Until our paths crossed again in California in 2009, Navin and I had not seen each other for several years, not since 2004 in Kathmandu just before he migrated to the United States and I stayed on to continue my fieldwork. As we exchanged a warm embrace, I was struck by the irony of the encounter. The contrasts of our life trajectories could not have been starker. I was looking for a quiet retreat, having just quit my job at the World Bank and saying goodbye to an American life to go back ‘home’. Navin Sharma, who moved to the United States from Nepal five years ago, was manning a sixteen-hour shift job in order to keep his new petrol pump franchise afloat. America may be the land of dreams but it comes with its own occasional setbacks. Talks about the Sharma family struggles got lost in the barking of two retrievers chaotically running around the small house they had bought in a peripheral suburb of California. Their son had an accident which left his skin scarred but spared his life and physical abilities. With a tinge of nostalgia and suffering, they spoke with pride about having finally found a foothold in America. I could hear the lull in the room when I announced to them I was leaving to resume my earlier research on the garment industry in Nepal. The garment industry is dead, they told me, there is nothing more to say about it. I said that I wanted to understand what that meant.

After arriving in Kathmandu, I went to see Chhote, a mutual friend of ours. His garment business had remained profitable some time after the industry had lost steam, which he attributed to his designing talents and ability to retain the loyalty of buyers and consumers. Emboldened by the retention of sales, Chhote initially went ahead and built a modern garment-making facility, but later changed his mind about continuing after sensing the brewing hostility against businesses in general. It was much later that he learned that his own workers, away from his watchful eyes, had begun to turn up at the protests called by the new trade union formed by the Nepali Maoist rebels.