Unlikely Aristotle

Book of the Week: The Inheritance of Loss by Kiran Desai

It’s been an usually long amount of time since my last post, and if there was someone out there in the world waiting for my hater comments on Moby Dick or lovely woman of the subcontinent (I’m just jealous), then I am so sorry to have kept you waiting.

Speaking of lovely Indian women…*drumroll* Kiran Desai is stunning in more ways than one.

I completed her book about a week ago, and I could have reviewed the other book that I had read since then, but I wanted to make a point. The point that I wanted to make was that, I didn’t have to review it as soon as I put that book down. The characters and the imagery of the Nepalese region of India, where this story takes place, is still vivid in my mind.

The main story surrounds a handful of characters, but mainly the three living in Cho Oyu, a romantic, dilapidated mansion on top of a hill in the village of Kalimpong. The three are a reclusive former judge; his wanderlust-ful granddaughter Sai, and their poor cook.

When I realized that this book was going to take place in as picturesque and breathtaking an area as the Nepalese regions of India, I was weary at first, and then pleasantly surprised. Something I have grown tired of (in all honesty, and this is my own personal opinion, remember!) is authors who – naturally – write about their own nation, but describe it in such a decadent and dramatic way that I’m just like, Ok I get it, you love your freaking country, can we get to the story?

Again, you might disagree with me here, but I did get a hint of this with Salman Rushdie’s Midnight Children (although still a fantastic read) and Jung Chang’s Wild Swans (totally excusable in her case, though, given her larger than life relationship with her country). Well, I guess this tends to be an issue when a central theme of the book is the relationship (or lack of one) between the characters and their nation. Indian novelists, I feel, have in time mastered the art of depicting this relationship, one of which have been exemplified in this great book.

The book goes back and forth, across different times, and different continents, following Sai’s journey from her boarding school to finally reconnecting with her grandfather, following the journey of the son of the poor cook, Biju, who travels to America illegally, and his story is the story of the millions of immigrants who have left their homes in search for a better life, and all the fascinating contradictions that entail. All these stories are set against the backdrop of a growing tension with the Gorkha people, the Nepalese in India who have long since felt they were treated as second-class citizens.

What I really love about this story is how each character’s personal stories are told so effectively. At times it seems like a miracle that Desai didn’t devote 300-odd pages to each character’s story, rather than to such a colorful cast. In addition to this, while each character’s tale remained deeply personal, after reflection, I could understand that each one was a sort of ambassador of their kind, representing a different class of disillusionment within India: one is the young Indian boy who is weaned on colonialist Britain, a product of a very confused time, trains himself perpetually to shed his Indian roots and become the ideal: as close to a civilized Englishman as he can be. He succeeds beyond anyone’s wildest dreams, overcoming religion, caste, language, everything in order to ‘raise himself up’ above the rest. His disillusionment with the colonial system and with the way his whole life has turned out appears to be the story of millions, just as much as Biju the immigrants’ story.

Despite all the depictions of the harsh realities of their lives, the story is consistently humorous, touching, sensitive, and very tasteful. I love most of all the fact that it had not implied that immigration to America or England as being the ultimate dream that anyone could possibly ask for. In fact, to me it seemed quite the opposite, that she was disillusioned with the way in which many people yearned for the West.

I give this book two thumbs up! It was an entertaining, educating, touching book that left me thinking, and gave me the mixture of hope, fear, anger, and joy that any masterful author is capable of doing.

On contradiction

The universe thrives in its duality, and yet at the same time, many pantheists believe in the oneness of the universe, seeing God in everything. Contradiction? How can it be a oneness if it is many things? Because, to use a very poor analogy, if everything in a room is made of plastic, it is all plastic, even though it comes in different forms. This belief in singularity of the universe is also, in my convoluted mind, an extension of the dual nature of the universe. Because there is the infinite and there is the absolute zero. There is light and there is the absence of it (darkness is just a state of the absence of light). There is life and there is death. Chaos and order. Man and woman. Young and old. Earth and air. Air and water. Water and fire. Rich and poor.

I’m not surprised at all that many religions and old cultures have been enamored by the concept of opposites, of balance and of duality. There’s the inescapable symmetry that inspires poetry and deep thinking, there’s the sudden innately human (or should I say animal) urge to achieve that symmetry, and maintain it, that perfect, perpetual yin and yang. Of the religions I respect the most, I always look at their take on balance. It’s a true indication of how reasonable and ‘good’ this religion is (good being my completely subjective opinion). Yoga, derived from a Sanskrit (ancient Indian language) word, meaning ‘to unite’, evokes the balance between the body, the mind and the soul, as the practice places an emphasis on all of them.

Although I’ve mentioned that this duality inspires the poet in many, I find myself thinking that this is the natural state of the universe, that the only poetic thing about it is the way it sounds or looks. War and Peace, etc. There is actually nothing poetic in what it is. However, true poetry for me has always been irony, something I always look for, and it always comes up in spades everywhere I turn, you can’t help but find it. In this era that we live in, if you don’t learn to appreciate irony, you’ll probably end up a very bitter person.

Turn on the TV. I can bet you all the money in my bank account (you won’t be getting much, though), that on one channel you will see images of people dying. Or dead. This will either be the news or it will be some thrilling new forensics show. Change the channel, or wait till you get to the commercials. You will now see an advertisement for L’Oreal or Cliniques or whatever’s new ReGeneVive Eye Rejuvenation Serum (or some such handle) or Wrinkle Smoother or Collagen Plumper.

There’s a whole book on irony in those two clips right there. First of all, there’s the news, lamenting the inevitable deaths of hundreds (you lose track after a while) of souls who have lived and died to serve as tools for the powers that be, helping shift power from one greedy hand to another faster than a hot potato. These deaths exhibit speed: the speed in which they occur and that with which they are forgotten. People will click their tongues, shake their heads, shrug their shoulders, maybe someone might shed a tear. Then, there’s the ads. While other condemned hurtle off with violent speed towards their deaths, Andie McDowell and Eva Longoria prance off wrinkle-free towards hers, because they’re worth it. As though the latest skincare product will somehow erase, or even delay for one instant, the only certainty that exists in life; that it will end.

Then there’s the irony of choice. Capitalist-pushers enjoy parroting the mantra that in such a country you have choices in your life that other economic systems just don’t contain. But in a recent discussion about everybody’s sudden obligation to buy HD-compatible TV’s to fit in with the new satellite and cable requirements, I wonder what choice we are really being given. Sure, I mean you can choose between a Panasonic or a Sony HD, both exceedingly pricy, but you can no longer choose between an HD and the cheaper regular one. So while we are yet again enthralled by the choices we are given, we fail to notice the choices that are being denied us. Smoke and mirrors, all of it.

I always check myself to make sure I never end up sounding or becoming some kind of cracked conspiracy theorist. But I refuse to believe that we live in a world where the benevolent dictators that surround us are giving us any real and viable choice in the matter and quality of our lives. All you need to do is open up a statute books and see how your rights are being raped so that you can get the privileges you lust for.

I also usually check myself to make sure I never write in the second person, but I’ll make this one time an exception. Because you’re worth it.