BOOK REVIEW

Vineet Mehta

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

The Inheritance of Loss is Kiran Deasi’s second novel. It has been critically
acclaimed and has bagged the Man booker prize for its author. The author,
Kiran Desai, is the daughter of renowned novelist, Anita Desai. The novel is
about the east and the west and tries to explore if “the twain can meet.”

In more ways than one the novel is post colonial commentary on the
eastern world represented by India and the western sphere represented by the
U.S. The novel is set in the mid 1980’s in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong,
“where India blurred into Bhutan and Sikkim...it had always been a messy
map”. It presents a picture of post colonial India which is trying to emerge out
of the stunting ,stultifying effect of the colonial past .By reconstructing the
Gorkhaland movement ,launched in the Darjeeling hills by the GNLF under
Subash Ghising, Desai points to the dissensions that have cropped in the Indian
socio-eco-political set up

“-there was a report of new dissatisfaction in the hills, gathering

insurgency, men and guns. It was the Indian-always been a Nepalese this
time, fed up with being treated like the minority in a place where they were
the majority.”

Desai uses her personal experience and knowledge as a diasporic writer to

examine what it means to travel between east and west .The novel zips back
and forth between the hills of Kalimpong and the streets of New York to talk
about characters whose biographies have gaps and who seek identity in a
messy ,globalised world. The novel is populated with characters who are either
exiles or eccentrics or both.

The plot focuses on Sai who is forced to stay with her eccentric grandfather in
Kalimpong and her hopeless involvement with her Nepalese maths teacher,
Gyan. Through Biju, the son of Grandfather’s cook, a parallel plot is created
that discusses the life of “shadow class” of illegal migrants in the U.S. The novel
weaves into its narrative contemporary issues of regionalism, globalisation,
racism and class. The novelist has been highly successful in sensitising the
readers about these issues through her story. The novel also alludes to the
effects of colonialism in India and how the country is still trying to emerge from
colonial hang over.

The novel satirises the anglophilia of the upper middle class by showing that
the marginalised, subaltern classes have started asserting their identity. The
west centric globalisation has been criticised. The experiences of Biju challenge
the notion of America being a land of dreams and immigration is presented as
a cowardly escape ‘an act of cowardice.’

Deasi is at her best when she attempts to expose the dark underbelly of the
society in the U.S. As, a writer Desai follows Rushdie and to some extent
Naipaul. Her pessimistic portrayals of the life in the U.S bear the undeniable
influence of her mother and mentor, Anita Desai. Inspite of accolades and
awards Kiran Desai comes across as an imitative writer rather than a genius.
Her attempt to assimilate the Gorkhaland movement in her story has been
quite successful and remind of writers like Amitav Ghosh who have been quite
successful in this genre. Poverty emerges as a powerful motif in the tale. The
present poverty in the socio-economic spheres , according to Desai , can be
traced back to colonialism.
But this novel is not just a political diatribe. The epigraph to the novel includes
a line from Borges

“My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty.” This
precisely is the central concern of this novel.