Writing the “other” Nris Through A Transnational Lens in Goat Days and Painting Kuwait Violet

Abstract

Analysing Benyamin’s Goat Days (2008) and Pamela Fernandes’ Painting Kuwait Violet (2018), this chapter argues that through the situations protagonists face, the anecdotes about peripheral characters who are migrant workers from other Asian countries, the inclusion of Gulf history as it relates to importing Asian labour, and the insistence on cross-cultural communication and community as survival tools for migrant workers, the novels bear witness to the transnational plight of unskilled migrant workers in the Gulf. Although the protagonists in these novels are Indians, Benyamin and Fernandes show that the poor condition of unskilled migrant workers in the GCC countries is a Pan-Asian problem and should be dealt with as such. Unlike magazines and newspaper articles about unskilled migrant workers in the Gulf that are replete with employment data or tragic stories of deaths, Fernandes and Benyamin provide an in-depth look into the lives of the humans who are building the Gulf from the ground up, thus compelling the reader to be more invested in their successes and failures. Ultimately, these novels problematize the belief that everyone benefits equally from globalization as race and social class continue to be major determinants of success.