out by the Pakistan Army to curb

the Bengali nationalist movement in the erstwhile East Pakistan in March 1971. The

operation also precipitated the 1971 Bangladesh genocide and caused roughly 10 million

refugees to flee to India as well as the death of 58,000[ to 3,000,000 civilians. Bengali

intelligentsia, academics and Hindus were targeted for the harshest treatment, with

significant indiscriminate killing taking place. These systematic killings enraged the

Bengalis, who declared independence from Pakistan, to establish the new state of

Bangladesh. The violence resulting from Operation Searchlight led to the war of liberation

by the Mukti Bahini against Pakistani "occupation" forces in Bangladesh. Following the ill

fated Operation Chengiz Khan, Indian intervention resulted in the Pakistani

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Army's unconditional surrender to the joint command of the Indian Army and Mukti

Bahini on December 16, 1971.

The cry for democracy has been a long and arduous job for Nepal.

Throughout its history people have had to suffer under authoritarian regimes that curb

the freedom of political parties. There is widespread feeling of resentment towards the

lack of representation of the masses in the political process of the country. Therefore

when the Panchayat regime came to an end in 1990 and parliamentary democracy

adopted, people had expected their interests to be better represented. However, when

reforms fail to appear, there was simmering unrest in the country, which eventually

erupted as the Maoist led war in Nepal. The Nepalese Civil War (labelled the People's

War by the Maoists) was an armed conflict between government forces and

Maoist fighters in Nepal which lasted from 1996 until 2006. The war was launched by

the Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist) on 13 February 1996, with the aim of

overthrowing the Nepalese monarchy and establishing a 'People's Republic'. It ended with

the Comprehensive Peace Accord signed on 21 November 2006. More than 15,000

people were killed and an estimated 100,000 to 150,000 people were internally

displaced as a result of the conflict. The government responded to the rebellion by

banning provocative statements about the monarchy, imprisoning journalists, and

shutting down newspapers accused of siding with the insurgents. Several rounds of

negotiations, accompanied by temporary cease-fires, were held between the insurgents

and the government. The government categorically rejected the insurgents' demand for

an election to the constituent assembly; it would result in the abolition of the monarchy

by a popular vote. As a result of the civil war, Nepal's greatest source of foreign exchange,

its tourism industry, suffered considerably. The conflict forced the young and able to seek

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work abroad in order to avoid the Human Rights Violations committed by the

Government forces and the crimes committed by the Maoists.

5.2. A Brief History of the English Novel in Bangladesh and Nepal

The history of Bangladeshi Writing in English can be traced back to the Pre-Independence

period, to the works of the earliest writers of Indian Writing in English such as Bankim

Chandra Chattopadhya, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt and the most revered of all

Rabindranath Tagore. Writer who hailed from Bengal were the pioneers of Indian Writing

in English and were the forefathers of Bangladeshi writers today. However, “what we call

'Bangladeshi writing in English' has come into being after the Independence of

Bangladesh. Although the stream is very feeble, it exists” (Askari, 2013, p.02). Owing to a

linguistic loyalty tied to Bangladeshi nationalism, begun with the Language Movement in

the 1950s and its refusal to abandon Bangla for the externally enforced and mandatory

use of Urdu by politically dominant West Pakistan, English-language literature in

Bangladesh has taken longer to assume its role in the subcontinental boom pioneered by

writers from India, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The first generation of Bangladeshi writers who wrote in English were poets. As

far as fiction is concerned, the area is mostly dominated by writers in the diaspora. The

earliest fiction in English is written by a Bangladeshi writer from Australia, Adib Khan who

has written mostly on the themes of identity, migration and dislocation. Another very

important writer of Bangladeshi origin is Monika Ali, whose debut novel Brick Lane was

short listed for the Man Booker Prize. Brick Lane is a story about the inhabitants of the

eponymous locality in London which is then centre of Bangladeshi expatriate community.

