"I think that England is another form of heaven. I think that if I go to England, I will at once forget my trouble from which I am suffering," Thus wrote Sunita in a school essay. She kneeled hunched over a kerosene lamp, on a gundri mat. It was a warm balmy night in Lamjung. So, Himalayan countries like Nepal and others are not the only Shangri-Las -England is a Shangri-La too. When asked, the majority of Nepalis here will remember the London of their pre-migration imagination as a sophisticated place of tall buildings, pristine streets, organised lives, friendly, highly educated people and success. Yet how many actually end up staying here permanently? Not as many as you would think. This is not only due to visa issues, so why do so many choose to leave?
On arrival here, the London Dream can be both confounded and confirmed. Yes, here are the tall buildings, but they are just one aspect of a much bigger picture. There are clean streets, but they have sanitised, de-individualised houses holding over-individualistic people and around the corner are "filthy" streets that "smell like meat". There are organised lives: suited chic Londoners eating Pr?t-a-Mang? lunches. But they stride blindly past huddled junkies lying sunken into spirals of chemical highs and pavement lows.
There is success: life in London can reap many rewards. However, a common experience of Londoners tells a different story. Many find themselves caught in a compelling, vicious cycle of earning and spending, like a dog chasing its tail. So of course, for some, it is not long before "the city loses its inaccessible importance".
Going 'home' to Nepal brings with it the clash of the Shangri-La and the lived London experience. It brings identity crisis. In the words of Shohidur Rahman in the Guardian Weekend, "Londoners come wrapped in many layers". Back in Nepal, can they slip easily into the celebrity role of one who is altogether more modern? Will they tell stories of a land where pumpkin is never out of season, where students have laptops and where there are poor people and children who are overweight? This is a workable identity for one returning from the Promised Land, bearing prestigious gifts and the badges of a shifted status. But then, increasingly, the distance from Kathmandu to London can begin to contract and that between self and Nepali home lengthen.
On the other hand, determined to be as inconspicuous as possible, people might find themselves speaking little of London, temporarily trying to eclipse a more recently acquired self with an original Nepali self. One interviewee commented, "why should my family worry about my time living abroad, let them have their dream". But simultaneously an urge to challenge the idealisation of London may also be pressing: a returned daughter will tell her mother to allow British visitors to help make momos, while a brother says he believes that development is not "about getting to choose between a range of cars". In addition, a feeling of protectiveness towards Nepal can also weave into this picture but it sits uncomfortably with despair, frustration and embarrassment at the country's political situation. All these various impulses together form a charged and mismatched conglomeration of emotions-sometimes meaning that the return to London after a visit home is a bittersweet relief.
Why such a cocktail of conflicting emotions? One answer may be that we internalise society's attitudes. People find it hard to see identities as plural, malleable and different in every individual. How often have you been asked whether you feel more Nepali or more British? People want these to either be mutually exclusive (as does the Nepali embassy) or else they expect them to be two separate coexisting identities. More than coexistent they are actually merged, one with the other. One's Britishness can be a Nepali Britishness and vice-versa. In London people can often feel extra Nepali or isolated from Britishness, while back home Britishness can show up starkly against a Nepali background.
The confusion caused by these expectations of mono-identity is partly what causes the erosion of London-the-Utopia. And, like Western images of Nepal as Shangri-La, this London is revealed as a projection. Thus, in our shrinking world, Nepali-Londoners tend to find that any expectations, like Sunita's of a heavenly England, explode into fragments.
