Book review: The Inheritance of Loss

I am not much of a reader and can quite easily lose patience with books that are slow and uninteresting to me, which in itself explains why I have not done a single book review on this blog thus far. It’s pretty much an aberration of the genes, I believe because my parents and even grandparents are voracious readers and my mom and grandmom are known to have devoured books of varied genres: right from business magazines to reader’s digests to novels to religious texts to comics. Having said that, surprisingly, I have brought myself to read some of the most insipid pieces of fiction (Last Man Standing David Baldacci, Acceptable Risk Robin Cook) and my mom was amazed that I managed to reach the last pages of these books when she herself used them as a soporific for her afternoon siesta. But that is beside the point. I did manage a few good reads apart from the absolutely racy and fantastically unreal pieces of pulp fiction by the likes of Jeffrey Archer and Sidney Sheldon.

I had never read a Man Booker winner so far and didn’t have any preconceived expectations from Kiran Desai’s Inheritance of Loss. I found her style reminding me of a rare concoction of the styles of R.K. Narayan and Ruskin Bond. Although the narrative is set in the late 1980s there is contemporariness in the context: a senile old grandpa with a colonial hangover, typical old world aunties with their silly British accents, a convent bred teenager coming to terms with a world outside her own, a gutless Nepali who on one hand wishes to join his brethren and claim what is rightfully theirs and on the other hand lacks the courage to let go off his puppy love, an illegal immigrant in the US who leads a more miserable and wretched life than his poor father in India would have ever seen in his entire lifetime and a paradise called Kalimpong torn in pettiness of war.

The narrative is a bit slow especially when it veers away to Jemubhai Patel’s ancestry and Gyan’s family tree. However, the descriptions are so vivid that you can almost feel the picture grow in front of your eyes as you read it. The metaphors are so accurate that you jump at the comparisons and say “Didn’t I think of that too!”
Sample this excerpt:

“Unsuspecting of the approaching news, Lola was in her garden picking caterpillars off the English Broccoli. The caterpillars were mottled green and white with fake blue eyes, ridiculous fat feet, a tail and an elephant nose. Magnificent creatures, she thought, studying one closely, but then she threw it to a waiting bird that pecked and a green stuffing squiggled out of the caterpillar like toothpaste from a punctured tube.”
Déjà vu ! How many times would DJ have squished a caterpillar under his boots and exclaimed “Cibaca!” as a kid.

Kiran describes human nature so beautifully. Look at this gem:

"Cowardice needed its facade, its reasoning, like anything else if it was to be his life's priniciple. Contentment was no easy matter. One had to situate it cannily, camoulfage it, pretend it was something else."

The language is peppered with so many figures of speech that it is literally a hunting ground for English teachers (I can almost imagine Mrs. Aga jump at this book). Where words don’t suffice to paint the picture, sounds do, which seemed very Ruskin Bondesque. Despite the floweriness in the English, the liberal use of Hindi words keeps the feel very Indian. You can see flashes of R.K. Narayan in the heart wrenching, yet funny depiction of the characters: each one pretentious and yet so painfully human that you don’t whether to laugh or to cry because you see a reflection of your own mind in their foibles and contradictions: Gyan, who is so childlike in his need for love and doesn’t want to stand up to his calling; Biju, who despises the Americans and yet yearns to settle in America; the judge Jemubhai Patel, who cannot see beyond his microcosm of his dog Mutt and him, even as a war is tearing the landscape; Sai, who turns away at the abject poverty of her lover; Noni and Lola who fall off their high English horses when they see their opulent lifestyle shredded down to the bare minimal needs of survival during war. You sometimes wish these characters would rise above their frailties and become the heroes about whom books are written. But alas! The book is not about overnight saints, gun-totting heroes of war or a rags-to-riches success of illegal immigrants in the US. Like the title suggests, it is about loss and losers: loss of peace in paradise, loss of dignity, loss of direction, loss of love; yet it is not recounted like an elegy or a rant. It just leaves you with a medley of feelings.