She has written four novels – Brick Lane (2003), Alentejo Blue (2006), In the Kitchen

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(2009) and Untold Story (2011). Tahmina Anam is also a British Bangladeshi writer who

has grabbed the attention of readers and critics worldwide with her two novels, A Golden

Age (2007) and its sequel The Good Muslim (2011). Now a new generation of English-

language prose writers like Tahmima Anam, Shazia Omar, K. Anis Ahmed, Maria

Chaudhuri, Mahmud Rahman, Farah Ghuznavi, and Khademul Islam have emerged; and

the nation’s literature is poised to extend beyond its own boundaries and the boundaries

of the subcontinent. These writers use English as a medium to connect to the larger

corpus of world literature, a rejection of the insularity of contemporary Bangla-language

literature, which is an expansive, if closed, system. This has not always been the case:

during the 1970s and ’80s, Bangla-language writers read widely, often in English, despite

their loyalty to the Bangla language (Shook, 2013, n.p.)

Taking objection to a piece in a Nepali newspaper where Manjushree Thapa

is quoted to have said that there are only three of four Nepali writers in English, Khem

Aryal, in an article, “The Writing on the Wall”, in the Kathmandu Post, has charted a brief

history of the growth and development of Nepali Writing in English. He claims that

Nepalis have been writing in English since the 1950s. The Father of Nepali Literature,

Maha Kavi Laxmi Prasad Devkota was one of the first writers to start writing in English,

followed subsequently by others like Abhi Subedi, Peter J Karthak and Ramesh Shrestha.

However, most of the early writers in English were poets, while Abhi Subeda wrote plays

as well. It would therefore, still not be too wrong to say that there are three or four

writers who write in English who have received attention beyond Nepal. Nepal does not

have the same colonial history that its neighbour has and English education was available

only to a very small minority of the elites. This can be one of the reasons for the slow

growth of writing in the English language in Nepal.

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The publication of Samrat Upadhyaya’s Arresting God in Kathmandu, a

collection of short stories in 2000, and Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History (2001)

are no doubt landmarks in the history of Nepali Writing in English. Upadhyaya writes

mostly short stories, though he has written at least three novels. Some other writers are

Sushma Joshi, Rabi Thapa, Sheeba Shivanagini Shah, Ajit Baral, Richa Bhattarai,

M.K.Limbu, and Aditya Man Shrestha (Pun, p.1). Samrat Upadhyaya is the first Nepali

writer to be published in the west, followed by Manjushree Thapa. Their names have

gained prominence because they have received acclaim worldwide, which incidentally can

be also because of their diasporic status. Manjushree Thapa has written two novels The

Tutor of History (2001) and Seasons of Flight (2010), and one collection of short-stories,

Tilled Earth (2007). She is also well known and awarded for her non-fictional works.

Expressing his opinion about the themes of Nepali Writing in English, Min Pun (2013)

says: “The recurring themes of the stories range from village life to life in Kathmandu,

from the lives of women in the male-dominated society to the lives in the foreign lands.

The stories also deal with caste, class, poverty, corruption and the impact of technological

development on life” (p.61).

5.3. Conflict in Tahmina Aman’s The Golden Age and The Good Muslim

Tahmina Aman is a British Bangladeshi writer and columnist. She is the author of two

novels that chronicles the trials and tribulations in the lives of the Haque family from the

Bangladesh War of Independence to the present day. Her first novel The Golden Age,

published in 2007, was the winner of the First Best Book of the 2008 Commonwealth

Writers’ Prize. The sequel to this, The Good Muslim, published in 2011, was nominated for

the 2011 Man Asian Literary Prize.

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Tahmina Anam’s The Golden Age (2007), focuses on the Bangladesh War of

Independence in 1971, highlighting the history of atrocities that the war spawned. Its

sequel The Good Muslim (2011) concentrates on the growing fundamentalism regarding

Islam, in Bangladesh. The third book of Anam’s planned trilogy is, yet to be out. Anam’s

novels present the challenges to peace under the shadows of conflict. Partition created

new boundaries and drove a wedge across the Indian subcontinent. Pakistan and East

Pakistan were stuck on two sides of India. The Golden Age is Anam’s portrayal of how East

Pakistan severed all ties with the mother country and emerged as an independent nation,

Bangladesh, with a new identity and how as a language Bengali contributed to this

process.

