Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss (2006)

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The Inheritance of Loss, a 2006 novel by Indian author Kiran Desai, follows two alternating plots which evolve in 1986. The main part is set in the North Indian town of Kalimpong at the time of the Nepalese uprising, where the 17-year-old Sai stays with her grandfather, the retired judge Jemubhai Patel, and their cook, and experiences the violent political situation behind a veil of a first love relationship with her science tutor Gyan, a young Nepalese who finally leaves her to join the Gorkha separatist movement. The second part deals with the nameless cook's son, Biju, who immigrated to New York where he illegally works in low-class gastronomy, and finally decides to return to India.

Author and Production History

  • Kiran Desai (born in 1971), daughter of famous author Anita Desai (three times shortlisted for Booker Prize)

Bibliography

  • Novels
  1. Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard (1998)
  2. The Inheritance of Loss (2006)

Publishing History

  • First published in the USA by: Atlantic Monthly Press; in Hardcover: January 2006 ISBN-10: 0871139294 ISBN-13: 9780871139290; in Paperback: August 2006 ISBN-10: 0802142818 ISBN-13: 9780802142818
  • First published in the UK by Hamish Hamilton in 2006

Awards

Reviews

cf. reviews of books

Plot Summary

  • One: February 1986. Kalimpong, northeastern Himalayas. The judge plays chess, watches his female dog called Mutt and waits for his tea, while the cook tries to find something to serve it with, and the seventeen-year-old Sai awaits a mathematics tutor called Gyan with whom she has had one-year-long love affair. They are robbed and humiliated by a juvenile Nepalese guerrilla gang.
  • Two: Unwilling, the cook has reported the robbery in the judge's name. The police arrive and investigate unenthusiastically, noticing the downfall of the judge's once wealthy home and his servant's poverty. The cook's wife died seventeen years ago, his only son, Biju, works as a waiter in the US. The cook tells his dramatic story of the snake incident.
  • Three: Biju's experiences at a fast food restaurant in the US, selling hot dogs with a fellow server, Romy. Being nineteen and feeling too young and disgusted by the sheer thought about the Dominican prostitutes, he is the only worker who does not attend a nearby brothel. The manager's name is Frank - ironic for someone selling frankfurters.
  • Four: The cook is humiliated by the police for his poverty and low social standing. Sai feels embarrassed and tries to make her friend feel better but only succeeds in making the situation even more uncomfortable, the gap between even more visible. The cook has great expectation as to his son's, and thus his own, future.
  • Five: Biju changes jobs often and has difficulties assimilating the multicultural world in New York, which is divided into a first-class and a second-class clientele. When he meets a Pakistani co-worker, he is almost glad. At least he knows what to expect from him: well-known reciprocated hostility.
  • Six: The cook closes the gates, fearing the local thief, Gobbo, and talks to Sai about her background. Sai's parents married against their families' will and emigrated from India to Russia, where Mr. Mistry was promised to become a space pilot, leaving their six-year-old daughter at St. Augustine's nuns' convent. The Mistrys are run over by a bus and leave their orphan child in the care of the nuns and now her grandfather, Justice Jemubhai Patel, who had moved into Cho Oyu, a house built by a Scotsman. Sai had a hard time at the convent where she befriended Arlene Macedo and learned to distinguish between Englishness and Indian culture, as well as a certain fascination with sin.
  • Seven: Sai arrives at her grandfather's house at the age of nine. She finds her only relative assimilating a lizard and his dog Mutton a film star. The judge is bossy towards the cook and not thrilled by the presence of his granddaughter. As he cannot afford a convent school education and does not want to send her to a government school, the judge hires a tutor for Sai.
  • Eight: The judge is disturbed by Sai's arrival and cannot sleep. He remembers his first journey to England, the ashamed parting from his parents, the stay at Mr and Mrs Price's and his loneliness in Cambridge. In the morning, he tells Sai of her tutor: Noni (Nonita), an elder spinster who lives with her widowed sister Lola (Lolita). The cook shows Sai around in the neighbourhood: Uncle Potty, their nearest neighbor, a farmer and a drunk; Father Booty; two Afghan princesses living with Nehu; Mrs. Sen, whose daughter Mun Mun left for America and the two sisters, who live at Mon Ami and feel contempt towards the Russian-Indian relations but nevertheless develop sympathy for Sai.
  • Nine: Lola and Noni hear about the robbery at Cho Oyu and fear they might be attacked by there own watchman, Budhoo a retired Nepalese army man. The sisters have a cat called Mustafa, read Jane Austen and are characterized as very pro-British. Lola's daughter Pixie (Piyali Bannerji) works as a BBC reporter.
  • Ten: Biju takes up another job at an Italian restaurant but the owner and his wife cannot cope with his smell, and so he changes to Freddy's Wok where he has to deliver by bicycle. One night, he delivers dinner to a group of young Indian girls celebrating "Antigentrification Day", feeling loathing and respect at the same time. He looses his job and spends all his saving during a very cold winter, which he spends sharing a den in a basement in Harlem. In the springtime, he finds a job at a bakery and a friend: Saeed Saeed from Zanzibar.
  • Eleven: Sai takes lesson at Noni's on Mondays, Wednesday and Fridays. The cook takes to liquor production, first for Biju's sake, then for himself, too, as he likes to spend money on small luxuries. He invents stories about his employer to make himself look better. His invented legends about the judge's past and the judge's own memories mingle. In 1919 Jemubhai was born to a peasant and court swindler, sent to school, to Cambridge, traveled the region to spread justice but, in reality, was corrupt and contaminated. The cook entered the judge's service at the age of fourteen and his wage hasn't been raised much since.
  • Twelve: Sai taking lessons at Lola and Noni's. Meanwhile, Mrs. Sen is informed that her daughter might be offered a post at CNN and rejoices in her feeling of superiority of Lola with her daughter working at BBC. Noni remembers a romance story told by her kitchen maid, Kesang, and fears that Sai might not be raised to her social standards. Having come to an end with her science knowledge, she decides to plead for a tutor for Sai. The judge sends for a tutor reluctantly.
  • Thirteen: The principle recommends a post-graduate student, Gyan. The cook sits with them while Gyan and Sai do math as accurately as possible as not to show that they really observe each other. The cook's loyalty is divided between science and superstition; he is surprised to find out that Gyan is Nepali, not Bengali as he thinks the latter more intelligent due to their diet rich in fish. Sai becomes conscious of her looks and obsessed with her face.
  • Fourteen: Biju works at the Queen of Tarts bakery with Saeed, a young Zanzibar, womanizer and illegal immigrant, who had to go back to Zanzibar after a INS raid at a night club once, but came back under a different name: Rasheed Zulfickar. Saeed has implied for the green card several times, but Biju never will as the Indians are not admitted for the lottery. The MetalBox watchman asks the cook to ask his Biju to procure work for his son and the cook takes pride in having a son whom he can address in this matter.
  • Fifteen: The cook receives a letter from Biju saying that he got a new job in a bakery and the father is at once so happy that he cannot but tell everybody how has son is manager of a restaurant now and that soon he will fly to the US himself, too. He even imagines Biju getting married to the grocer's daughter.
  • Sixteen: Sai asks the cook about his grandfather's marriage. The cook first tells the judge loved his wife very much and become grumpy only after her death. Then he remembers that he did not like her, in fact, and that she was a man woman from a high standing family. When Sai asks her grandfather, he remembers the circumstances of their wedding. Due to a shortage of money, he was to be married to a rich man's, Bomanbhai Patel, daughter, Bela. Bomanbhai was a financier, merchant, brothel-owner and expected status to be added to his wealth if his daughter married the first boy in the village who was to study in the UK. In exchange, he paid for the ticket to England. On their wedding night, the 14-year old Bela was so scarred that Jemu took pity and did not touch her. His last remembrance is that of the newly-weds on a bike. The judge suspects Sai's tutor to have funny ideas. Noni encourages Sai once more to make something out of her life: "time should move" (125).
  • Seventeen: Saeed plays soccer with a mouse until it dies. The cook sends even more pleading letters to his son and becomes an important personality in the village based on the hopes he raises. Saeed experiences a similar lot when his mother gives away his address to village friends and family and Saeed is stalked by those asking for his help. Omar and Kavafya are the two other men working at the bakery. Together they try to get a green card illegally but only loose their money. Saeed has no need to visit prostitutes as he has enough girlfriends as it is. When a customer finds a mouse in a loaf of bread, the bakery is closed by health inspectors, Saeed finds another job at a Banana Republic shop and Biju realizes that they won't see each other any more. Nostalgically, he thinks about his hometown and the times when Sai was jealous of him for his father's love.
