The inheritance of Loss: Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai’s Booker prize winning effort is the most detailed novel I have read in quite sometime. It is apparent that Desai has spent much effort behind this novel. Each sentence, each chapter is an amazing compilation of minute details that takes a huge amount of cognizant effort to capture. The grit and the hard work behind the writing is admirable and it succeeds too in as much as detailing can be considered to be an essential element of a novel. This is an amazing piece of work when examined from my chosen prism of the three isms. In itself the novel is a bundle of contradictions, in the broader sense however there is perhaps no such modern novel that bears so succinctly and so distinctively the birthmarks of the social class of the author.

Form wise, the detailing is just impossible to ignore. The scene shifts from the cloudy hills of Kalimpong to the ghettos of America alternate with rapid frequency most of the time, not letting the reader to get trapped in either of the two settings through which the novel transpires and this is quite necessary in so stilted settings, it is just sometimes that the American Ghetto seems to linger on a bit too long but not long enough to actually damage something comprehensible. Emotions are handled with an iron baton, displaying only the cream, to let the reader conjure up the milk floating underneath. Form wise it might be considered to be quite taxing, but Desai is writing not just for effects but for reflection and as in any serious work a bit of gloominess is the price the reader ought to be prepared to pay to discover events worth thinking about.

It is the realism that presents the stark contrast which at once forms the most brilliant as well as the most absurd portions of the novel.
The scenes of the American life of the poor Indian immigrant are terrific, the picture of the old tumbled down house set somewhere among the always half asleep hills of Kalimpong represents in itself a time wrap for its characters, as intended to be offered by the author. The police treatment of the poor cook and his acceptance of it are viciously realistic. In themselves, it is in scenes like these that the work’s realistic essence lies. To me they represent realism as it should be, no holds barred, brutal and pinching.

On the other hand lies the absolute reverse of this authentic and proud realism. Sai, a seventeen year old girl is far too mature for her age. It can hardly be a credible situation where she lectures Gyan about the meaning of life. Utterly ridiculous too seem to be the scenes where the pair fall fall in love. Whoever heard of falling in love by mutual touching of ears, eyes, hands and god knows what other sensory organs. Miss Desai herself must be no stranger to love and yet, however romantic and mushy love might be, still it can never reduce itself to the innocence of five year old kids probing and scratching each other. And whatever gave her the ludicrous idea of putting a powder puff inside a blouse? At times it seems that only Desai can surpass her own self in invoking such ridiculous propositions, each inherently more ridiculous than the previous.

There is always an inherent danger when an artist tries to write about events where she has never ever been personally present. Perhaps Desai writes about events that were tragic and disturbing based on hearsay from people she knows who lived through the said times and if that be the case then it is a serious folly, for then the artist is sacrificing truth to opinions and dimensions. She portrays the Gorkhaland movement as a movement of caustic teenagers and youth bullies who have no clue about what they are involved in. For her it is a tragic misadventure carried on the shoulders of arrogant youths inflamed by shrewd and corrupt politicians. She never bothers to delve deep into the reasons for the same and yet that does not prevent her from passing implicit judgments about the same. one wishes she had actually met people who have lost their sons to the movement, one wishes she had heard about the rationale and basis for the movement, one wishes she had tried to understand the moral philosophy of the youth who gave their lives to the movement. What an oversimplification for her, the entire Gorkhaland movement is! A few youths, as malleable as metal in a hot furnace are let loose by their villainous leaders, who then saunter about the beautiful land of Kalimpong, terrorizing and bullying the peaceful people there! That’s all there is it to, for her. How filthy and how repugnant such analysis is, particularly for a capable artist like Miss Desai. This is a heavy let down in the novel, this oversimplified and caricature like portrait of the entire Gorkhaland movement. It is here that the novel looses something that no other virtue in it can quite rebuild, and to think that Sai, a girl who sleeps walks through the movement without ever realizing its essence as it unfolds before her very eyes, as it stains her every breath, gives meaningful advice about life to someone! But Miss Desai does not stop here, no! She must go further. One of her characters actually meets a senior leader of the movement, who is reduced to the level of a lusty, uncouth as low as they come human being. Has Desai ever met any of the leaders of the movement, particularly during the period which she is writing about? Most definitely not and yet she has no qualms in painting the leaders of the movement at that time in such turgid colors with her pen. What can the meaning of this be?

The answer of course lies in her class origins. The kind of people whose opinions she considers as facts, without bothering to investigate in any manner the event she is trying to capture, are the bourgeoisie of the Indian society. Hence they are quite willing to enjoy the bliss of the hills, totally incurious about the lives of the poor Gorkhas who are expected to serve them without daring to ask for the right to lead a better life and when they do so, their movement must represent all that is arrogant, unworthy and preposterous. In America the same bourgeoisie are subservient to the white bourgeoisie there. There are no takers for these brown sahibs in that distant land and hence this search to expose the underbelly of the white American society through the life led by illegal immigrants in American Ghettos. What a contradiction this is! When Desai chooses, the reader is expected to sympathize with the poor immigrants in America and when she decrees, the reader is expected to forget the downtrodden of their native place merely because her classes of people are the lords over here. There is no such glaring example of class hypocrisy in modern Indian English literature.

I am no expert about the Gorkhaland movement; however a movement for which people gave their lives deserves a better investigation than what Desai has undertaken here. Over the years the booker has gone to several undeserving recipients, but none surely, to such an under researched and such a hypocritical work. This is serious miscarriage of justice and Desai should really consider herself lucky to have won the booker. Maybe she went on a visit to the sleepy hills of Kalimpong, attended to by a Gorkha servant and considered the precise auspicious moment, advised by a retired high ranking government official about when to start this work of hers. In this derisory work of her, even this does not seem to be over the top.