Why is a Bahun man working with the Gurkhas?

When I told Shyam Dai in 2018 that I was going to Singapore for my PhD and would be researching Gurkha women, he smiled and said, “Good luck being a Bahun man and researching with the Gurkhas!”

Those words stayed with me.

From day one, I was hyperconscious about the gender and ethnic differences between my research interlocutors and me.

I often remembered Shyam Dai’s words after I started my PhD. I spoke about my concerns with Dr Dhiraj Ghotane (a Gurkha son), who told me that Gurkha women would want to talk to me because I was pursuing a history that had largely been ignored until then. That was one answer that encouraged me. When I spoke to the children of Gurkhas, including Gaumaya and Lex, they believed that my lack of preconceived ideas would help me ask questions with genuine curiosity. They helped me build a community that Puspa and Bhawana helped substantiate. They welcomed me as a friend and have always supported me since.

Now, in 2026, I still think about what it means for a Bahun man to research Gurkha women and men. I still do not have a perfect answer.

What I do know is that I have been welcomed into hundreds of homes and lives with a generosity I could never have imagined. What began as a PhD became something much bigger for me. It stopped being just my research.

I am saying this not because I have done anything pathbreaking during the course of my academic life. I am sharing this simply because it has shaped me both as an academic and as an individual. I have only been humbled.

What I also know is that people have showered me with love. I have made friends with dozens of *maijus*, *bojus*, and *chhyamas*. I have cried with *maijus* listening to their struggles when their husbands were deployed. I have sat with *mamas* who cried as they remembered the wars in Cyprus and the Falklands. I have laughed out loud with *bojus* cracking jokes, and with *bajeys* patiently explaining things they thought were obvious while I kept asking one question after another.

I was never the author of those stories. I was simply one of the many people fortunate enough to listen. When I started my fieldwork, I never imagined that someone who simply asked questions and listened would be welcomed with so much warmth that a Bahun man would one day be called *Bhanja* by the *mamas* and *maijus*. It means a world to me.

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