5.3.1. A Golden Age: A chronicle of war

Tahmina Anam’s A Golden Age (2007) centres on the Bangladeshi struggle for

freedom from Pakistan and the contribution of the Haque family to it .The Golden Age is

basically the story of a mother’s struggle amidst the turmoil of a civil war raging all

around her. The story opens in 1959 with the words of a young widow to her dead

husband. “I lost our children today” (Anam,2007, p.3), by which she means that she has

lost the custody of their two children Sohail and Maya. With no income to support her

children and no money to fight the court battle against her rich and powerful brother-in-

law she loses custody of her children, who are taken to Lahore in West Pakistan.

Rehana’s battle to gain custody over her children parallels the nation’s struggle for

independence. Filled with a sense of failure as a mother Rehana Haque struggles to make

herself self-sufficient enough to get back her children from West Pakistan. Widowhood

strips Rehana of the power that she had as a wife, and losing her children deprives her of

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motherhood. The norms of patriarchal society insist on the domesticity of women and

also assert that a woman needs to be cared for by a man. Her brother-in-law Faiz,

expresses the conventional thinking regarding widowhood when he says: “You know what

I admire about you, bhabi. You manage to stay so cheerful despite all your hardships.

Being a widow – no fate worse for a woman” (Anam,2007, p.178). Paradoxically Rehana

experiences unfettered independence due to her widowhood as she has no man to

‘control’ her. She is able to make decisions for herself, and launches herself on a struggle

to get back her children.

One of the first things that Rehana does is to sell her wedding jewellery,

divesting herself of any material signs of matrimony. She "pawned the rest of

her jewels: the sun-shaped locket and matching earrings, the ruby ring, a few

gold chains," (Anam, 2007, p.36).“Pawning her gold jewellery, . . . was a

shedding of her ties to her role of wife as well as allowing herself new freedom

to be seen as a single woman” (Snider, 2010, p.9).

Rehana plans to build a house that can be rented out in a plot that she owns in Dhaka,

but money from her jewellery alone is not enough to do so. Out of desperation she

agrees to meet and maybe marry a wealthy, but old and blind widower. During her

meeting with Mr. Ali, Rehana happens to touch a brush that belonged to his dead wife, in

a fit of jealousy he tries to grab the brush away from her breaking a mirror in the process.

In the ensuing confusion Rehana spots a jewellery box that she picks up and walks away

with. She justifies her action of stealing from a blind man as a desperate act of a grieving

mother to get back her children. She finally is able to build her house and get back her

children from Lahore. The novel then jumps to March 1971, the tenth anniversary of her

children’s return, which they celebrate every year. It is also the month when the civil war

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started. At this point the focus of the novel shifts from Rehana’s personal struggle to that

of a national one.

Partition created new boundaries and drove a wedge across the Indian

subcontinent. Pakistan and East Pakistan were stuck like horns on two sides of India. The

Golden Age is Anam’s portrayal of how East Pakistan severed all ties with the mother

country and emerged as an independent nation, Bangladesh, with a new identity and how

as a language Bengali contributed to this process.

Ever since '48, the Pakistani authorities had ruled the eastern wing of the

country like a colony. First they tried to force everyone to speak Urdu instead of

Bengali. They took the jute money from Bengal and spent it on factories in

Karachi and Islamabad. One general after another made promises they had no

intention of keeping (Anam, 2007, p.33).

“Anam sees the war of liberation firmly from a Bangladeshi perspective, where

the Pakistani Army is the villain” (Singh, 2008, n.pag.). She documents the killings ordered

by the Pakistani authorities, the atrocities of rape and torture at the behest of the

Pakistani army. The Dhaka university students were involved in the protests right from

the beginning; Sohail and Maya also get caught up in the charged atmosphere, attending

rallies, aiding armed rebels and eventually becoming freedom fighters themselves.

Rehana too is not untouched by the rebellion around her; her children ask her to attend

the speech of Sheikh Mujibur Rehman, that she reluctantly does. Eventually she too is

compelled by the involvement of her children to contribute to the war efforts. She allows

her home Shona, to be used as a sort of a guerrilla headquarters, burying arms in the

backyard. She helps to rescue her neighbour’s daughter’s fiancé Sabeer from atrocious

torture, using the influence of her brother-in-law who is posted in Dhaka as an officer of

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the Pakistani government. She nurses an injured guerrilla commander, hiding him in her

house Shona, and develops an attachment to him in the process. Her involvement in

looking after the commander awakens latent emotional and sexual desires. The

nationalist movement and her involvement in the War of Liberation provide Rehana a

space where she can assert her identity. Anam is said to have been inspired by her

grandmother's story who housed freedom fighters in her house during the war.

