The Warring Worlds of the Nepali Love Story: Understanding Love and Gender through a Select Reading of Texts from the Nepali Civil War

Abstract

This article analyses how the idea of love is variously deployed by male and female authors narrating the conflict in Nepal between the Maoists and the Royal Government (1996–2006). Male authors, like Narayan Wagle in his work Palpasa Café, Yug Pathak in Urgen ko Ghoda, and D. B. Gurung in Breaking Twilight, deploy the form of the heterosexual love story in order to provide certain explanations and resolutions for the political conflict. In doing so they open up a host of issues related to gender in Nepal, as their texts seek to contain and confine the female characters. On the other hand, female authors, like Tara Rai in Chapamar Yuwati ko Diary and Radha Paudel in Khalanga ma Hamla, use the form of the memoir to bring forth a different idea of community love. This article demonstrates how love, within the love story format presented by the male authors, becomes restrictive and confining to female characters, while the form of the memoir allows women not only to redefine love but also to create a new identity for themselves in post-war Nepal.