The Inheritance of Loss

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Much has changed in the West by the time Biju experiences it. Although now much more of a melting pot, unlike the Judge’s immigrant experience, Biju does not seem to have any opportunity to assimilate and become Western, though it is unclear whether he would take such an opportunity. Nor does he seem to desire any affinity with the other Asian immigrants he knows and works with, some of whom do take the opportunities towards assimilation and citizenship. Instead, Biju’s experiences not only make him yearn for his homeland but also inspire a desire to refine and clarify the kind of Indian he sees himself as being. It almost feels like Desai is trying to convey a message to the reader about the importance of things in life which perhaps she sees are often overlooked. The cook thinks about his attempts to send Biju abroad. For his first attempt, Biju had interviewed and been accepted at a cruise ship line. They had paid eight thousand rupees for the processing fee and the cost of training before realizing that it was a scam. His second attempt involved applying for a tourist visa. Despite the fact that it was difficult for poorer people to be approved for a visa, Biju was allowed to go to America. The judge remembers how his and Nimi’s relationship had turned sour. When he had returned from England, she had taken his powder puff. As he looked for it, his family ridiculed him for using it. By the time he discovered that Nimi had taken it, he was furious, and he raped her. In the following days, he insisted that she speak English and follow English customs, which she refused to do. He took off her bangles, threw away her hair oil, and pushed her face into the toilet when he discovered her squatting on it. He then left her at their home while he went away on tour.

The day after Gyan’s eruption at Sai, he tries to apologize, but they only return to their fight about English customs, and Sai accuses him of being a hypocrite for enjoying Western things like cheese toast with her but making fun of them with his friends. He leaves, and tells his friends in the GNLF about the judge’s guns, giving them a description of Cho Oyu and telling them that there is no telephone. After setting the scene with a moment of such high drama, Desai shows how the lives of Gyan and Sai and her grandfather, along with their cook and his son, intertwine before and after this horrible turning point. She casts her net wide, and scenes in which the cook's son, Biju, tries to make a life in the US are paralleled by the judge's experience studying in England in the 1940s. In both situations, we see a young Indian man setting off full of idealism about the cultural and material opportunities of the west, only to find himself ground down by the reality of being a second-class citizen. Kiran Desai (1 December 2007). The Inheritance of Loss. Open Road + Grove/Atlantic. pp.29–. ISBN 978-1-55584-591-9.Biju is told that there are no buses to Kalimpong because of the political situation. Biju catches a ride with some GNLF men. They take him most of the way before dropping him off and robbing him of all of his possessions, money, and clothing. He is forced to walk the rest of the way to Kalimpong. Kiran Desai". The Man Booker Prizes. The Booker Prize Foundation. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012 . Retrieved 23 August 2013.

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. She sometimes thought herself pretty, but as she began to make a proper investigation, she found it was a changeable thing, beauty." 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. The characters' lives are intertwined with the story of the cook's son, Biju, who experiences the negative aspects of living as an illegal alien in New York.The only emotional connection that endures is that between the cook and his son, and even this is so uncertain, despite a momentarily hopeful ending, that it hardly lightens the book. Otherwise, we are left with Sai, and her sense, which is also the sensation experienced by the reader, of being battered by overlapping stories that drown out her own desire for the reassurance of love: "Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it." 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?” However it focuses so heavily on description that the plot in some places feels as if it has been completely overlooked. On the other hand, the only thing that impedes my interest is the Indian words and dialogues with which I am not familiar and beyond my understanding. But I believe this is the essence of writing such book; it only reflects the nationalistic observation of Kiran Desia. Desai’s genius is to explore all these themes within the context of a very human and poignant story. The novel tells a compact family tale in broad scope raising issues and difficulties facing the inheritors of colonial domination. Sai’s feelings give a sense of the inheritance; “Never again could she think there was but one narrative and that this narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own tiny happiness and live safely within it.”

In Chapters 7 and 8, more is revealed about Sai's life with her grandfather. The judge promises Sai that he will educate her because she is too good for the government school. The judge is haunted by the trunk that the thieves stole when they took their food and alcohol. That trunk had been his father's, and it makes him remember his days in England. He recalls how lonely he had been and how he left his fourteen-year-old wife. At Cambridge, he became negatively obsessed with his Indian identity: he tried to wash himself over and over again, and he began using white powder to hide his Indian features. a ) American dream also exists in India. The western culture influences the psyches of Indians . Consequently, due to the extreme poverty probably brought about by big population, corruption, and ridiculous so-called Caste System, most Indians are so hapless that they dream of venturing out to the USA. In reality, their life turns out to be more miserable than what they expect to be. It was written over a period of seven years after her first book, the critically acclaimed Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard. [2] [3] Among its main themes are migration, living between two worlds, and between past and present.Kiran Desai is the daughter of novelist Anita Desai. Kiran was born in Delhi, then spent the early years of her life in Punjab and in Mumbai, where she studied at Cathedral and John Connon School. She left India at 14, and she and her mother lived in England for a year, before moving to the United States.