3.3.2. The Good Muslim: Engaging with Fundamentalism

In the second book of her proposed trilogy, The Good Muslim, Tahmina Anam has shifted

the focus of her story from the mother Rehana Haque to the siblings Maya and Sohail,

both former revolutionaries. The novel opens in an independent Bangladesh, a struggling

young nation trying to find its foothold, still ravaged by wartime trauma. It is 1984 and

Maya has returned to Dhaka to nurse her ailing mother and is devastated by the changes

that her household has gone through. She had been away for more than a decade, during

which period she was working as a village doctor, giving up her dream of becoming a

surgeon. Maya performed abortions for women who had been raped in the war, so that

they need not carry a stigma all their lives. She had left home basically because she was

unable to bear her brother’s transformation from a freedom fighter and a war hero to a

devout Muslim, embracing an orthodox version of Islam which encourages, according to

Maya, regressive ideas. Her once vibrant mother is ailing, suffering from cancer, her

sister-in-law Silvi is dead, leaving behind a little boy, Zaid, whose upbringing become a

matter of contention between the brother and the sister.

The family crises mirror the state of the nation. A dictator is in power; war

crimes are still unaccounted for, and criminals are on the loose. The stories of

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women raped and abused during the war for an independent Bangladesh have

been erased or marginalised in the search for a clean, linear history. Frantic

forms of religiosity proliferate (Hussien, 2011, n.pag.).

Both Sohail and Maya are searching for ways to escape the ghosts their violent pasts and

negotiate their future in a society that seems alien to them. While Sohail finds solace in

religion, Maya searches for atonement in the backward villages giving service to the

needy. Sohail turns to religion to escape the torturing memories of the war and

renounces everything that reminds him of his old self - doing away with his shirt and jeans

to wear loose kurta-pyjama and a prayer cap. Though he used to be an avid reader in the

past, he has stopped reading anything, to the extent of shunning his library books to

memorise the one and only holy Quran. He wants to send his only son to madrassa

instead of a formal school and ignores friends and family, devoted to the Tablighi Jamaat

movement that he has given himself up to. He spends all his time upstairs giving sermons

to his many followers. The person to be blamed for his transformation, according to Maya

is Silvi, Sohail's wife. Maya refuses to accept that he found solace in religion. Maya's own

suffering is equally haunting. She recalls her surgical training days when she performed

abortions on young women who had fallen prey to enemy soldiers. In an attempt to

atone for those sins she abandons her training and devotes herself to delivering babies

instead. As a village doctor, she learns a lot about her country's patriarchal mindset. Yet,

the rebel in her encourages her to challenge the customs. One hot day, she and her

pregnant friend Nazia decide to go for a swim in the nearby pond. This resulted in a

hundred and one lashes for Nazia men lurking outside her house threatening to kill her,

indications of growing fundamentalism in the society.

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In an e-mail interview to the AsiaSociety, Tamina Anam, when questioned about the

conversion of Sohail answers:

This was the most difficult part of the book for me to write, because I did want

Sohail's conversion to feel to the reader like something he really needed - that

his faith became a moral scaffolding on which he could hang the rest of his life.

And when he first turns to his faith, it's his sister, the more secular character,

who rejects him. You can argue that she's the fundamentalist, and that perhaps

if she had taken a more balanced view of his conversion, he may not have taken

things as far as he does (Anam, 2011).

Talking about the title of the book, in the same interview, she says that “the title is meant

to ask a question. Which of the characters is the good Muslim? Is it the one who rejects

her faith, or the one who embraces it?” (Anam, 2011). She leaves it to the reader to

decide for themselves who is the good Muslim.

5.4. Taslima Nasrin’s French Lover: Search for the self.

This is how Taslima Nasrin is introduced in her official website. :

Taslima Nasreen, an award-winning writer, physician, secular humanist and

human rights activist, is known for her powerful writings on women oppression

and unflinching criticism of religion, despite forced exile and multiple fatwas

calling for her death. In India, Bangladesh and abroad, Nasreen’s fiction,

nonfiction, poetry and memoir have topped the best-seller’s list.

