The Psychogeography of Homelessness: Reconstruction of Fractured
Girmitya Identity in Satendra Nandan’s Requiem for a Rainbow

Anshika Agarwal

doi:10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i08.037

Title: The Psychogeography of Homelessness: Reconstruction of Fractured Girmitya Identity in Satendra Nandan’s Requiem for a Rainbow
Authors: Anshika Agarwal
Journal: International Journal of Social Science and Economic Research (IJSSER) ISSN: 2455-8834 Volume: 11 Issue: 8 Publication Date: August 2026 DOI: 10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i08.037
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Anshika Agarwal Research Scholar, Department of English and MEL., University of Lucknow
MLA 8 Agarwal, Anshika. "The Psychogeography of Homelessness: Reconstruction of Fractured Girmitya Identity in Satendra Nandan’s Requiem for a Rainbow." Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, vol. 11, no. 8, Aug. 2026, pp. 4141-4251, doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i08.037. Accessed Aug. 2026. APA 6 Agarwal, A. (2026, August). The Psychogeography of Homelessness: Reconstruction of Fractured Girmitya Identity in Satendra Nandan’s Requiem for a Rainbow. Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research, 11(8), 4141-4251. Retrieved from https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i08.037 Chicago Agarwal, Anshika. "The Psychogeography of Homelessness: Reconstruction of Fractured Girmitya Identity in Satendra Nandan’s Requiem for a Rainbow." Int. j. of Social Science and Economic Research 11, no. 8 (August 2026), 4141-4251. Accessed August, 2026. https://doi.org/10.46609/IJSSER.2026.v11i08.037.
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ABSTRACT: This paper explores the psychogeography of homelessness and the reconstruction of a fractured Girmitya identity in Satendra Nandan’s semi-autobiographical work, Requiem for a Rainbow: A Fijian Indian Story (2001). Due to his life journey spanning a complex geography connecting Fiji, India, England, and Australia, Nandan’s life path reflects the compounded trauma of a twice-displaced community. Unlike voluntary migrants who navigate a singular spatial divide, Nandan’s sequential dispossession from both Fiji and his ancestral India complicates his diasporic journey, transforming it into a narrative of un-belonging. After the traumatic disruption of Sitiveni Rabuka’s 1987 military coups, which shattered Indo-Fijian assumptions of domestic security, Nandan was thrust into forced exilic flight to Australia as a secondary exile. It thoroughly analyses the text’s chapters—from the political shock of Fiji’s inaugural coup to childhood memories of Maigania along the Nadi River, student years in Delhi, parliamentary realpolitik in Suva, and academic settlement in Canberra—this paper examines how physical eviction from national spaces inflicts imperceptible psychological trauma. In response to this dislocation, Nandan constructs an “imaginary homeland” that is not merely a lost city of the mind, but a fractured, layered construct encompassing both the ancestral India of the Girmitya imagination and a paradisiacal Fiji. Hence, the paper demonstrates how Nandan utilizes the sanctuary of language and the emancipatory power of literature to heal the void of homelessness, rewriting dislocation into a space of belonging and reclaiming a sense of self beyond rigid geopolitical boundaries.

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