The Inheritance of Loss

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It may not be as comprehensive as Salman Rusdie’s Midnight’s Children although it is also about India that used to be under the British empire. However, it is more exact with its urgent message: the loss of the nation’s true identity due to western influences. The true Indian identity that was an amalgam of the nation’s own culture and tradition spawning several centuries when they were still free of foreign influences. After all, India has one of the oldest civilizations in the world. But there are also gentler pleasures. As much as anything this is a descriptive tour de force. There are fine evocations of the clean beauty of the Himalayas, the all-pervading dank of the monsoon, huge crumbling colonial mansions, crammed basements where bed shortages force immigrant labourers to sleep in shifts. Her prose is strong and vivid and generally a delight to read.

That is not to say that Desai's novel is an unremittingly depressing affair. She is a wonderful writer of comic set-pieces, most of them centring on Biju's experiences in New York. Yet, while these chapters are carried off with aplomb, it is the melancholy at the heart of The Inheritance of Loss that fuels the narrative. We see the crumbling dreams of Sai's neighbours, Swiss Father Booty and his alcoholic friend, Uncle Potty, still trapped in an older era when colonialism was for the best. Desai says that her novel “tries to capture what it means to live between East and West and what it means to be an immigrant” and goes on to say that it also explores at a deeper level, “what happens when a Western element is introduced into a country that is not of the West”. Desai also asks “What happens when you take people from a poor country and place them in a wealthy one. How does the imbalance between these two worlds change a person's thinking and feeling? How do these changes manifest themselves in a personal sphere, a political sphere, over time?” An aged judge lives in the highlands of north India. As political and ethnic tensions stretch through the mountain air, he reconsiders his origins, his education, his career, his opportunities, both taken and missed. He has a granddaughter, orphaned in most unlikely circumstances, as her parents trained for a Russian space programme. But what circumstances that create orphans are ever likely? She is growing up, accompanied by most of what that entails. Roy, Pinaki. " The Inheritance of Loss: A Brief Rereading". World English Literature: Bridging Oneness. Eds. Nawale, Arvind, and Pinaki Roy. New Delhi: Authors Press, 2013. pp.13–29. ISBN 978-81-7273-705-4. I say generally because occasionally Desai steps over the boundary between enjoyably rich and horribly cloying. Take the following, for instance: "a simple blind sea creature, but refusing to be refused … odd: insistent, but cowardly; pleading but pompous." That is how Desai renders a male "organ". There's also a whiff of sixth-form straining for profundity. A man who is blinded disappears "entirely inside the alcohol that has always given him solace". And when a light blows it diminishes "to a filament, tender as Edison's first miracle held between delicate pincers of wire in the glass globe of the bulb".Over the years the cook had become ashamed of the judge’s poor treatment of him, and he began to lie to other servants and Sai to exaggerate the judge’s wealth and social standing. In reality the judge had been born to a family of the peasant caste, but his father saved up money to send him to the mission school. He had studied hard and risen to the top of his class. He attended Cambridge, passed his exams and was admitted to the Indian Civil Service. He was placed in a district far from his home and toured around India, even though his knowledge of regional Indian languages was minimal. The Inheritance Of Loss by Kiran Desai is a magnificent, impressive novel that ultimately is disappointing. As a process, the book is almost stunningly good. As a product, it falls short. In Chapter 12, Noni and Lola arrange for Sai to have a tutor from the local college. This is where she meets Gyan. Chapter 13 focuses on Sai's maturation as she becomes a woman. She wants to look better and begins takes better care of her appearance. In Chapter 11, the cook tells his story. He began serving the judge's father years at age fourteen. He feels disappointed for not having secured a cook's position with a white family. Despite his mistreatment by the family he serves, the cook makes up nice stories about how he is treated well by the judge. The lies help him keep his dignity. He needs to feel respected. It may not be as tear-jerking and bewildering as Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things although it is also about Indian families trying to survive the Third-World realities of life. However, it is more realistic with the characters finding themselves in the situations that were not imposed to them but mostly of their own choices. I think this is what made me appreciate Desai’s over Roy’s: that her characters have choices, despite the fact that those options are limited because of the harsh environment that they happened to live in.

most of the characters are selfish and cynical, if not downright mean. the ones who aren't get treated badly. the environment is moldy and decaying. i felt like taking a shower after reading passages from this book. In this quotation, Noni, Sai's tutor, expresses that her life is wasted and stagnant. Mistakenly believing that an appearance of respectability was the key to happiness, Noni abandoned her dream of being an archaeologist and never found love. On their remote estate, Noni and Lola idealize contentment and seek to recreate an imagined colonial past. In this quotation, Noni advises Sai to reject romantic views of isolation and pursue a life that excites her.it's not just what happens, but how the author writes. the rape scene really made my skin crawl. her description was vulgar. i'm crossing my legs and curling up into a ball just thinking about it. Biju thinks about and misses his father daily; much of his emotional energy is spent trying to figure out ways to ease the cook's worries. However, when Biju calls his father for the first time in three years, he realizes that their relationship has been damaged by their time apart, their separate experiences changing them. In this quotation, Biju expresses his intense fear that, through their time apart, his father will realize his affection for Biju was simply a matter of habit and obligation. Biju suffers from poverty, isolation, and racial discrimination from American customers and his immigrant coworkers. Biju questions his own prejudices when he befriends Saeed Saeed, a Zanzibarian Muslim and local legend. The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai explores burdensome themes of cultural and national identity and the immigrant experience, but does so with an easy technique that makes for effortless reading. Winner of the 2006 Booker Prize, its relevance has only grown over the years. The story is centered on two main characters: Biju and Sai. Biju is an undocumented Indian immigrant living in the United States, son of a cook who works for Sai's grandfather.