  • Eighteen: In Kalimpong, the monsoon season begins. Gyan has to stay overnight as he cannot possibly go back in the rain and hail. The judge is irritated about the young man's presence at dinner and asks him uncomfortable questions knowing that he won't be able to answer, knowing that he himself had to undergo a similar procedure during his examination period in England. His memory leads him back to his study time at Cambridge, his passing the exam by chance, meeting Bose, his only friend in England, turning away from everything Indian, admiring yet not trusting the English. In the meantime, Gyan breaks of the electrifying atmosphere and brings up all his courage to touch Sai. After some time, Sai gets up and vanishes. At night, they all lay awake listening to the rain and thinking: the judge about his past, the cook about his son, Gyan about Sai; and Sai walking restlessly back and forth between her bed and the bathroom.
  • Nineteen: Biju meets Saeed Saeed who tells him of his marriage to a hippie waitress. He married her for papers and now has to study for the INS authenticity test. Despite all that he is liked by the girl's family. Biju does not have that kind of luck. His father continues sending him letters. The monsoon cuts the village off from the rest of the world.
  • Twenty: The twenty-year-old Gyan and the sixteen-year-old Sai continue with their love affair and gently explore each other's bodies. Occupied with their love-making they hardly notice the upcoming insurgency.
  • Twenty-One: Noni and Lola talk about the political situation in India and the Nepalese separatist movement. Sai keeps thinking about Gyan and his touch. Mrs. Sen joins their conversation and brings it down to a stereotype view of Muslims. The sisters look down on Mrs. Sen, not only because of her proud talks about her daughter Mun Mun and the arguments over the UK or the US getting the upper hand in globalization politics.
  • Twenty-Two: Biju has found a job at Brigitte's, a steak restaurant owned by Odessa and Baz, a couple drinking tea and talking politics, business-like attitude, no understanding for immigrants. Biju befriends Achootan, a Muslim who hates the US and wants to acquire the green card out of revenge. Biju goes through a difficult phase of decision and finally resolves not to loose his religion and traditions. He quits the job determined not to work at a place which sells beef any more. At last, he finds a post at a Hindu place, called Gandhi Café, a chain owned by three brothers: Harish-Harry, Gaurish-Gary, and Dhansukh-Danny.
  • Twenty-Three: Gyan and Sai continue their romance and go on excursions to avoid the attention from the village people. They notice little differences and learn to keep some things to themselves. Gyan's family story is told: his ancestors were soldiers in the British Army, promised wealth and glory but in the end only death came with certainty. Finally, Gyan's father has ended this tradition and became a teacher. After such conversations and journeys, Sai comes home late and the cook worries about her and reproaches her but is finally soothed with Sai's placating.
  • Twenty-Four: The narrator turns to the reader explaining that the Indians and Americans are a perfect match marketwise. The Gandhi Café owners turn out to be exploiters of their workers. Malini, Harish-Harry's wife, comes up with the idea to accommodate Saran, Jeev, Rishi, Mr. Lalkaka and Biju in the basement, where they have hardly any space and have to sleep on tables due to the rats. Harish-Harry is a two-faced man acting avuncular or choleric towards his workers and overly polite towards his clients. In a state of drunkenness, however, he shows his hatred towards the Americans and comes to terms with his lot only when he thinks of the money he makes. Finally, he buys a big house and sends off pictures of it and a luxurious car in front, his wife on top of it, to his relatives in India.
  • Twenty-Five: Mutt is given a coat for the winter time. The cold influences all inhabitants. For Christmas, Sai joins the two elderly sisters, Father Booty and Uncle Potty at Mon Ami where they eat and drink in abundance. Lola remembers what it was like to journey in the 50's and 60's and Nona suggests they should go on an expedition once again. Sai remembers a trip to the Darjeeling museum where they talked about Sherpa Tenzing and the colonial way of conquering a mountain.
  • Twenty-Six: While buying rice at the market, Gyan is surprised by a Gorkha demonstration. Amidst the crowd of angry men, he identifies his former college friends: Pada, Jungi, Dawa, and Dilip. He merges with the group and listens to the irate speaker, sceptic and critical at first, showing sympathy and solidarity at last. Roused by the masculine atmosphere of rights-demanding and alcohol-drinking, he feels ashamed of his comfortable relationship with Sai and resolves to take part in the Gorkha liberation movement.
  • Twenty-Seven: The next day when Gyan arrives at Cho Oyu, he provokes an argument with Sai calling her stupid for celebrating Christmas instead of Indian holidays. He reproaches Sai with following the custom of a people who don't want Indians. Sai responds by pointing out Gyan's stupidity because he couldn't find another job but teaching her, whom he calls stupid.
  • Twenty-Eight: The judge remembers the feeling of hate from his youth. When he came back from England, he felt immediately misunderstood, foreign, and superior. His nineteen-year-old wife Nimi had some hopes at his arrival but having taken his powder puff only managed to draw his entire anger and frustration to her person. The judge raped her in a mixture of hatred and lust, a beginning of their relationship which was to even worsen with time. A hired companion for Nimi, Miss Enid Pott, abandons her arguing that she won't learn English. The judge feels disgusted by his wife's lack of Englishness and finally, literally, drives her mad.
  • Twenty-Nine: Gyan realizes that his anger is not entirely due to Sai but still leaves slamming the gate shut. He returns to Cho Oyu and apologizes for his behaviour, which Sai forgives although they both do not feel entirely comfortable with it. In fact, Gyan betrays Sai telling his friends about the house and the judge's possessions, which tragically explains for the plot's beginning: the robbery of Cho Oyu. The next morning, he feels guilty but realizes that love is a fluid thing.
  • Thirty: The cook has a sense of holding his son's flesh when, in fact, he is holding buffalo meat to feed Mutt. He remembers how the villagers had said his wife's ghost would hunt their son because of her violent death and that he never admitted to having succumbed to those voices before the judge. His first attempt to send his son Biju to the US turned out to be a swindle. Then, Biju applied for a tourist visa and, to his astonishment, it was granted to him. The feeling of happiness of that moment is contrasted with injuring his knee after a fall at Gandhi Café and the lack of compassion he receives from his employer. His leg finally heals but the burden of being illegal remains and drives him sick. Saeed Saeed reappears and reports about his small steps to success. Biju contemplates going back home.
  • Thirty-One: In March, Sai accompanies Lola, Noni, Father Booty and Uncle Potty to Darjeeling Gymkhana where they plan to supply themselves with books or liquor respectively for the time of political uproar. By the time, everyone has to follow the Nepalese separation movement under Ghising and Pradhan, top GNLF man. Father Booty tries to support local farmers but fails because everyone wants to have branded goods (i.e. cheese). Sai thinks back of how badly her relationship with Gyan ended. They meet other townspeople: Mrs. Thondup and her daughters Pem Pem and Doma, whom they like for being aristocratic; Mrs. Sen whom they do not like for being middle class and, consequently, do not greet; the Afghan princesses. They wonder about rising vegetarianism among soldiers, the Army Beautification Program, the carnivorous monks; and notice the downfall of Darjeeling. Uncle Potty buys rum to get him through rough times. He is tolerated by Lola and Noni due to his high education and parentage. At the Gymkhana library, Sai becomes enraged about old-fashioned guides for Indian gentlemen and Noni wonders about the Christian notions of sin and forgiveness in Crime and Punishment. They discuss Hindu religion, laws and caste system, while outside Nepalese men are on strike and inside the club owner tells of hypocritical and superficial tourists he has to put up with in order to support himself.
  • Thirty-Two: In this Gymkhana dining hall, just before Sai arrived at his place, the judge had a meeting with Bose after 33 years of not seeing each other. The conversation was painful, the judge wondering about Bose's naïveté and not wanting to succumb to his past. On his way back, the judge remembers racist incidents he experienced in England at which he failed to intervene and realizes that the hierarchical structure between himself and the cook has changed as he ignores his servant's side business. To his surprise, the judge finds that he does not object to Sai's presence in the house: apart from being a cheap companion, she seems akin to his status as a stranger in his own country.
  • Thirty-Three: A short section of anterior narration tells of the incidents to come at Gymkhana hall: Nepalese separatists will gather and camp here to finally surrender arms on October 2, 1988, Gandhi Jayanti Day. As for now, the party from Kalimpong leave to have lunch at Glenary's where they meet other acquaintances and eat Chinese. On their way out, Sai recognizes Gyan among the shouting crowd and is shocked at the ferocity in his expression when their eyes meet. The car has to be stopped on their way back; Sai vomits overcome with the shock of the moment. They are stopped by bridge guards, Father Booty's camera and cheese and all their books confiscated. At home, Sai heads straight to bed injuring the cook's pride as he suspects her of putting restaurant food before his.
  • Thirty-Four: The authorities return the books but keep the camera, search Father Booty's house, find out that he has no valid residence permit and force him to leave the country, his house and dairy taken over by a Nepali doctor. Sai projects all her anger on Gyan, whom she holds responsible for the wrong done to Father Booty and remembers the day Cho Oyu was robbed.
