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Abstract
Kerala, a southern state heavily influenced by communist ideologies until recently, had a lurking fascination for the Gulf and its diaspora. Eighty-eight per cent of the Malayalis who migrated to the Middle East from Kerala, went on to become cultural icons at home, the most sought after bridegrooms and the patriotic NRI's who contributed generously to the development of Kerala. This paper focuses on the narrative strategies that Benyamin employs in Goat Days—the only novel translated in English that recreates the Gulf-experience of Keralite migrant laborers. The writer manages to bring out the glaring disparity between the hopes nurtured in the Malyali imagination by the Gulf returnees and the stark reality of their brutal existence in the new promised land of Gulf countries.