‘The Inheritance of Loss’ is a story of ‘Cho-Oyo’ and it’s surrounding homes created at the foot of Kanchenjunga in Darjeeling. Pulled forward by a handful of seemingly mundane characters, the story wriggles its way to conclusion at an unapologetically slow pace. Kiran Desai, daughter of the critically acclaimed author Anita Desai, follows her mother’s style of writing with intricate details throughout the book but sets herself apart with a style of writing that is more raw and laden with highly intelligent, delicately incorporated sarcasm.
‘The Inheritance of Loss’ certainly isn’t for beginners. Desai doesn’t care an ounce about picking up a catchy plot, including enticing plot-turns, employing reader friendly language to hook the reader to the end with cliffhangers at the ends of chapters and so on. Hers is a purely auteur style of writing. It makes me wonder why she picked a plot so slow and arguably dull but as the story progresses we start making sense of the title of the book and get sucked into the lethargic abyss that the characters live in. She revolves the lives of the characters around the very unspoken part of Indian history – the civil unrest of 1989 where the GNLF demanded the separation of Gorkhaland. Slowly but surely, the unrest seeps into the serenity of the hills within which Cho-Oyo is located in safe yet sad isolation, altering the lives of the equally sad characters that live within.
Sai, her grandfather the retired judge and their cook lives in what used to be a magnificent haveli that is now a rickety establishment barely standing still. Not to mention Mutt- the judge’s dog that he loves more than any human being he has ever loved and could ever love in his entire lifetime – combined. The sheer extremity that Desai has displayed in creating a character that is so despised with the world and is equally despicable himself is amazing. I don’t think I’ve come across a character that I hated, pitied and found amusing at the same time.
Sai’s fleeting love story with her tutor who made his way to Cho-Oyo everyday, the neighbours who managed to add a splash of flavour and humour to her otherwise deprived life, the sub-plot of the cook’s son who migrated to America in hopes of a better life but landed the worst possible deal like every other immigrant of his means – all add to the dimensions of the experience the book provides. The multi-directional flow of the stories of the characters ensures a pace. However, in terms of ‘progress of story’, things only start ‘happening’ when the civil unrest intensifies and shakes up the characters that lived in a bubble.
Desai isn’t giving a social message through ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ – she’s giving about a hundred of them but none unequivocally. The thoughts and lives of her intrinsically crafted characters are her message. Kiran Desai’s literary genius is unmissable in the book. I don’t ‘recommend’ ‘The Inheritance of Loss’ in the traditional sense because I cannot guess what you look for in a book and if Desai manages to give you it. But I do recommend the experience of it, that’s unique and intense.
Read more book reviews here:
Leave a Reply