BOOK REVIEW
A journey – within you! text by YASMIN TAJ On Seasons of Flight, Prema, the protagonist, sets off on an odyssey of self-discovery across geographies in the hope to invent a life for herself in a strange land with connections and memories of her homeland still lingering. Amongst all the chaos and political turmoil in her country and her village atop a hill in war-torn rural Nepal, Prema, takes you on a journey from living in the hills and struggling to understand the nuances of life to moving to one of the most developed nations in the world, the USA and trying to find herself there. A childhood lost to the early demise of her mother followed by her younger sister disappearing and joining the Maoists, Prema starts her early life in Nepal with a college degree in forestry, resulting in a job with an NGO and is quite satisfied with the way things are going with her lover Rajan. But destiny has other plans, and even though she fills up a US Green Card Lottery with little interest, she ends up winning it! This is where the trajectory of her life changes. Leaving behind an old father who only wishes for his daughter to achieve her dreams, Prema sets off to Los Angeles and starts life anew. In the US, her journey towards discovering herself begins from trying to explain to people where she comes from, Nepal – a country less known to people on that side of the world. From explanations like ‘it is near India’, or ‘where Mt Everest is’, or ‘have you heard of the Sherpas?’, to refuting claims of people who believed Nepal is Naples, any Nepali reader will smile and identify with Prema’s instances of introducing herself and her country. Soon, Prema settles down to a job 46 yzine.com.np
of a homecare attendant to an elderly American woman, Esther, and discovers more about the American way of living after moving out of the home of the Nepali family she was living with in Little Nepal. She also discovers another side of her persona - her passion and immense love towards Luis, her American lover. But no matter how far you go or how hard you try, to leave your past behind, there always remains a string that keeps you connected to it. Prema too tries hard to embrace this new way of living but soon realises that she can never totally leave the place she came from. “It was and it was not far, where she came from. Some days her birth village felt centuries away, and other days it was too close, she could not get far enough away from it.” From moving jobs to homes to having casual relationships and eventually finding love with Luis and a
warm connection with Esther, Prema still missed something; she wasn’t homesick, yet there was something missing. What gives Prema a reason to look at life in a different way and find a purpose in it, is her encounter with Fiona, a lepidopterist and lawyer on the lookout for El Segundo Blues, a tiny butterfly that ‘stayed still for long stretches and then took flight in a flutter of blue. A creature that goes through cycles of transformation before it is finally ready for a season of flight’. Her life follows a similar trajectory. It takes its own flight at intervals and remains silent and unmoved other times. What’s most interesting about the character Thapa has created is the fact that Prema is just a simple South Asian woman striving to find fulfilment in life. She goes along in her journey with the flow, yet, does it in her own special way. She is self-centred to an extent, yet has a heart of gold. Thapa’s style of writing is highly descriptive and it’s amazing how she looks at the little intricacies in life and describes them with such ardour. Her socio-cultural observations are impeccable, something that every Nepali, who has stepped out of the country, would agree with. From Prema’s discovery of her own self, her journey into a new and strange land and her attempt to reconnect with her homeland, this narrative of a Nepali immigrant against the backdrop of Nepali politics is certainly an absorbing read. After ‘Tilled Earth’, with this book, Thapa has certainly maintained her reputation of being a critically acclaimed and internationally accomplished Nepali author. Yasmin Taj is the senior copy editor and senior correspondent of The Times of India, New Delhi.