FACE TO FACE
Never-ending narratives
MAITREYEE S. GANAPATHY
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The Inheritance of Loss is about poverty and patterns that repeat across generations, says Kiran Desai.
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Following her instincts: Kiran Desai.
SHE could rarely follow the rules they taught at writing workshops. Kiran Desai, quite simply, followed her instincts and her heart when she took on a small news item and transformed it into a comical story structured like a fable.
Looking back on her debut, Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, Desai admits that writing the book was a lot of fun but probably not very fulfilling. But the book had established at least one fact for this 34-year-old writer, that it was writing that was going to be her life.
A lonely affair
Much like her mother, the acclaimed novelist Anita Desai, before her, it also showed her how writing was going to be a lonely affair. "So much time spent in solitude... sometimes I think it is good for writers to have a job," she muses. "Not only was it lonely work, spending hours and months and years on a dark subject made it worse", she says. "Dark" is how she describes her second novel, The Inheritance of Loss, launched here in India this January. "I completed it about two years ago and the whole of last year I spent editing the book. I deliberately took out large chunks and lightened them," she said in a recent interview to The Hindu, wondering whether she had not sat too long with the novel.
Set in the hill district of Kalimpong in the 1980s, it is the story of the lives of a retired judge, Jemubhai Patel, the cook who works for him, the judge's neighbours, locals and expatriates. Growing up in Jemubhai's crumbling mansion is Sai, the judge's granddaughter who was delivered at his doorstep after her parents died in a car accident in Russia.
A major portion of the narrative is taken up by Jemubhai's past, his journey from a small village in Gujarat to England and his subsequent return as an ICS officer of the Raj. The journey has had the most profound effect and his experiences in England, the humiliations — whether real or perceived — have seared into his soul, changing him forever. So, as Jemubhai climbs the ladder of material success, his soul sinks to new depths.
Now, nearly half a century later, it is the cook's son, Biju, who is trying his luck in the United States. For three years he has been staying on illegally, working in the kitchens of restaurants and cafes, pining for home and wondering if he would ever see his father.
Meanwhile, in the hills of Kalimpong, an insurgency is building up. As the agitation gains ground, it not only shakes the cosy worlds of the likes of Lola and Noni — these women provide for many moments of hilarity in an otherwise grim tale — it also stymies the budding romance between Sai and her handsome Nepali tutor, Gyan.
Overwhelming beauty
Kiran Desai says she chose Kalimpong as she had lived and done schooling here. She describes the beauty of the hills, especially the view of the majestic Kanchenjunga with a lot of feeling in the book. But in doing so, she also brings out the poverty — both material and spiritual — more acutely. "Funny it has come out like that," she says when you point it out. "I love the place and I find the beauty of the place overwhelming."
Speaking of her characters, specially the judge, she says, "I built up the novel with stories I had been hearing from childhood. My father's father belonged to a small village in Gujarat and I have heard stories of those like Jemubhai. Ashamed of his own skin and arrogant in the extreme, he embraces these Western manners and turns back on his family and his society, placing himself above them. But in no way has he been accepted by the society he aspires to be a part of. The more he is aware of the irony, the more he fills himself with hatred.
"I think transporting a man from a poor family into a supremely wealthy society must really have an impact ... must result in some kind of mental deterioration. In most cases, it is those back home who take the brunt as the power balance changes. Jemubhai's case is an extreme. I call him an ogre and believe me, there are ogres in existence."
Different forms
Kiran says that she read through a number of memoirs left by ICS officers. And a lot of them discuss the dichotomy they faced. Here they were serving under the British, educated in the West but felt they could not be a part of any of the worlds they lived in. Jemubhai is part of the colonial legacy of the Raj. We hear similar tales even now. We now have other forms of colonialism. Today we have the same picture repeated with poor people heading to the U.S. to get a better life. And they come from all over the world — doing odd jobs, serving in restaurants. It is crazy. All these kitchens are in the basement where the third world resides and upstairs at the restaurant it is the posh first world. In fact people like Biju may spend years working and living in the U.S. without ever getting to know a single native American.
In fact, she quite recognises the power of Biju's story. "My humanity is in feeling we are all voices of the same poverty... " goes a line from Jorge Luis Borges. Kiran says she kept the poem by her side as she wrote Inheritance of Loss and then quoted it in the beginning of the book.
Biju's story or rather the story of illegal immigrants in the U.S. is not finished yet and will continue in her next book, says she.
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