I am not the one to judge whether the contents and context are universally appealing and I am not even aware if that is a criterion for a Booker. Even so, as an Indian reader, I would think it comes the closest to portraying the dichotomous state of the present Indian society and the Indian minds. It’s not a book meant to be read at a super fast pace in a superficial manner because it doesn’t have any dramatic turns or unexpected climax, it is slow paced like real life. It is meant to be savored and mulled over just like rolling your tongue on a mint and letting the flavor pervade all the taste buds.

What Women Want

Warning: This post has nothing to do with the movie of the same title. Nor does it provide a step by step analysis peering into a woman’s mind. Disappointing, I know. Sorry guys! Also feminist brigades can do well to keep off.

The idea of egalitarianism in our society is quite befuddling. I have often wondered, when we talk about women’s equality or equality of the castes, whether we actually mean equality in the absolute sense of the term or we actually provide them with crutches to “help” them feel equal. I see the latter being the order of the day and there is a supercilious air with which this equality is bestowed upon the “lesser” mortals subtly conveying that “you can never become equal without these crutches”.

What do you feel when you see seats in a public transport bus that say “Only for Ladies”? Does it mean “Ladies, we have tormented you for ages and now as a token of atonement we offer you reserved seats”? Does it mean “Women, you still are like weak dandelions that will get blown away by the fierce wind of a man’s world. So sit down and don’t hurt yourself”? Does it point out, “Females, the harsh reality is that we men are ill-mannered and cannot control the movements of our hands and our eyes. Hence in view of your own safety we suggest you sit down separately.”? I have come across seats reserved for the elderly and disabled persons in the buses in UK and even a special area for buggies but never seats reserved for women. So is this what we are really looked forward to as equity in our country?

The other day as I was taking the public transport to office, I did not find a seat while some blokes were occupying the seats meant for ladies. A lady, who herself was seated, started arguing with the men seated in the reserved section and pointed out to me as a victim of their incivility. She wanted me to join her Mahila Mukti Morcha Andolan and claim what was lawfully mine. I simply stood spectator. There was another incident where a friend of mine demanded that her colleague should be chivalrous enough to offer her his seat and reproached him for his thoughtlessness. It goes for all the acts of chivalry and many women outright demand it: we love to dump our heavy shopping bags on the men while our hands remain free to twirl our locks and adjust our makeup, we expect them to open the Bulund Darwazas for us while we make our regal entry like Queen Victorias (we could do with some applause as well), we demand that they draw our chairs out so we can place our fragile bottoms on those exquisite cushions at fluffy sounding restaurants and yet we’d like ourselves and the men around us to believe that we are superwomen! I am rather amused at the dichotomous stand that we women take on what we believe is equality and I surmise many men are quite bemused too. I am not too surprised that we do not get what we really need because we are not clear about it ourselves! We expect reservations right from seats in the buses, to engineering colleges to parliaments and yet we want to be judged on level playing field and be awarded promotions and raises at par with men. I do not have problems with engineering and medical colleges solely for women or the fact that women’s tennis is played as best of three instead of best of five. These cases accept that there are areas where women have niche skills even though nature has not endowed them with the physical prowess of men.

Breaking the proverbial glass ceiling has become an obsession for women’s lib brigades. Why don’t they accept that some women out of their own choice would like to quit their high profile careers to devote time for the family? Why are women, who choose to stay at home and become “mere” housewives, looked upon with derision for having “wasted their qualifications and professional degrees”? Isn’t liberation all about volition even if you choose the same path your grandma was forced to take? I think the most memorable scene in the movie Mona Lisa Smile is when Katherine Watson (Julia Roberts), a feminist arts professor at Wellesley women’s college, is shocked by her best student’s decision to settle into family life. Katherine did not realize that in her ambitious plans for her bright student she was treading on the latter’s right to choose family over career. Although the movie was very pro-feminist, it did not show either the career woman or the housewife as a winner or a loser. Instead it just questioned their ideologies. Perhaps it is time women just sat back and asked themselves what they really want rather than live life in one big blur of time and fighting the wrong battles in their lives.