SPECTRAL MODERNITY: MAGIC REALISM, PSYCHOLOGICAL TRAUMA, AND SOCIAL FLUX IN INDRA SUNDAS’S ‘GARIMAAN’

Indra Sundas’s Nepali short story Garimaan (गाडीमान) masterfully fuses magic realism’s veiled supernatural irruptions with the protagonist Saila’s psychological unraveling amid rural-urban collision. This paper dissects how sparse motifs – elongated shadows, haunting wails and piercing lamentations rising through the mist and temporal loops defying starry nights – defamiliarize Gundri Bazaar’s “iron beasts,” catalyzing Saila’s id-ego fracture and cultural dissociation. The formalist repetition of cart groans and oxen instincts amplifies the atmosphere of social flux, where highland folk heroism crumbles into bazaar inferiority. Drawing on Freudian/Jungian psychoanalysis, Cathy Caruth’s trauma belatedness and Himalayan folklore traditions, seven ultra-rare magical moments emerge as psyche mirrors, culminating in Hussel(Whistle) Khola’s shrouded climax. This elevates Sundas’s innovation in Nepali literature, remapping post-globalization identity rifts.