A wise man once told me that the sign of a mature & confident person is not only his willingness to accept that he will always continue to make mistakes but more importantly it is his ability to own up to his mistakes when he makes them. I neither claim to be too-mature nor overly-confident but today I’d like to admit to one of my mistakes. In one of my previous posts (dated:09 Nov 2006 ) I had critiqued Kiran Desai and her book “The Inheritance of Loss” without even reading it. Though to be fair, I had admitted then, to not having read it.
Last week I managed to get hold of a copy and I stand corrected in everything I said. It is a masterpiece. Period!
And to show penance I have painstakingly taken the trouble of selecting certain passages for your enjoyment. If you have not read the book, I hope it will encourage you to do so and if you have then I hope it will take your mind back again to the beautiful book.
The selection isn’t meant to tell you the story but just to give you the taste of the exquisite prose and her sometimes wry and sometimes comical understanding of human nature.
Cast of some important characters:
Judge : An old cranky old man from the British era living his last days in Kalimpong.
Sai: His innocent 16 yr old grand-daughter from his estranged daughter and son in law who died in Moscow.
Gyan: A young 19 year old nepali boy who tutors Sai and is her first love too.
Cook: The faithful family retainer of the judge whose son, Biju, is in the US.
Biju: Cook’s son who is struggling as an illegal alien in New York
Lola & Noni: Widowed and Spinster Bengali sisters living retired in Kalimpong. Serious Anglophiles.
And for the non Nepali readers of my blog: Momos are a Nepali-Tibetan delicacy akin to Chinese dumplings. Hubshi is rude Nepali slang for Negro.
Happy Reading.
----- * -----
The judge remembered his wedding. She came to him with a garland. They did not look at each other. He was twenty five, she was seventeen. “So shy, so shy” – the delighted crowd was sure of having witnessed the terror of love. What amazing hope the audience has – always refusing to believe the nonexistence of romance.
----- * -----
The wedding party lasted a week and was so opulent that nobody in Piphit could doubt that the family lived a life awash in ghee and gold, so when Bomanbhai bent over with a namaste and begged his guests to eat and drink, they knew his modesty was false – and of the best kind therefore.
----- * -----
When her parents died, Sai had not seen them in two whole years of her young life, and the emotional immediacy of their existence had long vanished. She tried to cry, but she couldn’t.
In the office, beneath a Jesus in a dhoti, pinned on two varnished sticks, the nuns searched long and hard and finally found her grandfather who possibly could take her in. In a country so full of relatives, Sai suffered a dearth.
----- * -----
Lola panicked as a bat swooped by her ear.
“What does it matter, just a bit of shoe leather flying about,” said Noni, looking, in her pale summer sari, as if she were a blob of melting vanilla ice cream.
----- * -----
His dog Mutt followed the judge to his room. As the judge sat brooding, she leaned against him with the ease that children have when leaning against their parents.
----- * -----
When Gyan tried to test the depth of her eyes with his, her glance proved too slippery to hold; he picked it up and dropped it, retrieved it, dropped it again until it slid away and hid. ……When they finally kissed, she closed her eyes and felt the terrified measure of his lips on her, trying to match one shape with the other.
----- * -----
Eating momos dipped in chutney, Gyan said: “You’re my momo”
Sai said: “No you’re mine.”
Ah, dumpling stage of love – it had set them off on a tumble of endearments.
----- * -----
Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically Sai, decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.
----- * -----
Lola: “When did Darjeeling belong to Nepal? Darjeeling was in fact annexed from Sikkim and Kalimpong from Bhutan.”
Noni: “Very unskilled as drawing borders, those bloody Brits.”
Mrs Sen, driving right into the conversation: “No practice, na, water, water all around them, ha ha.”
----- * -----
“Tenzing was the real hero,” Gyan had said and everyone agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hillary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
----- * -----
“And what is the purpose of your visit?”
“What should we say, what should we say?” they nervously discussed as they stood in line at the immigration counter of the US embassy in Kathmandu.
“We’ll say a hubshi broke into the house and killed our sister-in-law”
“Yes Yes” they agreed – it was a fact known to all mankind:
“It’s black people, hubshis who do all this”
They were, then, shocked to see the African American lady behind the counter. But this fear quickly gave way to hope.
God, if the Americans accepted the hubshis, surely they would welcome Indians with open arms.
----- * -----
“They say they will try your house in Brooklyn next” Biju gleefully informed an agitated Saeed. He felt a measure of pride in delivering this vital bad news. Realized he missed playing this sort of role that was common in India. One’s involvement in other peoples’ lives gave one numerous small opportunities for importance.
----- * -----
“Jesus is coming,” read a sign on the landslide reinforcement.
“To become a Hindu,” someone had added in chalk underneath.
----- * -----
“The Dalai Lama must be thanking his lucky stars to be in India instead,” Lola said “better climate and let’s be honest, better food. Good fat momos”
Noni: “But he must be vegetarian, no?”
“These monks are not vegetarian. What vegetables grow in Tibet? And anyway Buddha died of greed for pork”
----- * -----
The librarian said: “We Hindus have a better system. You get what you deserve and you cannot escape your deeds” quickly adding, “And at least our Gods look like Gods, no? Like Raja-Rani. Not like this Buddha, Jesus – beggar types.”
----- * -----
Why is the Chinaman yellow? He pees against the wind, ha ha.
Why is the Indian brown? He shits upside down. Ha Ha Ha
----- * -----
As the political situation in Kalimpong worsened, Lola thought a lot. What was a country but the idea of it? She thought of India as a concept, a hope, or a desire. How often could you attack it before it crumbled? To undo something took practice; it was a dark art and they were perfecting it. With each argument, the next would be easier, it would become a compulsive act, and like wrecking a marriage, it would be impossible to keep away, to stop picking at wounds even if the wounds were your own
----- * -----
After the boys encroached on her land, Lola went to the local chief. “Side of road, my land” she mumbled, weakly in broken English, as if to pretend it was English she couldn’t speak properly rather than illuminate the fact that it was Nepali she had never learned.
----- * -----
“What is this GOrkha? It was always GUrkha. And there aren’t even many Gurkhas here anyway. All in Hong Kong. And anyway why are they writing their posters in English if they want Nepali to be taught in schools.” Nona moaned.
----- * -----
When Biju finally called from America, the local village people all gathered around the cook in the STD booth, giggling in delicious anticipation.
“Hello, Pitaji?”
“BIJU?”. By natural logic he raised his voice to cover the distance between them, sending his voice all the way to America.
“Biju, Biju” the villagers chorused, “it’s Biju” they said to one another. “Oh, it’s your son,” they told the cook who was already speaking to his son. “It’s his son,” they told one another. They watched for his expression to change, for hints as to what was being said at the other end, wishing to insinuate themselves deeply into the conversation, to become it, in fact.
The atmosphere of Kalimpong reached Biju all the way in New York.
