This novel was Kiran Desai's second novel, and it won her the "Man Booker Prize" (for 2006, as it was known back then). Back then she was the youngest to win the award. It is also learned that the novelist is yet to publish her third novel, although its was originally planned for release in 2018.
Ponder the words, loss, and one's 'inheritance' of it.
Biju - 'luckiest man in the world' for he won a VISA as a tourist to the US when more qualified people failed, but three years down the line in New York he realises that:
"Year by year, his life wasn't amounting to anything at all; in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing the air. And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity—oh the tediousness of it. Clumsy in America, a giant-sized midget, a big fat-sized helping of small . … Shouldn't he return to a life where he might slice his own importance, to where he might relinquish this overrated control over his own destiny and perhaps be subtracted from its determination altogether? He might even experience that greatest luxury of not noticing himself at all."
How he returns to his father, was to me most painful part of the novel, as he does so with literal sum zero.
The Judge - a life of pretense, never settling in the UK while he studied, a marginal pass to ICS, lost in a make believe world upon his return while destroying the life of the more genuine, and innocent, Nimi. He inherited only loss in his old age, as he lived to suffer for it - where he had to finally turn to Faith and Belief for the return of the only being he cared about.
"Never again would he know love for a human being that wasn't adulterated by another, contradictory emotion."
A life totally wasted, which resulted in the ruination of a couple more.
Sai and Gyan - Two young people who by the end of the novel, has set backs in life, due to the circumstances that they have inherited. There was just the faintest hope that maybe Gyan will discover his true self after the disasters of Kalimpong, and maybe Sai will see her surrounds for which they were - they inherited loss, but youth gives you hope for greater things.
All other characters in the book - Noni, Lola, father Booty, and Uncle Potty - with the latter's plain sexual orientation which passes by in an environment of liberal tolerance in that limited crowd, all of whom have their bubbles of comfort burst as the tensions arise and the fight for Gorkhaland scale to an imagined level even for those who aspired for it.
The novel is built nicely, as we first see the cocooned, content life style, and beauty of the region, the characters settled to life that circumstances have brought them - or opted for, as the case maybe. Before long the tensions build up, with the friendly reference to 'uncle' and 'aunty', soon escalating to snigger and encroachment, before all hell break loose. Biju and other lot of illegals in the U.S. too have inherited nothing for their troubles (unless you have a talent to reinvent yourself like Saeed Saeed).
It is amazing, the wide array of topics that the author has managed to touch, through the stories of inheritances (and their causal losses), in a book of moderate size. I feel that the book hasn't made a sufficient impact among the broader readership despite the life truths it has managed to capture so effortlessly, outside of the recognition of the Booker prize, and the National Book Critics Circle Award. Personally, it is clearly one of the most important books I've read, as the Gorkhaland movement only serves as the fertile platform for a story that is applicable across to a much large set.
Rating: *****
P.S. Few points of trivia that made an impression on me:
"He was the real hero, Tenzing," Gyan had said, "Hilary couldn't have made it without sherpas carrying his bags." Everyone around had agreed. Tenzing was certainly first, or else he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours."
This is a moot point, although the rationality that it brings is worthy, of at least a place in one's memory.
Judge rates Tagore as over rated when Gyan mentions him, as the former asks Gyan as to which poets he reads. This again is a moot point, with me too, although my reading of Tagore is, as yet limited to Gora, and Selected Short stories. This is a point I didn't want to mention in the open at least till I read Gitanjalie - in both English and Sinhala to evaluate somewhat with my limited literary faculties, but now Kiran Desai has made me broach it, albeit through the use of her most flawed, and weak character.