  • Thirty-Five: Sai contemplates about the male fascination with weapons and remembers telling Gyan about her grandfather's hunting success, another invention of the cook's. After the police have searched the robbed Cho Oyu for clues, they pick up a village drunk and turn him into a scapegoat for the incident, beating him up severely.
  • Thirty-Six: Mr Iype the newsagent tells Biju of the political instability in Darjeeling resulting in a telephone call between the young man and his father in Kalimpong. Surrounded by other village people and due to the poor connection, the cook only manages to scream telegram-like sentences, and both men realize how fragile their relationship is, how much it has deteriorated over time. Biju remember his father's question whether he is growing fat and his own affirming answer which did not match reality: he has grown so gaunt that he has to buy children's clothes. Back at Gandhi Café, Harisch-Harry shows pictures of his house to the workers, explains that in spite of a prohibition he had the satellite dish placed in the middle of the lawn and destroying others' arguments when he points to racism.
  • Thirty-Seven: The situation becomes worse in Kalimpong, more strikes are being held, a group of remaining boarding school boys disgrace themselves by having chickens run around without their heads. Lola and Noni are forced to accommodate Nepalese youngsters before they take away their land and build huts of their own.
  • Thirty-Eight: Lola complains before Pradhan but he only ridicules her and reinforces her shame and anger. The sisters have to pay for their wealth and social standing, Lola blaming her dead husband Joydeep for the calamity. They fight, Lola arguing that Noni betrays her sister on behalf of the Nepalese.
  • Thirty-Nine: Sai thinks about Gyan, their intimacies, the last quarrel; she reads Wuthering Heights, visits Uncle Potty. The man realizes that Sai does not laugh at his jokes the way she used to, remembers how he fell in love with love in his college days and his homosexual amours. Sai catches a cold which prevents her from searching Gyan only for some time before she finally decides to find her love in the poor part of the town.
  • Forty: She looks for him in town first, asking Dawa Bhutia at the Chin Li Restaurant, Tashi at the Snow Lion travel agency, walks past the many missionary churches and finally heads for the poorer quarters. When she arrives at his hut, she feels ashamed of her own wealth but when Gyan sees her disgust, hears her accusations about Father Booty and reproaches her for being a fool, her rage explodes and she accuses him of hypocrisy. Their fight is interrupted by a short moment of familiarity and laughter but Gyan cannot cope with this step back from his newly acquired manhood and becomes even more irritated, so much that, provoked by the guilt she inspires in him realizing that it was he who gave away the secret of the guns at Cho Oyu, he hits her in his sister's presence and leaves her behind. Sai feels rage, then shame and loss of dignity. Back at home, she overhears the beaten drunk's wife and her father-in-law pleading with the judge to help them but the old man draws them back and they finally leave.
  • Forty-One: In Manhattan, Biju is bothered by a mad person who tells him about the real name of the river Hudson - the river that flows both ways. Biju pretends not to speak English in order to get away. At the Shangri-la Travel, he buys a ticket to India from Mr. Kakkar, who warns him that he will regret his decision. Biju buys many US items, even a bottle of perfume of a yet unknown future wife and only remembers the positive things about his homeland, having already forgotten the reasons why he left it in the first place.
  • Forty-Two: Gyan's sister tells the family of his fight with Sai, leading to his grandmother's outburst of worry and anger, and his house-arrest which does not allow him to join his friends at the march at the Mela Ground. At first he feels ashamed to be treated like an adolescent, then embraces the fact that he does not have to act and finally the guilt about having betrayed Sai comes back. At Cho Oyu, it is decided that the cook is the one who has to go to the burning of Indo-Nepal treaty of 1950.
  • Forty-Three: 27th July 1986. The cook cannot postpone it any longer; he has to leave for the march, where he meets the MetalBox watchman. Despite the initial order and peacefulness, somebody starts throwing stones and a bloody battle begins between the marchers and the police, in which thirteen local boys died and many police-men were severely injured. The cook is disillusioned about his fellow-countryman and fears that he might never see his son again.
  • Forty-Four: The violence lasts through another year, the inhabitants below Mon Ami, put up flags around their huts, showing that their taking over of the land is blessed by Gods. Due to the food shortage, Sai has to buy some things from the back of shops; for everything else they rely on the garden crop. The beaten drunk's wife and her father-in-law come back and beg the judge for help but he refuses again and they greedily observe Mutt. They return some days later and steal the judge's dog to sell her to somebody else.
  • Forty-Five: Biju on his journey home stops in London, Frankfurt, in Arabic countries. He plans to become a taxi-driver when he comes home and looks forward to seeing his father. He overhears a joke about Indian immigration.
  • Forty-Six: At Cho Oyu, the judge becomes restless trying to find Mutt for her dinner. He asks around the neighbourhood but it is certainly not the time for people to bother about animals when there are human beings dying. The judge, however, feels that while his fellow humans deserved to die, the beautiful innocent creature he loves so much did not. After curfew, soldiers force him to return home. Short digression on the soldier, his wife and their satisfaction with army food supply.
  • Forty-Seven: Meanwhile, GNLF boys are hunted by the police, their adolescent fervour compared to Hollywood action films. The violence gets worse and while it shocks everybody, it also signifies a surprising "mundaneness" (394).
  • Forty-Eight: Biju's airplane arrives in Calcutta. As their bags do not arrive for a long time, some not at all, he observes his fellow countrymen, tourists, businessmen. Those with foreign passports are served first and are entitled to compensation, while Indian residents are treated as second-class clients. Short digression on the talk between two Indian who immigrated to the US, the one from Ohio taking gratification from the loss of luggage, a story which gives him ammunition against his father, who refuses to see the advantages of the US, but above all, refuses to be proud of his son.
  • Forty-Nine: The judge still cannot find Mutt and starts praying for her to come home. He remembers the incident which caused him to send his wife back to her family. She was invited by Mrs. Mohan to have some fun and join the other women driving to the railway station. There, she unknowingly becomes witness of the Nehru welcoming committee. The judge is immensely angry with her and surprised by her first sign of resistance, he beats her up severely, the first of many more times to come. Finally, when he feels ready to kill her, he sends her back to her uncle, where she gives birth to a girl but the judge still does not want to taker her back. The uncle refuses to take care of the mother and child. She is forced to live with her sister, where she becomes very unhappy. In the meantime, the judge's father wants to bring his son to terms but fails realizing that he has become another man. Nimi dies when her sari catches fire from a stove, a death which is hinted as suicide, but which the judge preferred to take for an accident. The only time he ever liked his wife was at the bicycle ride. They keep searching, the judge despairing seeing some justice in this loss, the cook worrying about his son, Sai finding gratification in crying for Mutt in a way she never could cry for Gyan.
  • Fifty: Biju finds out that there are not buses going to Kalimpong. At last, he bribes some GNLF men to take him and his luggage in their jeep. It is a long and exhausting journey, which he spends in anticipation of seeing his father and contemplating about the fate of a nation of immigrants.
  • Fifty-One: The judge falls asleep and dreams about Mutt dying. When he wakes up, he accuses the cook to have neglected his responsibility of watching over her and threatens to kill him if he can't find the dog. In search of Mutt he comes to Thapa's Canteen, where the remarks of the men ridiculing the importance of the judge's loss, first make him feel better but then only deepen his guilt. Gyan, who is the only one not laughing about his grief, promises to find Mutt, determined to win back Sai.
  • Fifty-Two: Biju's journey ends with him being robbed by the GNLF men and left standing in his underwear and a bright-coloured woman's sleeping gown. His money gone, his dignity taken he remembers the warning given by Harisch-Harry and Mr. Kakkar and wishes he could talk to Saeed Saeed whom he met once more before leaving the US and who told him of a new love for a girl from Zanzibar, whom he wanted to marry once he would break off his fake marriage and finally be entitled to a green card. Biju's injured knee start hurting again.
  • Fifty-Three: When the cook comes home drunk, he throws himself to the judge's feet and begs him for punishment. The angered judge, in fact, gives him a thrashing with his slipper and the more he beats him, the more the cook confesses and asks for more. Sai is shocked and runs outside feeling angry with herself for having sulked in self-pity about Gyan. In the meantime hints are given as to the lot of other characters: Uncle Potty will sell Father Booty's property to someone else, Mrs. Sen will knit a sweater which the prime minister will never wear as he will be assassinated in 1989, Lola's daughter Pixie will marry an Englishman, and Gyan will miss Sai without her never knowing it. The next day, Biju finally arrives at Cho Oyu. Father and son are united.

