How has language affected how Nepali Gurkha-origin individuals and communities integrate, dissociate or simply live life in the UK? How does this vary across generations and genders? How is this intertwined with cultural or artistic expression? This Meet the World panel explores the experiences of Nepali Gurkhas living in the UK to understand how the use of language – or the inability to use a specific language – defines their identities in the fraught multicultural realities of Britain today.

The panellists for this Meet the World session are Premila van Ommen, a researcher on Gurkha youth culture in the UK; Mukahang Limbu, whose debut poetry collection ‘Mother of Flip-Flops’ was published by Out-spoken Press in 2022; and Sanjay Sharma, a researcher on the transnational histories of Gurkha women. Premila will talk about the role of rap in the youth culture of British Nepali youth; Mukahang will talk about how he and other Nepali youth are using poetry and prose to recall Nepal while living in the UK; and Sanjay will share his experiences of using oral history to record the often hidden lives of Gurkha wives.

The session will be moderated by Rabi Thapa, NCW virtual translator in residence for summer 2023, a UK-born, Nepal-bred writer/editor/translator who lives in Wales, hoping one day to be one of the Cymru Cymraeg.

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