One of the most controversial writers of contemporary times Taslima Nasrin, is a

writer who has gripped the attention of readers and critics alike. Besides many collections

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of poetry, essays, short stories and autobiographies, Taslima Nasrin has written eight

novels. The most well known of them being Lajja (Shame) and Forashi Premik (French

Lover). Her works have been translated in thirty different languages. Some of her books

are banned in Bangladesh. Because of her thoughts and ideas she has been banned,

blacklisted and banished from Bengal, both from Bangladesh and West Bengal part of

India. She has been prevented by the authorities from returning to her country since

1994, and to West Bengal since 2007.

Born in a Muslim family, Taslima Nasrin was brought up in a “highly restrictive and

conservative environment” but yet apart from excelling in science, she was also fond of

literature. As a feminist and secular humanist, through her works, Nasrin attempts to

fight for women’s suffering, oppression and secure women rights against religion,

traditions and the oppressive cultures and customs and hence advocates for uniform civil

code which grants equality and justice for women which soon provoked not only Islamic

fanatics but also different political and non-political organizations to carry out protests

against her, suing her editors and publishers, banning and burning her books publicly,

further alleging fatwa demanding her immediate execution, because of which she had

been banished from Bangladesh and at present, reside in exile in New Delhi since 2011,

under compulsion.

The novel that is selected for examination in this study is French Lover published

in 2002 that resonates with the author’s strong feminist ideas. Marakand Paranjape, in his

review of French Lover describes it as “deeply disappointing” and as a “banal novel that

has little to offer to admires of Lajja” (Paranjape, 2002, n.p.). There are others who have

commented on its almost soft-pornographic quality. However, the novel has captured to

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a great extent the struggles against patriarchy that a woman has to put up, especially so

when she is from a South Asian or a Third World country.

Nilanjana Mondal or Nila, the protagonist agrees to marry a Punjabi NRI from Paris

to escape from the trauma of a broken relationship, hoping to find a better life in exile.

However, she becomes a victim of Western prejudice the moment she landed in Paris in

the hands of immigration officers. She is detained in the airport even though there was

nothing wrong with her passport. The reason, Chaitali tells her is “the colour of your skin

– it is not white enough” and “your passport – it’s not of a rich country” (Nasrin,2002,

p.10). The immigrant officials refer to her as “Red saree”, robbing her of her individuality.

Nila’s feeling of alienation begins even before has she arrived properly. “Intertwined with

elements of diasporic dislocations is the predicament of the immigrant women who are

treated as alien by their host nations and are enslaved and treated as objects by men in

their own communities” (Chakraverty, 2014, p.246). Kishanlal, for all his exposure to

western culture turns out to be a typical patriarchal husband who could not understand

the restlessness of his wife. He is disappointed to find that she does not know how to

cook: “how can you be a woman and not know how to cook” (Nasrin,2002, p.20). Nila

feels trapped in the plush apartment of her husband. She wants a job: “The reason why I

took the job is that . . . I have to live according to your wishes because you are the master,

you are the boss; without you my life is pointless and I am a mere servant who will clean

your house, cook ,serve and provide sexual gratification at night” (Nasrin,2002, p. 79)

Finding herself being subsumed by the dominance of her husband Nila decides to leave

him, only to become the partner of a the lesbian Danielle; from being the sexual object of

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her husband she became the same thing with another. Nila’s quest for agency is fraught

with pain and suffering, with the ceaseless struggle in an alien land.

Nila goes back to Calcutta, but is not able to adjust there also, apart from the queries of

curios neighbours; she finds that Calcutta is no more home for her. She returns to Paris,

but this time a little more empowered with the inheritance she received after her

mother’s death. Rudderless and homeless Nila finds momentary solace in her relationship

with Benoir Dupont, her French Lover. With him she felt “that in this cruel, grotesque,

world, love could be so intimate, sex could be so perfect” (Nasrin,2002, p.170). She could

not have been more wrong. She is deeply disappointed to find that he is no different from

Kishanlal. The novel ends with Nila’s realization that all men are same.

