66 pages • 2 hours read
Kiran DesaiThe Inheritance of Loss
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2005A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 41-45Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 41 Summary
Biju attempts to call Kalimpong again, but the line has gone dead. A homeless man approaches him at the banks of the Hudson, spouting random trivia about the river, so Biju leaves. On the way to Gandhi Cafe, he considers his failures in America and wonders if he should return to India. Biju shares this with a Gandhi Cafe regular, a travel agent named Mr. Kakkar, who reminds Biju of India’s poor plumbing, heat, disease, and others’ constant requests for money. Biju insists, and Mr. Kakkar sells him an airline ticket for Calcutta. He warns Biju that he will work at an American company even in India, but with poorer quality of life.
Biju prepares for his journey by buying New York souvenirs and other luxuries to take home. Biju thinks of pleasant memories—playing around the village and watching cricket on television—but neglects negative memories of his corrupt school and deceased relatives.
Chapter 42 Summary
Gyan’s sister told the family of the fight between her brother and Sai. His grandmother scolds him for joining the GNLF and predicts he will be imprisoned if he continues. She forces him to stay home when the GNLF arrives to pick him up that day. She tells them he is sick with diarrhea, and they leave. They demand one male participant per household for the public burning of the Indo-Nepal Treaty the following day, and many give similar excuses of illness.
Gyan lies indolent inside the house. He feels relieved not to masquerade as a macho militant any longer and plans to make up with Sai. His guilt over betraying her returns, and, growing anxious, he paces his room. At Cho Oyu the judge tells the cook to be the household’s male representative at the treaty burning.
Chapter 43 Summary
It is July 27, 1986, the day of the treaty burning. The cook feels nervous about going to the rally but proceeds into town nonetheless. Thousands from surrounding regions arrive in Kalimpong and wait hours in the heat for the event to begin.
Rocks come flying from behind the post office and injure members of the crowd. The crowd throws rocks at the police in front of the police station, who throw them back at the rioters. The violence escalates between the crowd and the police, who eventually begin firing their weapons. Thirteen young men die as a result. The crowd turns on the police and murder them brutally, beheading and dismembering them. The police run for shelter inside the police station and to homes like Mon Ami, but they are turned away.
Chapter 44 Summary
Kalimpong exists in lockdown, with former neighbors no longer speaking to each other and each ethnic group treated with a unique strain of prejudice. Lola complains that the local shop that once sold her eggs now refuses to serve her, and Mrs. Thondup’s daughter Pem Pem will not acknowledge Lola in public. Mon Ami’s lawn is still filled with Nepali huts and a new shrine, preventing government interference. Their pear tree has been stripped, and their vegetable patch is no more.
The GNLF is burning government buildings, turning Kalimpong into a ghost town. Residents fear harassment by both police and insurgents. The cook is afraid, although he assures himself these things will pass. Sai goes to town to buy food in secret, but most of their food comes from the Cho Oyu garden.
The relatives of the alcoholic man accused of the gun robbery return to Cho Oyu. The cook turns them away as they beg for food. When they leave, they see Mutt and say she would be valuable to sell. A few days later, they sneak into the yard and stuff Mutt in a sack. They walk far away to their remote village and wonder if they should force her to breed puppies rather than sell her.
Chapter 45 Summary
Biju sits in a crowded, sweaty plane bound for Heathrow, followed by Frankfurt. He makes five more connections before stopping in Calcutta. Biju eats his meal and requests another, but the flight attendant says they’ve run out. Other travelers get drunk around him and call to the flight attendants.
Although Biju did not see most of New York’s famous sights during his time there, he has hope for the future. He plans to buy a taxi in Kalimpong with his savings and spend time with his father. He thinks of drinking with the cook and retelling the drunk men’s joke about two men parachuting from an air force plane.
Chapters 41-45 Analysis
These chapters contain some of the novel’s most pivotal moments, the violent outbreak chief among them. This historical event saw the GNLF burning the Indo-Nepal Treaty of 1950, a document that ensured peace between India and Nepal, free passage of citizens along the border, and other trade and armed conflict agreements. The boiling rage of the GNLF forces and the police who resist them explodes on this day, which Desai depicts with visceral detail:
“[T]he police began to chase the crowd; the stones came down; everyone was being hit, people, police; they jumped on one another, beating with sticks, bashing with rocks; began to slash with their sickles—a hand, a face, a nose, an ear” (303).
The cook, the avatar of Kalimpong’s pleasant village life, witnesses his home torn apart. He runs through the cast of townspeople and mourns that this routine has been forever shaken, the town newly “trapped in its own madness” (307). Lola and Noni, once protected in their sophisticated bubble, are now objects of prejudice and hosts to a growing Nepali village on their property. They suffer hostility and shame from the people they once belittled: “Little children lined up in rows to spit at Lola and Noni as they walked by” (308). The judge also loses his beloved dog, stolen by desperate locals.
Meanwhile, Biju makes his way toward the eye of the storm. He romanticizes Kalimpong as he anticipates his homecoming: “He remembered bathing in the river, feeling his body against the cool firm river muscle, and [...] gnawing on sugarcane” (296). This is a land he knows intimately, whereas New York remained so strange to him that he doesn’t know the Hudson, “the name of the river on whose bank he had lingered” (314). Biju’s anger, self-pity, and desperation have culminated in this return, flush with defiance and love for both his father and his home.
Gyan enjoys something of a homecoming himself. After his grandmother forbids him to participate with the GNLF, he “felt sweet peace settle on him, and though he pretended frustration, he was very relieved by this reprieve into childhood” (298). He chooses to be happy through cowardice rather than courageous through violence, but he knows one final act of bravery is required to atone for betraying Sai.