Characters

  • Sai (1): Sai Mistry, a seventeen year old alumna of St. Augustine's Convent where she was registered at the age of six; at the age of eight, after her parents' death, she moves in with her grandfather at his mansion (Cho Oyu), where she is raised by the cook (of whose love for his son she is jealous, 139) and taught by neighbor and tutor Noni until the age of sixteen when Gyan (20 yrs old) takes over the post of her science and mathematics tutor; "shy around her peers", she wants to travel, reads a lot (93); love-affair with Gyan
  • The judge (1): Jemubhai (Jemu) Popatlal Patel (76) born in 1919; at the age of 20 marries 14-year-old Nimi (whom he later rapes, beats and humiliates) and leaves hometown Piphit in 1939 so study at Fitzwilliam, Cambridge where he luckily passes his exam in 1942; joins the ICN and moves to Kalimpong in 1957; never learned Nepalese; Chief Justice (38), Hindu, Patidar; Sai's maternal grandfather
  • Mutt (1): the judge's female dog who is robbed by two poor villagers and sold to a family who seeks modernity
  • The cook (1): "at fourteen, he was hired by the judge at twelve rupees a month" (81); has no name, he mingles legends, invented stories and authentic memory (82), unreliable narrator (117); his wife "had died seventeen years ago, when Biju was five, slipping from a tree while gathering leaves to feed the goat" (19); he misses his son whom he sent off to the US; takes the judge's humiliation and beating masochistically
  • Biju (3): the cook's only son; immigrates to the US at the age of 19; Balwinder Singh (242); returns to India after a difficult time working at several kitchens in NYC
  • Uncle Potty (5): "their [Cho Oyu mansion] nearest neighbor, who had bought his land from the judge years ago, a gentleman farmer and a drunk" (56); homosexual (261, 334); Father Booty's friend; finally sells his friend's property
  • Gyan (12): a science Bachelor, recommended by principal for the post of tutor to Sai; love affair with Sai; joins the Gorkha movement
  • Bose (17): the judge's only friend in England whom he met at the boardinghouse (160); later they meet at the club in Darjeeling
  • Romy (21): one of Biju's fellow servers at Gray's Papaya
  • Frank (22): the manager at Gray's Papaya
  • Nandu (24): another man from Kalimpong who immigrated to New York; Biju was supposed to get in touch with him after his arrival in New York, but Nandu avoided seeing him (132)
  • Sister Alice 824): one of Sai's teachers at St. Augustine's Convent who teaches her about different time zones
  • Gobbo (32): the local thief at Kalimpong
  • Mr. and Mrs. Mistry (33): Sai's parents; they met in Delhi, "The pilot and the student, the Zoroastrian and the Hindu" (34-25); their families were against marriage; they immigrated to Russia due to Mr. Mistry's job offer as a space pilot; they died in Moscow in a bus accident
  • Arlene Macedo (39): Sai's only friend at the convent and "the only other student with an unconventional background"
  • Sister Caroline (40): one of the nuns at St. Augustine's convent who reproaches Sai for being shameless
  • Mr. and Mrs. Rice (53): the couple young Jemu stays with in Cambridge, on Thornton Road; Mrs. Rice "always called her husband Father and she had taken to calling Jemubhai James"
  • Father Booty (56): "of the Swiss dairy, who spent each evening drinking with Uncle Potty"; wants to improve the situation of local farmers; forced to leave Kalimpong
  • two Afghan princesses (57): "whose father had gone to Brighton on holiday and returned to find the British had seated someone else on his throne. Eventually the princesses were given refuge by Nehru (such a gentleman!)" (57)
  • Noni (57): Nonita; Sai's tutor; "Noni had never had love at all. [...] She found, to her shock, that she ahd actually felt jealous of Kensang. [...] When Sai had first arrived, Noni had seen herself in her, Sai's shyness." (92)
  • Lola (57): Lalita; "when Lola's husband had died of a hear attack, Noni, the spinster, had moved in with her sister, the widow"
  • Budhoo (59): "a retired army man who had seen action against guerrilla factions in Assam and had a big gun and an equally fierce moustache" (61); Lola and Noni's watchman
  • Mrs. Thondup (59): "from an aristocratic Tibetan Family" (259); daughters Pem Pem and Doma never befriended Sai
  • Mustafa (60): Lola and Noni's cat
  • Pixie (63): Piyali Bannerji; "Lola's daughter, was a BBC reporter" (63); marries an Englishman
  • Mr. Iype (69): Biju's acquainted newsagent in New York
  • Jacinto (70): a New Yorker building "superintendent supplementing his income by illegally renting out basement quarters by the week, by the month, and even by the day, to fellow illegals" (69)
  • Joey (70): a NYC local homeless whom Biju frequently meets
  • Saeed Saeed (72): Biju's only friend in America; from Zanzibar; he "could sing like Amitabh Bachhan and Hema Malini" (Bollywood actor and actress) (72); womanizer (105ff); forced to go back to Zanzibar, returns ast Rasheed Zulfickar (106-107); gets married to a hippie waitress for papers (164); finally, plans to get married to a girl from Zanzibar
  • Major Aloo (74): the biggest player in the alcohol smuggling business in Kalimpong
  • MetalBox watchman (75): a rival servant to the cook; asks the cook to help his son (108), attends the 1986 protests with the cook
  • Mr. McCooe (80): Jemu's principal at the Bishop Cotton School
  • Kesang (91): Lola and Noni's maid, who tells them of her romance with the milkman
  • Joydeep (92): Lola's deceased husband
  • Tashi (114): "famous for charming the Patagonia pants off foreign women"; owner of the Snow Lion Travel Agency at Kalimpong (227)
  • Bomanbhai Patel (120): Nimi's father; the judge's father-in-law
  • Bela Patel (122): Nimi; the judge's wife whom she marries at the age of 14; she becomes mad with his raping, beating, ignoring her and finally dies (possibly suicide, 410) from her sari catching fire from a stove at her sister's place
  • Omar and Kavafya (129): Biju and Saeed's co-workers at the Queen of Tarts Bakery; visit whores at Washington Heights; part of the fake immigration van incident
  • Mr. Bocher (130): owner of the Queen of Tarts bakery, which is finally closed by health inspectors in favor of a Russian establishment
  • Odessa and Baz (180): the owners of Brigitte's; steak-lovers; Baz thinks his wife "cosmopolitan" (182)
  • Achootan (182): Biju's fellow dishwasher at Brigitte's
  • Harish-Harry (187): owner of a triplet of Gandhi Cafés in New York, New Jersey and Connecticut (with brothers Gaurish-Gary and Dhansuhk-Danny); husband of Malini (196); double name symbolizes double identity as Hindu and immigrant
  • Saran, Jeev, Rishi, Mr. Lalkaka (196): Biju's fellow workers at Gandhi Café
  • Padam, Jungi, Dawa, Dilip (208): Chhang, Bhand, Owl, Donkey; Gyan's friends from college; Ghorka rebels who rob Cho Oyu
  • Miss Enid Pott (226): a companion Jemu hires for his wife Nimi, but who soon leaves as she finds Nimi unwilling to learn
  • Ghising and Pradhan (256): top GNLF men in Darjeeling and Kalimpong respectively
  • Haseena and Alphonso (263): Uncle Potty's parents
  • Father Peter Lingdamoo, Father Pius Marcus, Father Bonniface D'Souza (284): missionaries the villagers meet at Glenary's after the visit to the Darjeeling library
  • Dawa Bhutia (337): cook at the Chin Li Restarant at Kalimpong
  • Mr. Kakkar (359): "proprietor of the newly opened Shangri-la Travel in the same block as the Ganhi Café"; warns Biju against going back to India

Narration

  • extra-heterodiegetic, variable focalization with passages from within, sometimes too obvious scheme value (267, 373, 398); addresses reader: see meta-level
  • comment example: "Foolish cook. He had not realized that the deliberateness came not from faith in science, but from self-consciousness and doubt [...]" (98)

Setting

  • India, Darjeeling, Kalimpong, Cho Oyu (14) and Mon Ami (60); library and club
  • US, New York City, different basement kitchens at which Biju works: Gray's Papaya, Baby Bistro, Le Colonial, the Stars and Stripes Diner, Pinocchio's Italian Restaurant (65), Freddy's Wok (66), the Queen of Tarts baker (72, 126); Brigitte's - a steak house (180); Gandhi-Café (187)
  • UK, Cambridge, Fitzwilliam College

