Jemima Sakum Phipon, Assistant Professor
Department of English,M.U.C Women’s College,Burdwan.
Of ‘life and the land’ : Darjeeling in Indra Bahadur Rai’s There’s a Carnival Today
Authors
Abstract
This paper seeks to closely examine Indra Bahadur Rai‘s There’s a Carnival Today as a
historical documentation of ‘ life and the land’ of Darjeeling in the 1950s.There’s a Carnival
Today(2018), is a translation of Indra Bahadur Rai’s Aaja Ramita Cha(1964) by Manjushree Thapa. The
fact that it is‘ a novel about the old Darjeeling’ written by a son of Darjeeling’s soil makes it a
Darjeeling novel in the truest sense.It chronicles the socio-political upheavals which brought about
dynamic changes to the Darjeeling hills post-Independence. Even after India’s independence from the
colonial masters, Darjeeling witnessed very little or no change in the administrative and economic
structures as domination and oppression persisted in Darjeeling in the form of an internal neocolonialism
perpetrated by the Government of West Bengal. The novel portrays the unrest in the tea plantations as
workers protested against difficult labour conditions and took to the streets in protest.Though written at
a time when the Gorkhaland movement had not begun, yet it portends the future unrest. The novel
portrays the quotidian lives of the people of a cosmopolitan Darjeeling through the eyes of Indra
Bahadur Rai .At the core,There’s a Carnival Today is a novel that centres around a theme that is
prevalent in Indra Bahadur Rai’s writings, the Indian Nepalis, and their place in this massive political
entity called India.It foreshadows the issues of identity which still shape politics and attitudes in the
region even today.