Dec 06, 2007 02:13 PM
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Kiran Desai’s novel is unique in the braveness of its sheer scope and the simpleness of its telling. Set in Kalimpong in the time of the gurkha uprising in West Bengal, it is peopled with characters whose lives are never so poetic that they can’t be viewed with humour.
There is Sai the orphan teenager who is “convent educated”.
The system might be obsessed with purity, but it excelled in defining the flavour of sin……….this underneath and on top a flat creed : cake was better than laddoos, fork spoon knife better than hands, sipping the blood of Christ and consuming a wafer of his body was more civilized than garlanding a phallic symbol with marigolds. English was better than hindi.(As a convent bound hostelite during my schooling, I feel this is the most succinct and accurate summation of life in a convent boarding.)
She is then left with her grandfather, Jemubhai Patel, a retired judge from the British era, educated in London, and loyal like a well-trained dog to the memory of the Raj that succeeded in leaving him with a distaste for everything Indian and therefore inferior – including, though he does not know this, himself.
The recommended number of Indians in the ICS was 50 percent and the quota wasn’t even close to being filled. Space at the top, space at the top. There certainly was no space at the bottom.
In his once-grand house called Cho Oyu there also lives the cook, a superstitious, illiterate man who has spent his life serving the judge, conscious and accepting of his lowly position in society and only ambitious for his son who has managed to go to America.
? The cook had been disappointed to be working for Jemubhai. A severe comedown he thought from his father, who had served white men only.
The respect on the policemen’s faces collapsed instantly when they arrived at the cook’s hut buried under a ferocious tangle of nightshade. Here they felt comfortable unleashing their scorn, and they overturned his narrow bed, left his few belongings in a heap. It pained Sai to see how little he had : a few clothes hung over a string, a single razor blade and a sliver of brown soap……..”
Then there is Biju, the cooks son who is working illegally in various restaurants in America.
Biju had started his second year in America at Pinocchio’s Italian restaurant, stirring vats of spluttering Bolognese, as over a speaker an opera singer sang of love and murder, revenge and heartbreak. “He smells”, said the owner’s wife. “I think Iam allergic to his hair oil.” She had hoped for men from the poorer parts of Europe – Bulgarians perhaps or Czechoslovakians. At least they might have something in common with them like religion and skin colour……..”
Besides these principal characters, there are a host of other personalities from Kalimpong and from among Biju’s acquaintances who are, to use the cliché, brought to life by Desai.Sai"s love interest is Gyan - a Nepali whose youth implies that he must rebel and be a part of the anti-establishment.
“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 was made to wait with the bags so that Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.
There are the sisters Lola and Noni - a widow and a spinster – Bengalis, who see themselves as the superior, cultured, and cosmopolitan denizens of a suitably pretty place that they have chosen to spend the rest of their lives in. Then there’s Father Booty and Uncle Potty a Swiss Priest and a khaandaani raeez.
“Where is your bum?” said Uncle Potty to Father Booty as he got into the jeep. He studied his friend severely. A bout of flu had rendered Father Booty so thin his clothes seemed to be hanging on a concavity. “Your bum has gone!”
The book moves across locations and periods in time while following the lives of its characters and comments on a changing/changed world. Sai’s inheritance of loss from her grandfather, one of the most tragic figures I have come across, is a personal one. Yet it captures the whole world of post-colonial reality. The author takes a peaceful look at life and all its turbulence with an observant eye – and even the deepest sadness is viewed with a gentle humour that elevates the pathos to clear-eyed acceptance without diminishing its profundity. The story seemingly ends on a note of loss for each of its characters, and yet there is hope – only it is not for bettering the present; but of having been left, still, with the things that really matter.
Like Jude Law in The Holiday, I am a weeper. Lump-in-the-throat-moments frequent my reading and film-watching. Yet I never felt that tear-jerking moment with this book. It left me wiser and none the sadder. Like my friend said after reading this book : I never knew such profound sadness could be expressed with such humour. And this astonishing genius is the biggest reason for recommending this book.
