The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss starts off breathtakingly. It has everything. The motley cast of characters includes a closeted priest, aging Anglophile twins, and pair of young lovers. The action takes place in two well-rendered settings – a Indian tiny village perched on the slope of a Himalayan mountains near the Nepali border, and the underbelly of New York City, a global village inhabited by illegal and semi-legal immigrants from around the world. The tangled plot covers love, politics, abandonment – even disasters on the Russian space station. From the blurb on the back through the first 300 pages, this book is completely engrossing. And then it ends.

But first things first. The book opens with the story of a young orphan growing up in the care of nuns. If this ensemble novel has a main character, it is her – Sai. Sai’s parents died in Russia years ago. When she is expelled from the convent school because she cannot pay, she is sent to live with her ancient grandfather, who even after 350 pages we will know only as “the judge.” The judge lives in a musty, decaying mansion, with only his cook (who we know only as “the cook”) and an Irish setter to keep him company.

Although admittedly the lovely young girl going to live with the creepy old relative thing has been done before, Desai’s imaginative and detail-heavy prose somehow keeps the opening sections from feeling formulaic. The other characters help with this as well. There is a pair of sisters who live together in the mountain village, talking to one another in fake English accents and hoarding marmalade for special occasions. There are young Nepali guerillas with a political agenda, brutal police officers, and Sai’s awkward science tutor, Gian. Sai and Gian inevitably fall in love, which is fine, but the real romance is between Gian and the town’s band of young revolutionaries, whose aims are vaguely socialist and hinge on creating a separate state for the ethnically Nepali population in the region. As Gian (who is very poor) falls under the spell of the Gorkhaland Army, he falls out of love with Sai (whose family is – or was – very rich). Through this chain of events, Desai explores some interesting territory about the effects of colonialism, the realities of class warfare, and what history might mean to two confused and lonely teenagers.

Meanwhile, another central character emerges. This one, Biju, the cook’s young son, is trying to make it in America. We meet a similarly eccentric cast of characters in Biju’s New York: devout Muslims who work side by side with devout Hindus in the restaurant kitchens of devout capitalists. His various encounters get Biju thinking about religion and philosophy. In one particularly memorable passage, a new friendship forces Biju to ask himself if he really hates all Muslims or all Pakistanis, or if it’s supposed to be only Pakistani Muslims, or both, or neither, and why that might be so. Desai handles difficult topics honestly and gracefully, and Biju’s aloneness in America contrasts starkly with the busy, interconnected lives of those he left behind in the village.

Then Biju comes back home; Gian and Sai have a major argument; the judge’s Irish setter is kidnapped. The book ends.

It’s not that every book needs a happy ending. The Inheritance of Loss was never going to end with all the characters entering promising love affairs and the political tension in the region cathartically resolved. An unhappy ending would have been fine, but the book ended with its major plot points totally unresolved. What happens between the Gorkhaland Army and the people of the village? Is Biju glad to be home? Does Gian ultimately choose Sai or the band of revolutionaries? Will the judge ever find his dog? The book simply drops off before these questions are answered, as if Desai had a page limit that she had fulfilled or she had simply gotten bored of her characters and their problems. If it was the latter, it’s a shame; I could have read on until the stories were over.