According to Marakand Paranjape, “Nila comes across not as a rebel with a cause,

but a confused, unreflective, impulsive, utterly selfish, and ultimately destructive

character, someone who inspires little sympathy and even less curiosity”(n.pag.).

However, Nila’s character is able to bring out the strong feminist conviction of its creator.

It highlights the oppression experienced by women under patriarchal norms. The

institution of marriage puts the onus on the woman for its survival, making her more

responsible to preserve it. She is always the passive partner suppressing her own desires

to keep the institution going. Nila seeks to emancipate herself from this unjust equation.

She desires to find her ‘self’ and fulfil her urge for self-expression. Through her portrayal

of Nila, Taslima Narsin, focuses her reader’s attention to the needs and desires of a

woman which remain submerged in domesticity and the drudgery of housework.

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5.5. Conflict in Manjushree Thapa’s The Tutor of History and Seasons of Flight

Manjushree Thapa was born in Kathmandu in 1968 and grew up in Nepal, Canada and the

USA. Her first published work is a travelogue, Mustang Bhot in Fragments (1992). Her first

novel The Tutor of History (2001) is a portrait of a society in transition. One of her best

known work is Forget Kathmandu: An Elegy for Democracy (2005), published just weeks

before the royal coup in February 2005. She has also written a collection of short stories,

Tilled Earth (2009), which offers us a glimpse into the private dramas of ordinary people

in Nepal. It is she claims a result of her active engagements with people all around Nepal

through her social works. Her second novel is Seasons of Flight (2010), a novel set partly

in Nepal and partly in the USA and tells the story of Prema, a Nepali immigrant in the USA.

5.5.1. The Tutor of History: Politics and Female Bonding

The 1990s were very difficult times in the history of Nepal; it was a time of transition

when the country was moving away from Panchayati Raaj to parliamentary democracy.

Manjushree Thapa's novel documents this difficult transition from the perspective of one

small village South of Pokahra called Khaireni Tar, but which has been fictionalised for the

purpose of the novel. The main protagonist, the tutor of history is Rishi Parajuli, a

disillusioned communist, a highly qualified but unemployed young man. Other important

characters are, Giridhar Adhikari, an alcoholic who is the chairman of the Peoples Party’s

district committee; Om Gurung, a large-hearted former British Gurkha; and Binita Dahal, a

reclusive young widow who runs a tea stall near the town’s only bus stop. The novel is the

story of how the lives of these four people come together in the run-up to the

parliamentary elections.

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As election is announced the small town becomes abuzz with activity, more

people filed out of the busses coming from the cities and more people had tea at Binita’s

tea stall. Every party has set up their office in the town, and excitement is running high

and everyone is swept up by the wave of election frenzy. Binita notices that people are

suddenly paying her great attention. Someone comes with bananas from his garden,

another stop by to ask her how she is. Binita knew that such gestures were fraught with

meaning. Even the blind shopkeeper Shankar, hearing her voice in his shop, stopped his

transactions to ask after her health. Passers-by pressed in to hear her reply. They all want

something from her. All this attention is a result of the rumour that her brother-in-law the

movie star is going to get a ticket in the elections from their town.

Manjushree’s personal experience in rural development makes her understand

the desires of the people, especially people of small towns and villages like Khaireni Tar:

She writes:

People spoke of hunger, they spoke of injustice, they spoke of the kind

ofchanges they wanted to live to see. Their dreams weren’t lavish. A bridge

here would change their lives. A hundred-metres-long PVC pipe to bring

drinking water to the village. A few benches for the school. A little more

thought in the way they were treated by the district government. Who was

talking of big sums? Small allocations sufficed. Perhaps the district centrecould

allot money for one medical camp a year? (Thapa, 2001, p. 262)

Thapa takes us through journey of election where corruption plays a major role,

with votes being bought or cajoled. Money and force are two very important tools

necessary to fight an election. Even The People’s Party, that has made anti-corruption the

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main platform for their election agenda is not immune from the use of force. She gives us

an idea of how elections are fought in Nepal.