Time Structure

  • the plot starts in February 1986 and ends in July/August 1986
  • flashbacks to the judge's birth in 1919, his leaving his hometown Piphit in 1939; his studies at Fitzwilliam, Cambridge (54) and his final exams in 1942; the Mistrys' stay in Moscow (1975); several historical episodes of India
  • flashforwards to the assassination of Rajiv Ratna Gandhi, the ninth prime minister of India (1989)

Language and Style

  • Abbreviations: ICS, INS (106), NYC, JFK, NYPD (108), SDO (314)
  • Contrasting: "This seriousness combined with the comic she found compelling." (99);
  • Double entendre: "He began to wash obsessively, morning he scrubbed off the think milky scent of sleep, the barnyard smell that wreathed him when he woke and impregnated the fabric of his pajamas." (55)
  • Humor, irony: "universal guerilla fashion" (5); the policeman's umbrella: "a pink, synthetic made-in-Taiwan one, abloom with flowers" (15); Uncle Potty's rooster called Kookar Raja (56); Uncle Potty - "Dreadful legs those English girls have" (63); "Jemubhai's father owned a modest business procuring false witnesses to appear in court. (Who would think his son, so many years later, would become a judge?)" (77); Jemu "felt deeply impressed that a woman [Queen Victoria] so plain could also have been so powerful. The more he pondered this oddity, the more his respect for her and the English grew." (79); "bed tea" sounds like "baaad teee" (83); Sai wearing T-shirt saying "Free Tibet" (90); 2In Kalimpong, the plum tree outside the clinic, watered with rotted blood from the path lab, produced so many flowers, that newlyweds had their pictures taken on a bench underneath." (112), "As a kindness to the family, that they might not lose their income, the army employed his eldest son [...]" - Gyan's ancestors (192); cheating - "Biju took some of the cook's fake recommendations with him to the interview to prove he came from an honest family" (238); soldiers as veggies and "Army Beautification Program" (260)
  • Indian idioms: jhora (5, 16), the cook uses Hindu to express his fear (11), puja (97, 318)
  • Latin motto at the convent: "Pisci tisci episculum basculum" (40); Latin as a sign for learnedness: "a cabinmate who had grown up in Calcutta composing Latin sonnets in Catullan hendecasyllables" (51);
  • Listing: the rich staccato in chapter five forces interpretation (28ff); words of a sentence listed to highlight the pressure (110); cf. Rushdie - listing alternatives (410)
  • Melting of words: list of pudding in one word (87); different currys (277)
  • Meta-level, narration: "some of the narrative had been lost" (37); "Books were making her restless. she was beginning to read, fast, more, until she was inside the narrative and the narrative inside her, the pages going by so fast, her heart i her chest - she couldn't stop." (93); narrator-"The story went like this: [...]" (191); "(In fact, dear sirs, madams, we were practicing a highly evolved form of capitalism long before America was America; [...])" - narrator? (195); "(What amazing hope the audience has - always refusing to believe the non-existence of romance.)" (219); narrative's mystery explained: it was Gyan who told the boys about the guns (233), "Never again could she think there was but one narrative ant that narrative belonged only to herself, that she might create her own mean little happiness and live safely within it." (431)
  • Onomatopoeia: "bom bom" (17); "There was only the forest making ssss tseu ts ts seuuu sounds." (43);
  • Repetition: description of the policeman with a pink umbrella with flowers (25)
  • Sympathy guidance: Nun to Sai - "Don't you sit about feeling sorry for yourself. You don't think God sulked, do you? With all he had to do?" (42); Noni to sai: "if you get a chance in life, take it." (94); "Saeed Saeed caught a mouse at the Queen of Tarts [...]" (126); story of Gyan's problems finding a job (211); Jemu rapes Nimi: "he stuffed his way ungracefully into her" (225) and pushes her head into the toilet bowl (230);
  • Typography: first couple of words in each chapter in italics; type augments in the word "paaaaaawww"" (66); capital letters for LOVE (165), WAITER (276), the cook and Biju's telephone conversation (307ff), MUTTY (412)

