The Inheritance of Loss

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At the Ghandi Café, three years after that visa was approved, Biju slips on rotten spinach. He demands Harish-Harry pay for a doctor for him, but Harish-Harry refuses and calls Biju ungrateful. He suggests that Biju return to India for medical care. Desai touches upon many different issues throughout the book such as, globalisation, multiculturalism, inequality and the different forms of love. It almost feels like Desai is trying to convey a message to the reader about the importance of things in life which perhaps she sees are often overlooked. On the other hand, the only thing that impedes my interest is the Indian words and dialogues with which I am not familiar and beyond my understanding. But I believe this is the essence of writing such book; it only reflects the nationalistic observation of Kiran Desia.

Sai has been living in the house for nine years and it has probably become the only home she has known. Her father, a pilot, was recruited from the Indian Air Force for the Intercosmos Program during the period of friendship between the Indian and Soviet governments. Sai’s parents put her in a convent, aged six, when they moved to Russia where they died two years later in an accident, leaving Sai an orphan. On her parent’s death, the convent sent Sai to live with her grandfather, the Judge. Now seventeen-years old, Sai is slowly falling in love with her tutor, Gyan, an ethnic Nepali. b) The effects of Imperialism and colonial-mentality upon the social system raise awareness among chauvinists and jingoists. In fact, in the novel, Sai’s retired judge grandpa shows an air of aristocracy and I-am- better-than-you attitude upon his arrival in India after long studies and services under the British government. Such social situation also exists in the Philippines. In Chapter 11, the cook tells his story. He began serving the judge's father years at age fourteen. He feels disappointed for not having secured a cook's position with a white family. Despite his mistreatment by the family he serves, the cook makes up nice stories about how he is treated well by the judge. The lies help him keep his dignity. He needs to feel respected. The Inheritance of Loss is the second novel by Indian author Kiran Desai. It was first published in 2006. It won a number of awards, including the Booker Prize for that year, the National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award in 2007, [1] and the 2006 Vodafone Crossword Book Award.

The morning after Sai arrives, the cook takes her to meet her new tutor: Noni, who lives with her sister Lola. They pass the houses of Uncle Potty, Father Booty, the Afghan princesses, and Mrs. Sen—all of whom are upper-class and well-educated. Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss, (2006) was widely praised by critics throughout Asia, Europe and the United States. It won the 2006 Man Booker Prize, as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Circle Fiction Award. [2] Desai became the youngest-ever woman to win the Booker Prize at the age of 35 (this record was broken by Eleanor Catton in 2013). [8] In Chapter 2, the judge makes the cook go to the police to report the break-in. The police interrogate the cook, suggesting that it is he who instigated the crime because he is of a lower social class. Kiran Desai is the daughter of novelist Anita Desai. Kiran was born in Delhi, then spent the early years of her life in Punjab and in Mumbai, where she studied at Cathedral and John Connon School. She left India at 14, and she and her mother lived in England for a year, before moving to the United States.

It may not be as comprehensive as Salman Rusdie’s Midnight’s Children although it is also about India that used to be under the British empire. However, it is more exact with its urgent message: the loss of the nation’s true identity due to western influences. The true Indian identity that was an amalgam of the nation’s own culture and tradition spawning several centuries when they were still free of foreign influences. After all, India has one of the oldest civilizations in the world. The story is set in the 1980s in Kalimpong, located in the northern part of India near Darjeeling. The main characters are Sai, a seventeen-year-old girl living with her grandfather, who is a judge. The judge is an educated man who attended Cambridge University but has fallen in social position due to the country's political unrest. He carries the weight of having abandoned his wife, so he feels he is paying off his guilt by allowing his granddaughter, Sai, to live with him after her parents die. Gyan is Sai's tutor and boyfriend. Other principle characters are the judge's cook and the cook's his son, Biju. Biju went to America and works illegally in kitchens in New York City. Throughout the novel, there are two story strands—one following the lives of the people in Kalimpong, and one following the life of Biju. Lee-Potter, Emma (5 August 2020). "12 best Indian novels that everyone needs to read". The Independent. Archived from the original on 18 June 2022 . Retrieved 23 December 2020. Roy, Pinaki. " The Inheritance of Loss: A Brief Rereading". World English Literature: Bridging Oneness. Eds. Nawale, Arvind, and Pinaki Roy. New Delhi: Authors Press, 2013. pp.13–29. ISBN 978-81-7273-705-4.

This novel won the Man Booker Prize in 2006 and National Circle Award in the same year. As a reader, do not underestimate why this is deserving of the said awards. In fact , the novel is not much of a good read beyond my taste ; however, objectively speaking, I agree with another famous Indian writer, Salman Rusdie, that Keran Desia is a terrific writer. Chapter 3 focuses on Biju, the cook's son who lives in New York City. He works selling hot dogs for Gray's Papaya. Biju constantly compares himself to the overly confident workers he is surrounded by. They are crude and take him to a prostitute, insisting that he participate, suggesting that he is not a man unless he has sex. Biju feels humiliated and does not feel himself to be a man.

Kiran Desai". The Man Booker Prizes. The Booker Prize Foundation. Archived from the original on 14 October 2012 . Retrieved 23 August 2013. That is not to say that Desai's novel is an unremittingly depressing affair. She is a wonderful writer of comic set-pieces, most of them centring on Biju's experiences in New York. Yet, while these chapters are carried off with aplomb, it is the melancholy at the heart of The Inheritance of Loss that fuels the narrative. We see the crumbling dreams of Sai's neighbours, Swiss Father Booty and his alcoholic friend, Uncle Potty, still trapped in an older era when colonialism was for the best. High in the Himalayas sits a dilapidated mansion, home to three people, each dreaming of another time.This is one of my favorite novels written about Indian immigrants in the USA. I generally consider myself a fast reader. But I took one whole month to finish this book. There were too many ideas that made me close this book and contemplate it for a long time. At the Queen of Tarts Bakery, Biju meets a Muslim man from Zanzibar named Saeed Saeed, He admires Saeed because of the way he seems to stay afloat in the underground system of being an illegal immigrant rather than drowning in it, the way Biju feels. Biju begins to question his prejudice against people from Pakistan, and then questions his prejudice against people of many other ethnicities, as they had never done anything harmful to him or to India, unlike white people.

Sai is a girl living in mountainous Kalimpong with her maternal grandfather Jemubhai, the cook and a dog named Mutt. Desai switches the narration between both points of view. The major theme running throughout The Inheritance of Loss is one closely related to colonialism and the effects of post-colonialism: the loss of identity and the way it travels through generations as a sense of loss. Some characters snub those who embody the Indian way of life, others are angered by anglicised Indians who have lost their traditions; none is content.Kiran Desai studied creative writing at Bennington College, Hollins University, and Columbia University. [4] Work [ edit ]