Inheritance of Loss

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	Literature & Fiction
Author:	Kiran Desai

Inheritance of Loss is a novel that tells of parallel stories of different members of the Indian race, and of how, in the present time, they are confronted with issues of multiculturalism, discrimination, economic inequality, and globalization. At the beginning, the house of the Judge is the central part of the story. We can find here different faces of ancient Indian culture – Sai, ideal Indian woman, “the cook,” a typical servant, and the judge, real-time epitome of the Indian male. From that point thereon, narratives of the present and the past intertwines in a particular structure that is nonlinear. The story moves back and forth to the present, the recent past and the past. Alongside with this, are chunks and bits of the story of Biju, a parallel story with the same theme, occurring in a different place, to represent the face of the new Indian – the illegal migrant and the migrants’ encounters with discrimination.

The Indian woman, repressed for years, finds in herself a realization to find her own identity by becoming conscious of individuality. We see her in front of the looking glass, thinking of her future, as if she herself can arrange it. Her affection for Gyan, forbidden and unthinkable in the light of Hindu tradition opens this for her. However, such a love did not prosper, because we see Gyan fighting for another form of freedom as he joins the Nepali movement for liberation.

The typical servant is found to have given much hope, and a tendency to believe in a messianic hero, his son, Biju. In chapter 15 of this story, amidst the celebrations that exclusively belongs to the Indian culture, he was holding another celebration, a celebration of his son’s so-called achievements in his stay in New York, flaunting his ambition to go to that greener world. He offends his heritage, and he offends the son, who was almost crawling between restaurants, experiencing the most demeaning taunts from the foreign race.

The story has been set in present India, a product of the transition from the traditional India that we know of to the present past-colonial “modernity.” In this novel, we will see how traditional Indian practices mix with that of the new post-colonial practices. What changed? What amount of progress has been made? It is clearly demonstrated here that as much as the country is lifting itself up from the hierarchical order of things, borders are built anew, nothing really changed. Brahmins still remain the highest caste although members of other classes get to move to higher ranks through education, as that of Jemubhai’s. I see a sort of rearrangement of classes, changing of methods of oppression. If the Hindu religion has become an implicit promoter of old hierarchies and subjections in the old society, as that of Ramayana – Rama’s exile, Sita’s ordeal, etc.



Education, economic status and migration has produced for India a new basis for elitism, like those women for whom Biju has delivered bowls of soup and for which Biju had to transfer to another restaurant again. Alongside with it is the hope for a change toward the piecemeal modernity that can only be attributed to their past colonial masters. The judge himself is a glaring example for it, and Lola’s obsession for her British-accented BBC reporter daughter. The cook also had his share, believing in the American dream, as if having a son abroad gives him a different place in the society. Moreover, we see that they admire the works of modernity but they still forcibly cling unto their traditions. Like the Judge and Lola, they begin hating their own race for their backwardness but this kind of behavior is still backward, and is set to be able to push their country farther back.

The novel seems to have been a portrayal of the Indian race as a struggling race, struggling from the backward ways of the old and the oppression that they get from the new setup. India is a race who had taste of different flavors of oppression and humiliation. In America, Biju landed in what the writer spoke of the “the Gandhi café, [where] the lights were kept low, the better to hide the stains. It was a long journey from here to the fusion trend, the goat cheese and basil samosa, the mango margarita. This was the real thing, generic Indian, and it could be ordered complete, one stop on the subway line or even on the phone: gilt and red chairs, plastic roses on the table with synthetic dewdrops.” Indeed, the Indian can be found almost anywhere in the world, tainted, stained with pain.