Topics

  • alcohol: "chhang" - nectar of Gods (73); "fired by alcohol" - Gyan and frieds at Ghorka demonstration (214);
  • authenticity, reality, acting, film: "they laughed a movie laugh" (6), "This was classic cinema set in Kulu-Manali [...]" (7), "poor people needed certain lines; the script was always the same" (8); Mutt compared to a film star, Audrey Hepburn (45), "they were four shadow puppets from a fairytale flickering on the lumpy plaster of the wall - a lizard man, a hunchbacked cook, a lush-lashed maiden, and a long-tailed wolf dog" (46); "Remembrance, now authentic, shone from the cook's eyes." - narrator's comment, cook's memory (118); "Her [Sai's] eyes, he [Gyan] noted, were extraordinarily glamorous: huge, wet, full of theater, capturing all the light in the room." (156); "he [Gyan at demonstration] finally submitted to the compelling pull of history and found his pulse leaping to something he felt entirely authentic" (214); "She [Sai] found a new attack and went after it even though she grew steadily more horrified by the vermin that coursed from her mouth, but it was as if she were on a stage, the role was more powerful than herself." (348); Biju's thoughts on the unreality of life, fake countries (358); "theatrical dimensions" of Gyand and Sai's fight (363); "The police ran backward like a film in reverse to get into the station [...]" (370); "It was rather like the government warning about safety that appeared in the cinema before the movie with the image of a man cycling to work, a poor man but with a wife who loved him [...]" (372); "By the time they [Ghorka rebels] were done, they would defeat their fictions and the new films would be based on them...." (393)
  • beauty (259): "she [Sai] found it was a changeable thing, beauty" (100); "orphans [...] were so angelically beautiful, they looked as if the had already died and gone to heaven" (259); "The world had failed Mutt. It had failed beauty; it had failed grace." (389)
  • faeces, basic humanity: "they could see dozens of people defecating onto the tracks, rinsing their bottoms with water from a can" (41); Jemu's indigestion in England: "excrement and blood" (149); "Only his digestion dissented and told him he was home" (221); "soggy shit" - village women not used to Western toilets (247); Sai vomiting (288); Mustafa's bottomhole (320); Gyan feeds snot-balls to a spider (365); "A beheaded body ran briefly down the street, blood fountaining from the neck, and they all saw the truth about living creatures - that after death, in final humiliation, the body defecates on itself." (370); "shitting-peeing, bleeding-weeping humans" (381)
  • fate vs. accident: "An accident, they said, and there was nobody to blame - it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed" (19); "the fates decided otherwise, and instead of blasting through the stratosphere, in this life, in this skin, to see the world as the gods might, he was delivered to another vision of the beyond when he and his wife were crushed by local bus wheels" - ironic (36);
  • gender: "she felt intensely, fearfully female" (7); Moscow - "a masculine city" (36); "The daughters [Jemu's sisters] were promptly deprived to make sure he got the best of everything, from love to food." (80); "One thing was always missing, though, the proof of the pudding, the prize of the action, the manliness in manhood, the partridge for the pot, because he [the judge] returned with - Nothing!" (85); "This plumpness jiggliness firmness softness, all coupled together in an unlikely manner, must surely give her [Sai] a certain amoung of bartering power?" (100); "She [the cook's favored choice for daughter-in-law] was a lovely girl, small and plump, a glimpse through the nightie placket of breasts so buttery that even women who saw them were captivated." (116); "It was a masculine atmosphere and Gyan felt a moment of shame remembering his tea parties with Sai" (215); "as wives in those days would follow their husbands [...]. He [Jemu] has found her desirable and she [Nimi] was willing to appreciate anyone who would think so." (220); Gyan's hypocrisy, symp. guidance and characterization by contrast and similarity, ~the judge: "He was sullied by the romance, unnerved by how easily she gave herself." (232); a butcher calling a coat "Bitch, whore, cunt, sali" cf. the judge (406), symp. direction, pro-veggie "You have to swear at a creature to be able to destroy it." (241); "If you have made your husband angry, go ask for forgiveness." (408)
  • globalization, multiculturalism: "Antigentrification Day" (66); "They [Girls to whom Biju delivers food] had a self-righteousness common to many Indian women of the English-speaking upper-educated [...] (67); "immigration lottery" (110); US vs. UK (115); businessmen at Brigitte's talking about new markets in China and India (184); Father Booty's unsuccessful attempt to favor local farmers (257); capitalism/consumerism: Biju's shopping tour before going back to India (361); "The first stop was Heathrow and they crawled out at the far end that hadn't been renovated for the new age of globalization but lingered back in the old age of colonization." (381)
  • humans vs. animals: "Oh, Grandfather more lizard than human. Dog more human than dog." (44); "pheasant - fat foolish creatures, made to be shot" (85)
  • identity: "Jemubhai looked at his father, a barely educated man venturing where he should not be, and the love in Jemubhai's hear mingled with pity, the pity with sham." (50); "Her [Lola's] suitcases were stuffed with Marmite, Oxo bouillon cubes, Knorr soup packets, after Eights, daffodil bulbs, and renewed supplies of Boots cucumber lotion and Marks and Spencer underwear - the essence, quintessence, of Englishness as she understood it." (64); Jemu and Bose's mutation to Englishmen and their reading list: A Brief History of Western Art, A Brief History of Philosophy, A Brief History of France, etc." (161); Harish-Harry's two names (198); "James Peter Peterson or Jemubhai Popatlat Patel. IF [sic!] you please." (227)
  • justice: "He [Jemu's father] was proud of his ability to influence and corrupt the path of justice, exchange right for wrong or wrong for right; he felt no guilt." (78)
  • love: Jemu - "Never again would he know love for a human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion." (51); Jemu about his mother's love - "Undignified love, Indian love, stinking, unaesthetic love" (52); "there are many ways of showing love, not just the way of the movies [...]. The greatest loves is love that's never shown." (117): "But so fluid a thing was love. It wasn't firm, he was learning, it wasn't a scripture" (235); "Years ago, as a student at Oxford, Uncle Potty had considered himself a lover of love." (334)
  • post-colonialism: changes made by colonial advantages such as kerosene, gas etc (4); "It came to them that they might all die with the judge in the kitchen; the world was upside down and absolutely anything could happen" (8); the English vs. the Indian way of making tea (9); Cho Oyu built by a Scottish colonialist who devoured accounts of the time: The Indian Alps and How We Crosse Them, by a Lady Pioneer; Land of the Lama, The Phantom Rickshaw, My Mercara Home, Black Panther of Singrauli; "The cook had been disappointed to be working for Jemubhai. A severe comedown, he thought, from his father, who had served white men only." (86); " 'They worship the cow,' he [Biju] heard the owner of the establishment tell someone in the kitchen, and he felt tribal and astonishing." (185)
  • prostitution: Biju disgusted by the thought of Dominican women in Washington Heights (22); "He [Bomanbhai] offered soldiers unauthorized women in an unauthorized part of town on whom they might spend their aggrandizement of manhood" (120)
  • racism: "a sweet-faced girl, brought up to treat dark people like anyone else" (21); "'roast bastard,' just as in the Englishman's favorite joke book of natives using incorrect English." (85); "hubshi" (102); English boys piss on an immigrant child (279)
