Mapping a state of mind

Reading Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard a few years back had been fun, but the book had not really made an impact apart from the fact that it was the first novel written by Kiran Desai, daughter of well-known novelist Anita Desai. Kiran Desai's second novel The Inheritance of Loss stands on its own, weaving together a story about persons living on the periphery of society, marginalised, each trying to cope with his or her "inheritance of loss", so to speak.

Sounds simple? Not quite. The plot is a complex one, dwelling on different ways in which the novel's characters experience their personal loss in different places, a state brought about by socio-economic upheavals that have shaken the world in the last couple of centuries.

In a recent interview, Kiran Desai said that she read through a number of memoirs by ICS officers and the alienation they experienced as they could not relate to any of the worlds they lived in. Jemubhai, a retired judge, is one of those. He lives in a dilapidated house in Kalimpong with his granddaughter Sai, who has lost both her parents in a car accident in Russia, and a cook whose son Biju is an illegal immigrant in the US, hopping from job to job, hoping to make it big some day.

The novel opens in a poetic manner. To quote the opening sentence, "All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths." The colours of dusk pervade the whole novel, now and then punctuated by something magical as when on a misty evening in the garden, Sai found on looking back that the house had vanished and "when she climbed the steps back to the verandah, the garden vanished". The eye for detail reminds the reader a lot of Anita Desai in a way that the earlier novel had not.

The GNLF movement upsets the sylvan setting of Kalimpong as well as relationships which had so far cut across social inequalities. Young boys attack the judge's bungalow and take away his rusty, old, practically useless gun. They encroach upon the estate of Lola and Noni and their leader, aptly called Pradhan, refuses to listen to any protest. Eden is anything but peaceful, and as tension mounts, the reader feels that the novelist does not know how to resolve the complications. As one finishes reading the novel, one gets the feeling that Desai has taken on too many issues and is unable to cope with all at the same time.

However, the issues raised in the novel""loss, alienation and colonial hangover, among others, are very pertinent in today's context of India, especially the juxtaposition of the two passages from and to the country, the judge's and Biju's, despite the difference in their social standings and vocations. There is a similarity in the unhappiness experienced by the two of them while abroad and an inability to settle down here. The poem by Jorge Luis Borges quoted at the beginning of the novel conveys the sense of loss experienced by Desai's characters. She has said in an interview that the story of illegal immigration is an issue that she plans to take up in her next novel as well.

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THE INHERITANCE OF LOSS

Kiran Desai
Penguin Viking
Price: Rs 495; Pages: 321