The history of the Gurkha serviceman is one that goes beyond soldiering and bravery-it is in equal measure a story of the resilient human spirit, and of a tiny community that carved for itself a niche in world history.
A pioneering collection describing and dramatizing the Nepalese diaspora - the displacement and exile of the Nepali-speaking world *SHORTLISTED FOR THE DYLAN THOMAS PRIZE* A disfigured servant girl plans to flee Nepal; a Kalimpong shopkeeper faces an impossible dilemma; a Hindu religious festival in Darjeeling brings with it a sacrifice; a Nepali-Bhutanese refugee pins her hopes on the West; a Gurkha's daughter tries to comprehend her father's complaints; two young Nepali-speaking immigrants meet in Manhattan. These are just some of the stories of the people whose culture and language is Nepalese but who are dispersed to India, Bhutan and beyond. From every perspective and on every page, Prajwal Parajuly blends rich colour and vernacular to paint an eye-opening picture of a unique world and its people.
On the fiftieth anniversary of the 1971 Indo-Pak war, revisit its battlefields through stories of bravehearts from the army, navy and air force who fought for a cause that meant more to them than their own lives Why do the Gorkha soldiers of 4/5 GR attack a heavily defended enemy post with just naked khukris in their hands? Does Pakistan find out the real identity of the young pilot who, after having ejected from a burning plane, calls himself Flt Lt Mansoor Ali Khan? What awaits the naval diver who cuts made-in-India labels off his clothes and crosses into East Pakistan with a machine gun slung across his back? Why is a twenty-one-year-old Sikh paratrooper being taught to jump off a stool in a deserted hangar at Dum Dum airport with a Packet aircraft waiting nearby? 1971 is a deeply researched collection of true stories of extraordinary human grit and courage that shows you a side to war that few military histories do.
Soljer Soljer is a story based on an imaginary infantry battalion of the Third Gorkha Rifles — the Sixth battalion. The composition, training, camaraderie, and duties in all the other infantry battalions of our Army are almost the same except that certain customs undergo a change as they adapt to the ethnicity of the troops in that Regiment. So the visible changes would be the manner of the battle cry, salutation, greeting, decorum in festivity with the troops, or ceremonials in the Officer's Mess. There is no difference in the dogged determination or the ferocity in the will of troops of these troops in completing any mission allotted to their battalions! Colonel Mahip Chadha, whom I have not only known from our training days, but served with; has very clearly brought out the joys of the simple infantry life and the deeply embedded love, affections and stoic ethnic involvement that officers enjoy with their men. This is brotherhood in its purest form. The story is of Surinder Singh Sahni and his son Jaskaran who as father and son serve in the same battalion. Brigadier Sahni resigns from the Army due to domestic issues while his son enjoys a brief and very modern marriage thanks to considerate parents. Brigadier Sahni has to face terms with reality when he reads about the Indian POWs and later when his son is declared missing believed killed after a skirmish with militants from POK. His misery is compounded when his daughter in law has to suffer further privations, till she decides to fight the establishment by becoming a lawyer. The sacrifices made by the cowherds in rescuing Jaskaran are poignant and are noble.Jaskaran returns home as his amnesia wears off in another accident. His mother like all mothers refuses to believe that he is dead.There is a God in heaven who reunites the family. The question which plagues Jaskaran is--whether his countrymen recognised his loss-- The book has a sprinkling of humour and the reader laughs at the follies of life. Mahip has told his story as an infantry officer would — straight, to the point and without beating about the bush which makes enjoyable reading! Lieutenant General G S Negi PVSM AVSM* VSM Erstwhile Colonel The Third Gorkha Rifles The Indian Army
For a few years in the early 1990s - when the embers of a violent agitation for Gorkhaland were slowly dying down - Parimal Bhattacharya taught at the Government College in Darjeeling. No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight is a memoir of his time in the iconic town, and one of the finest works of Indian non-fiction in recent years. As Parimal tramped its roads and winding footpaths, Darjeeling slowly grew on him. He sought out its history: a land of incomparable beauty originally inhabited by the Lepchas and other tribes; the British who took it for themselves in the mid-1800s so they could remember home; the Darjeeling Himalayan Railway - once a vital artery, now a quaint toy train; and the vast tea gardens with which the British replaced verdant forests to produce the fabled Orange Pekoe. And in the enmeshed lives of the small town's inhabitants, Parimal discovered a richly cosmopolitan society which endured even under threat from cynical politics and haphazard urbanization. Written with empathy, and in shimmering prose, No Path in Darjeeling Is Straight effortlessly merges travel, history, literature, memory, politics, and the pleasures of ennui into an unforgettable portrait of a place and its people.
Gorkhaland is an attempt by a journalist to unravel the various layers of the ongoing crisis in the Darjeeling hills, where the Nepali-speaking community is locked in a political struggle with the state of Bengal, of which it is a part. The author endeavours to delve into the deeper recesses of the psyche of the Gorkha community settled in these restive hills and attempts to put the prevailing stereotypes under a subjective scanner. The author approaches the century-old tangle from four perspectives: the history of the region, the problem of assimilation of the various ethnic groups, the course of the movement, from Dambar Singh Gurung to Bimal Gurung, and the hurdles in the way of the fulfillment of the statehood dream. The problem appears insoluble given the odds set against the formation of a separate state, and the people are poignantly aware of the impossibility of realizing this collective reverie. Yet they cannot give in. The writer attempts to give expression to this poignancy at the collective level-the frustration which gets accentuated into a fratricidal mayhem with or without provocations.