  • reference to contemporary culture, art, objects: Noni and Lola's reading list: "Salim Ali's guide to birds and all of Jane Austen" (60); Noni and Lola watch To the Manor Born and Yes, Minister (61); Biju sings old love song pedaling down Broadway - "Yeh Ladki Zara Si Deewani Lagti Hai - Love Story 1981 - Asha Bhosle & Amit Kumar" (68); "This [smuggling] the cook had done for Biju, but also for himself, since the cook's desire was for modernity: toaster ovens, electric shavers, watches, cameras, cartoon colors. He dreamed at night not in the Freudian symbols that still enmeshed others but in modern codes, the digits of a telephone flying away before he could dial them, a garbled television." (74); Sai's reading list: "To KIll a Mockingbird, cider with Rosie, and Life with Father [...] the National Geographics" (93); Saeed Saeed meets Mike Tyson, Naomi Campbell, Bruce Springsteen at night clubs (106); Jemu's reading in Cambridge: "Topham's Law of Property, Aristotle, Indian Criminal Procedure, the Penal Code and the Evidence Act" (149); "macarena" (201); Uncle Potty reads comics (263); villagers enjoy P.G.Woodhouse and Agatha Christie (265); villagers rent books: Mahashveta Devi, the Indian Express, Amit Chaudhuri, on Buddhis esotericism, Agatha Christie's Five Little Pigs, Wuthering Heights (292), gestapo booth (334), Moby Dick mentioned by mad person Biju meets at station (357); Ghorkas imitating Rambo (393)
  • religion, faith, superstition vs. secularity, modernity: the cook's story about the bite he received by the snake couple, how his body swelled up and how he survived doing puja (17-18); "a policeman banished this irreligious thought from his mind" (18); Sai's parents "felt free and brave, part of a modern nation in a modern world" (35); "the perversities of the convent, the sweet sweety pastel angels and the bloodied Christ, presented together in disturbing contrast" (39); "The system might be obsessed with purity, but it excelled in defining the flavor of sin. There was a titillation to unearthing the forces of guilt and desire" (40); church vs. government schooling (47); the judge on the ship to England: "with his new Oxford English Dictionary and his decorated coconut to be tossed as an offering into the waves, so his journey might be blessed by the gods [...]. He felt a piercing fear, not for his future, but for his past, for the foolish faith with which he had lived in Phiphi." (49); "Jemu watched his father disappear. He didn't throw the coconut and he didn't cry. Never again would he know love for a human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion." (51); "At the entrance to the house hung a thangkha of a demon - with hungry fangs and skull necklaces, brandishing an angry penis - to dissuade the missionaries." (60); "the entire package [Jemu prepared for school] was prayed over and thumb-printed red and yellow with 'tika' marks" (79); "Noni felt a sudden exhaustion come over her [Noni]; the answer seemed attainable via miracle not science." (89); "the cook [...] believed in superstition exactly as much as in science. [...] he awaited modernity and knew that if you invested in it, it would inform you that you were worth something in this world." (97); 2The cook had been in the crowd. He was no Buddhist, of course, but had gone in a secular spirit." (113); "Anxiously awaiting your reincarnation." - taken from an obituary of an early deceased child (145); "The Nepalese have come and taken over and it's not a religious issue." - in contrast to the Muslim's, says Lola (176); Biju distinguishes between "Holy cow. Unholy cow." and dilemma: "One should not give up one's religion, the principles of one's parents ant heir parents before them" (183); Harish-Harry's purpose of his double-name: for the gods (198); "This tagged on to make him [Gyan]k feel antisecular and anti-Gandhian." (218); "Buddhist wheel of life [...]" (232); the cook's wife's ghost claiming their son (236), "superstition" (237); the beauty of nature as prove for God's existence (303); Sai passes several churches on her way to Gyan's - about missionaries (338); "(f the gods had favored her she [Sai] would, perhaps, but now, no she would show them that if they did this to her, she would unleash evil on the earth in their own image, a perfect devilish student oto the devil gods..." (354); mad person whom Biju meets at the station: "It's getting fucking Biblical" (356); Biju's thoughts about Bible folk and other religions (357); "[..] no official - police, government, nobody - would dispute the legitimacy of the landgrab. The gods themselves had blessed it now." (375); the judge should have asked the missionaries for help when searching Mutt: "they would have understood ad they would have been duty-bound to help" (385); evil and how humans could face it with boredom (394); "The judge got down on his knees, and he prayed to God, he Jemubhai Popatlal the agnostic [...]" (402)
  • sexuality: wiggling a sausage "like a pervert jumping from behind a tree - waggling the appropriate area of his anatomy" (21); Jemu "found his organ odd: insistent but cowardly; pleading but pompous" (52);
  • stereotype: "Here in America, where every nationality confirmed its stereotype" (30); Jemu surprised by lack of grandness in England "here, too, people could be poor and live unaesthetic lives" (53); "He [Indian student dating a blonde [had just happened to stumble into the stereotype; he was the genuine thing that just happened to be the cliché...." (396); "Where was Mutt? Sold to a family that couldn't love her in a village beyond Kurseon, an ordinary family, paying hard for modernity, receiving a sham. They wouldn't care for Mutt. She was just a concept. They were striving toward an idea of something, toward what it meant to have a fancy dog. She disappointed them just as modern life did, and they tied her to a tree, kicked her..." (429)
  • time:Sai's realization and concept of history repeating, cyclical (265); Jemu- "The present changes the past." (278)
  • truth, reality, memory vs. cheating, bribing, betrayal: cheating as a topic in the last letters between Sai and her mother (37); "Children often made up stories or were told them so as to mask a terrible truth" (33); "So serious was this rivalry [with the MetalBox watchman] that the cook found himself telling lies. Mostly about the past since the present could too easily be picked apart. He fanned a rumor of the judge's lost glory [...], he had grown to believe his own marvelous story." (75); "So fantastic was their (Jemu and his father's] dreaming, it thrilled them like a fairy tale, and perhaps because this dream sailed too high in the sky to be tackled by logic, it took form, began to exert palpable pressure. Without naiveté, father and son would have been defeated; had they aimed lower, according to the logic of probability, they would have failed." (81); the judge's memory of his touring life (83); "there was a worse aspect of contamination and corruption [...]. Nobody could be sure how much of the truth had fallen between languages and illiteracy" - the judge (84); "He [the judge] realized truth was best looked at in tiny aggregates, for many baby truths could yet add up to one big size unsavory lie" (86): "The cook's father [...] had bought recommendations on the servant chittie exchange for his son" (86); "His memory seemed triggered by the tiniest things - Gyan's unease, his reciting that absurd poem..." (152); "For a moment all the different pretences he [Gyan] had indulged in, the shames he had suffered, the future that wouldn't accept him - all these things joined together to form a single truth." (214); about immigration procedure: "But when you are on the verge of hysteria, so full of anxiety and pent-up violence, you could only appear honest and calm by being dishonest." (245); villagers don't like English writers writing about Indian: "it didn't correspond to the truth" (265); "[...] and then, damn it - A memory of - Six little boys at a bus stop" (279); "The cook couldn't help but enjoy himself, and the more he repeated his stories, the more they became truer than the truth." (302); "Rumour spread that there were men among the protesters with guns.... Perhaps it was true. Perhaps it wasn't." (369); "The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent. All you needed to do was to reach out and pluck it." (433)

