Land Where I Flee by Prajwal Parajuly: book review

Land Where I Flee (2014) is set in Gangtok, in the state of Sikkim in the Indian Himalayas in contemporary times.

Chitralekha Nepauney, owner of Nepauney Apparel, and habitual smoker, is nearly 84 years old. Chitra has had a hard life. Her husband, son, and daughter-in-law had died before her. She now wants the remaining years of her life to be ‘devoid of sadness.’

The advent of her birthday is one of significance in her Nepalese culture because ‘few people live to see their 84th birthday.’ There will be a Chaurasi – a reunion. Coming to the reunion are her two grand-daughters and two grand-sons.

Thirty-seven-year-old Bhagwati has just lost her job as a dishwasher at a local diner in Boulder, Colorado, in America, but she is happy. She will be seeing her grandmother for the first time since she left Gangtok 18 years earlier to elope with her boyfriend.

Agastaya is 34 years old and an oncologist in New York City, where he lives with Nicky Wells. He knows his grandmother is going to ask why he is not married.

Manasa, at 32, has a hedge-fund career in London. Married to Himal, she is a high-achiever, but miserable and a ‘cantankerous horror.’

The youngest grandson, Ruthwa, is a 31-year-old writer and a ‘boy trapped in a man’s body’ has been accused of plagiarism. Ruthwa does not like his grandmother: ‘She deserves to be in jail’ he says. He is only going to the reunion because he wants to write about Prasanti, his grandmother’s servant, who is a female eunuch.

They all converge in their birth town, but tensions arise, as they all want their grandmother’s blessing. Prasanti does too, but she makes ‘an unfortunate mistake, or was it deliberate?

‘The reunion was strange’ says Ruthwa, and indeed it was. The reminiscences, silences, vindictiveness, revenge, vindication, ‘a half-truth so heinous,’ a theft, and a tragedy are ‘tragedy’s way of unifying a family.’ The events of the reunion not only affect the grandchildren’s relationships with their grandmother, and their relationships with each other, but they also impact upon their relationships with their loved ones back in their respective countries.

This is a complicated family drama with all the nuances of strife and struggle, and the ways in which each person seeks acceptance, affirmation, and love.

MARTINA NICOLLS is an international aid and development consultant, and the author of:- Similar But Different in the Animal Kingdom (2017), The Shortness of Life: A Mongolian Lament (2015), Liberia’s Deadest Ends (2012), Bardot’s Comet (2011), Kashmir on a Knife-Edge (2010) and The Sudan Curse (2009).