In early 2004, Sushila Karki Pyakurel was on her way to Israel to work as a caretaker when she met a government official in Bangkok, en route to South Korea, for a sports programme. As soon as the man realised that she was headed for the Middle East all by herself, he asked her to […]
Author: Weena Pun
By the time I met my grandfather for the first and only time in 2000, his mental abilities were fast deteriorating. More often than not, he did not know where he was. He could not hear very well and he peed wherever he wanted. Yet, every now and then, he would regain his senses and […]
Pushpa is an anomaly, but also a part of an increasing phenomenon, in which urban youths have one eye fixed on the Gulf countries and the other further west, on Europe and North America. After a month-long vacation, Pushpa Bajracharya flew back to Dubai on Thursday, to resume his work as a merchandiser at a […]
A migrant worker walking out of the arrivals terminal at the Tribhuvan International Airport is instantly recognizable. He has many large suitcases tightly tied with strings as if each suitcase were a salmon fish in a net. The sight of the strings around the suitcase gave rise to the widely-used moniker dori lahure (dori: a […]
Migrant workers in Malaysia are routinely harassed by its policemen. But neither the employers nor the state machinery do anything to curb such treatment