Intertext

  • Jorge Luis Borges, "Boast of Quietness": motto; Desai said she started the book by reading the poem and kept it by her bedside while writing it
  • Katherine Mansfield, The Voyage (1922): a young orphan girl travels to live with her grandfather, not knowing what expects her, others commanding her fate (39-42)
  • V.S. Naipaul, Bend in the River (1979): (short-listed for the Booker Prize in 1979), Lola reads the book (62)
  • V.S. Naipaul, Magic Seeds (2004)
  • Upamanyu Chatterjee, Weight Loss (2006): defecating
  • Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941[?]): a Bengali poet, whom Gyan claims to have read (147)
  • Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment (1866): Noni reads the novel and discusses it with librarian (266)
  • Emily Brontë, Wuthering Heights (1847): Sai reading the book repeatedly (333)

Adaptations

-

Specials

  • National Geographic (1, 93, 96)
  • river that flows both ways (357)
  • butterflies (414)

Further Reading

1 MLA entry for nove, additional 3 for author

  • The Whole Circle. Rachel Donadio. PEN America: A Journal for Writers and Readers 8 (2008): p168-177. p168.
[Subject Terms: American literature, 1900-1999; Chandra, Vikram (b. 1961); novel; and Desai, Kiran (b. 1971); interview.]
  • An Interview with Kiran Desai. Eleanor Wachtel. Brick 79 (Summer 2007): p89-108. p89.
[Subject Terms: American literature, 1900-1999; Desai, Kiran (b. 1971); interview.]
  • The Inheritance of Myth: Kiran Desai no shosetsu. Mariko Enomoto. Eigo Seinen/Rising Generation 152.10 (Jan. 2007): p602-03. p602.
[Subject Terms: American literature, 1900-1999; Desai, Kiran (b. 1971); The Inheritance of Loss (2005); novel; by Indian American women novelists; treatment of cross-generational relations; relationship to exile.]
  • Kiran Desai (1972- ). Sarala Kirshnamurthy. Asian American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Ed. Emmanuel S. Nelson. Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2000. p81-86. p81.
[Subject Terms: American literature, 1900-1999; Desai, Kiran (b. 1971); novel.]

Links

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