But Thapa is not only concerned with the mechanics of the elections, important

though these are. She is also concerned with human relationships. Foremost of her

characters is Binita, a shy young woman, unsure of her place, worried about her relatives,

worried about Nayan Raj Dahal but gradually pulled into the group of mothers who are

aiming to improve the lot of women in the village. Binita’s decision to support herself

after the death of her husband is an unconventional stand by any standards The more

conservative Chettri-Bahun families of the town shunned her for her unseemly decision to

continue living alone, with only her little daughter for company, till the arrival of her

young cousin about six months back. Her husband’s family predicted doom for her when

he made her decision, the only sympathetic person Kainlo-Kaka, she realises had been

kind to her only to get close to her and then rape her, shattering her trust in all men. With

time, Binita learns how to negotiate her position as a widow running a tea shop, adopting

tactics like plastering the walls of her tea stall with pictures of gods and goddesses to

shame men to behave, and discourage drunks and brawls. As election arrives she too is

pulled into the excitement of it all. Her tea shop becomes the centre of local politics as

her brother-in-law gives her the responsibility of feeding the party-workers and an

opportunity for her to earn some extra income.

In the run up to the election, the women of Khaireni Tar organise themselves into a

mother’s group; a platform to voice their grievances as well as their aspirations. The

reclusive Binita shows no interest in it:

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Why should she join the mothers’ group? Women didn’t, on the sole basis of

being women, form trustful unions, she thought. They often acted as the loyal

agents of punishing men. Hadn’t Binita suffered her mother, who would much

rather follow tradition than take her own daughter back? Hadn’t she suffered

Kainlo-kaka’s wife? And what of the townswomen who had rigorously

ostracized her until her brother-in-law came back? She had no need to subject

herself to their false camaraderie now. (Thapa,2001, n.pag. )

Just because she could not decline Thakalni-Ama invitation, Binita attends the

mother’s group meeting; her experience there angers and confuses her. The meeting is

filled with women enjoying themselves. After the decision of rebuilding a local shrine is

taken, the women start to sing and dance, enjoying the female bonding. The laughter of

women in the mother’s group meeting only makes her feel more acutely the emptiness of

her own life. "There was laughter in the group. There were intermediate pleasures amid

women—bitterness arose in her. Intermediate pleasure was all she could have any more”

(Thapa, 2001, n.pag )

The fervour of election preparation is dimmed by the arrival of the Dasain festival,

Binita’s brother-in-law also leaves for Kathmandu to be with his family. Binita feels the

silence around her unbearable; “A woman without a family. This was the price she had

paid for love.” (Thapa,2001,p. ). She decides to renew her ties with the estranged family

of her husband; taking her daughter, and her cousin to receive ‘Teeka’ from Kainlo-kaka,

only to realize that his blessings: ‘May you fulfil your dharma. Keep the gods in your

heart. Find solace in piety’ (Thapa,2001,n.pag.) gives her no solace.

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Binita slowly allows herself to be drawn into the mother’s group even begins to

enjoy herself, the friendship and bonding she experiences in the group gives her the

confidence that financial independence alone was not able to give her. She also gains

strength from the friendship that she shares with Rishi.

This was the women’s society that she had only just discovered. She had only

just found women; and she would give them up for Rishi. For the pleasure of

one man. And if he were to fail her? She had some money; she’d use her wits.

Beyond that there were no safety measures. (Thapa, 2001,n. pag.)

5.4.2. Seasons of Flight: Reinventing the Self.

Manjushree Thapa’s Seasons of Flight documents the experiences of Prema, a small

town girl, who fortuitously landed herself a visa under the diversification visa scheme to

the USA. Prema is a young independent woman working with an NGO, protecting the

forests of Nepal. She works far away from home hardly ever visiting her native village

which is a hotbed of Maoist insurgency. She is a working woman, with liberal idea, living

independently in a small hill bazaar. She sometimes goes to meet her boyfriend Rajan

spending nights with him sometimes. Prema’s mother died when she and her sister were

very small. The absence of a mother also is a factor that gives Prema the independence to

live as she does, apart from the fact that she is too educated to be of any use in the

village.

Prema was the one who had left; she was the one who had progressed. She

telephoned her father every month, and her organization’s head office, in the

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capital, deposited a share of her salary directly into his bank account ‘you are as

good as son to me’ was how her father expressed his pride in her (Thapa, 2010, p.

11).

