Impermanence as Form: Taping, Transgressing, and Metaphorical Mothering in Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People

Abstract

This essay situates the hyperreal worlds of pravasis and the experimental narrative form of Deepak Unnikrishnan’s Temporary People within the framework of petro-coloniality. It argues that the novel exposes the precarity, affective labor, and subaltern vulnerabilities of South Asian immigrant workers, while its metaphoric structures generate both an aesthetic and an epistemic register for their absences embedded in the petro-culture of the Gulf. Although prior scholarship has examined the novel’s immigrant subjectivities and offered political and cultural readings, critique on narrative analysis grounded in close reading of its fragmented and experimental form remains limited. Apart from Alraddadi’s work, which highlights how the novel exposes the limits of established postcolonial frameworks such as Bhabha’s hybridity and fluidity, there has been little engagement with the text in relation to emerging conversations on petro-coloniality. Building on this gap, the essay examines the precarious existence and structural absence of pravasis in petro-colonial Gulf spaces through the novel’s distinctive narrative strategies and aesthetic choices. While it considers the text in totality, it offers close readings of three key stories, “Birds,” “Le Musée,” and “Glossary,” in order to develop the triadic framework of taping, transgressing, and metaphorical mothering that guides the paper’s formal analysis. Through this framework, the essay demonstrates how a holistic understanding of pravasis precarity, their affective responses to petro-colonial conditions, and the novel’s own transgressive formal strategies becomes possible.