A Reader's Inheritance - Review of The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

While reading the first words of the book, I was still possessed by the last words of Borges's poem printed at the start -

'I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive.'  

The effect of these words together with the vision of dusk in Kalimpong, the Judge and his orphaned granddaughter sitting on the veranda of a dilapidating house, Mutt the dog under the table, the cook brewing tea in an ancient kettle and Kanchanjangha looming in the horizon created a melancholy in me.  An emptiness in the pit of my stomach. I became nostalgic about memories that do not exist and places I have never visited.

So the book began and I carried this feeling with me throughout.  It was like haphazardly flicking through an album.  One snapshot pointing towards another to slowly reveal a complete story.   The book is set in the mid 1980's with snippets of the Judge's life going back to the early 1900's during British rule in India.   

I liked Kiran Desai's use of language - flowing, clear and visual.  She used some big words such as parsimonious, borborygmus etc, however, instead of sounding out of place or odd, the words blended in with the characters and the time adding to the authenticity of the narration. The breaks after each scene provided a helpful space for the reader to absorb what has just been narrated and to prepare for the next scene.

The moments on the Judge's veranda are the last few where 'they sipped and ate, all of existence passed over by nonexistence, the gate leading nowhere, and they watched the tea spill copious ribbony curls of vapor, watched their breath join the mist slowly twisting and turning, twisting and turning. '

Then in comes the Gorkha boys on foot through the forest wearing 'leather jackets from the Kathmandu black market, khaki pants, bandanas - universal guerilla fashion' and things start to take a drastic turn in the lives of these people who until this moment were only aware of the Nepalese insurgency as background noise. 

Despite Sai's (the granddaughter) year old affair with her Nepalese mathematics teacher Gyan, she was unaware of the rising frustration and desperation in the Gorkha community in India.  She did not feel attached to Gyan's background or his life other than her part in it.  This was not a decision she made consciously.  The Nepalese people living in India were referred to as 'The Neps' by the upper class Indians such as the Judge's neighbors Lolita and Nonita.  It never occurred to Sai to challenge this dissociation, as it has been this way for generations. The Gorkhas were an unnoticed and inferior minority. 

Sai did, however, take offence as she read parts of The Indian Gentleman's Guide to Etiquette in the Gymkhana library and came across the paragraph - 'The Indian gentleman, with all self-respect to himself, should not enter into a compartment reserved for Europeans, any more than he should enter a carriage set apart for ladies.  Although you may have acquired the habits and manners of the European, have the courage to show that you are not ashamed of being an Indian, and in all such cases, identify yourself with the race to which you belong. '

The Judge, Jemubhai Popatlal Patel, was caught in this dilemma of being an Indian Gentleman.  He rose high above his lower caste rural community by becoming an ICS (Indian Civil Service) officer, a rare incidence during British rule.  He drifted apart from his wife, family and background in the process but was unable to become part of the society whose teachings he followed.  Therefore, he hung suspended in the middle not quite sure of where to place himself.  Hence he kept to himself, a somber soul imparting an air of dignity to the untrained eyes.  The only entity he bestowed his unpretentious and unconditional love upon, was Mutt the dog.

The cook's son, Biju, felt a similar confusion many years later in America.  He grew up knowing that people belonged in certain groups - for examples - Black people are thieves, Muslims are violent and bad people in general etc. During his increasingly frustrating job hunt and attempts to survive in a foreign land, he found himself questioning these values of a lifetime.  Kiran Desai's account of the Holy Cow and Unholy Cow is hilariously accurate.  She also points out the paradoxical nature of our inclinations -  'This habit of hate had accompanied Biju, and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India.'

Kiran Desai has been very clear sighted in dissecting and highlighting these generalizations.  However, I was somewhat disappointed reading about the airport scene in India on Biju's return.   It was witty, no doubt and would have served as great material for stand up comedy.  But the weakest part in the book. She tended to put people in clusters here and conformed to western stereotypes of Indian people.   This part of the narration also felt as if the narrator is looking down at the crowd from somewhere high above and had a superior air to it.

The inheritance of Loss is Kiran Desai's second Novel and won the 2007 Booker Prize.  Her first novel Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard was also critically acclaimed.  Her mother Anita Desai is also a very well known author and has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize twice.

All in all, I found the book very gripping with charming descriptions and thoughtful anecdotes.  The title of the book is also very appropriate as the writer brought home the message on numerous occasions that our experiences of loss as an individual and as a community is like a ripple expanding across generations, nations and cultures.