With a job in a small village bazaar, there are no real challenges in Prema’s life and very

little prospect of improvement too. She casually applies for the green card lottery to the

USA and wins it to her own surprise. She makes arrangements to leave for the States,

telling her father only after everything is ready. She does not even consult her boyfriend

Rajan; “….the issue of the future had never arisen between them. Perhaps, he was

uncertain, or she was although well into the age of an arranged marriage, Prema had no

desire to find a husband” (Thapa, 2010, p. 42). “Unlike traditional women, she does not

believe that women need a husband to be secure in future. Her revolutionary nature

shows that female are not inborn feminine as defined by patriarchy” (Bista, 2011,p.70)

The second phase of Prema’s life begins in the USA. When Prema’s plane touched

down in America, it did not feel like America, the airport was undergoing reconstruction

and everything was disorderly. She is taken to Little Nepal, the Nepali immigrants’ ghetto,

found a job in an Indian restaurant and lives with a Nepali family. Prema chafes in this

environment, she feels that she has not come to America to live in “Little Nepal” and

leaves the neighbourhood to start a life of her own. She finds accommodation sharing a

house with an the African-American Meg, a nursing student, works in a Korean supplies

store, has casual sex with her neighbour Andy Campbell, but Prema’s hunger, her

wanting, remained, as did her desire for what, she did not know.

When Prema finally asks Luis out she feels that “it was possible to reinvent

herself” (Thapa, 2010, p.68). “Her swim in the ocean had changed her somehow. For the

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first time in America she was...happy” (Thapa, 2010, p.68). For Prema, the time that she

spent with Luis is her happiest period in America, with him she explores the city as she

had never done before, she discovers her own sexuality and revels in the pleasure she

derives out of it. With Luis she begins a whole new American life, “Finally, finally— she

had reached America” (Thapa, 2010, p.21). This feeling does not last very long: “. . .

Prema began to feel out of place where she was. Living in a flat on a toy street. Working

as a homecare attendant. Ensconced snugly in Luis’s life, his very— American— life. She

hadn’t actually reinvented herself, had she?” (Thapa, 2010, p.68).

Prema’s restlessness stems not just out of her desire for self discovery, but is also

a manifestation of her position as a displaced person. ‘I do not have a world!’ Prema

cried. ‘I left the world I had, and do not belong in the one I am in now— your world. I do

not have any place to take you, Luis. I do not have a place in the world.’ (Thapa, 2010, p.

186).

Prema is also haunted by her guilt of abandoning her sister Bijaya and her father –

the reason why she broke all ties with her family and set out on a zig-zag path to reinvent

herself. In the end she realizes that her restless spirit will find peace only through

reconciliation. So she begins her homeward journey – she calls her father, goes back to

Meg, to Neeru Didi, resumes contact with Rajan and Trilokaya and finally a trip back

home. She also makes friends with a group of conservationists and gets an opportunity to

do what she loves best. “Though, this novel is perhaps the most apolitical of her works,

the constant echoes of war and the political struggles occurring in Nepal seep into the

narrative” (Bole, 2014, n.pag). There are Maoist rebels lurking around in the forests that

she works in, her sister becomes one. But it is not the insurgents only who commit

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atrocities, soldiers also do so – they took away Kanchha, the owner of the cyber cafe in

the town and is not heard of again. In Seasons of Flight the personal, political, ecological

are all connected and inseparable.

5.6. Conclusion

The novels that have been examined in this study have focussed on the trauma and

violence of war and conflict in their respective countries. While the focus of Bangladeshi

writer like Tahimna Anam is the Bangladeshi war of liberation in 1971, the novelist from

Nepal, Manjushree Thapa have presented the Maoist Insurgency also known as the

People’s War. As some of these writers spend a good amount of their lives in the

diaspora, thay have also highlighted the plight of immigrants as depicted in the Talima

Nasrin’s French Lover and Manjushree thapa’s Seasons of Flight. Their quest for identity

as minorities in their newly adopted countries has been foregrounded by both the

novelists. Anam’s portrayal of the trauma of the 1971 War is to offer an alternative

narrative to the official version of history, which has been completely silent about the

war. It is an attempt at remembering and memorializing an important part of our history

that has been erased from our cultural memory.

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