The Inheritance of Loss

The judge is a proud man prone to extreme isolation. The promising son of a peasant family, he gains passage to Cambridge for his education, and a rich man in the community rewards him with marriage to his prettiest daughter. England withers the judge’s sense of self, however, as he internalizes the racism facing him daily. He powders his skin to make it paler, rarely speaks to avoid exposing his Indian accent, and spends many hours alone with his studies. He retreats “into a solitude that grew in weight day by day,” and which “became a habit, the habit became the man, and it crushed him into a shadow” (45). A life of constant humiliation in England renders the judge utterly averse to shame of all kinds.

The judge returns to India as a stranger without a true homeland. Judging cases nurtures his pride in being Western: “He had been recruited to bring his countrymen into the modern age, but he could only make it himself by cutting them off entirely, or they would show up reproachful, pointing out to him the lie he had become” (337). He resents his wife Nimi’s Indian ways, and his rage becomes murderous. No one escapes from his quick temper, including the cook, whom the judge spitefully forces to live in abject poverty. The judge’s only joy in life is Mutt, a setter he gives a multitude of affectionate nicknames. When Sai arrives at Cho Oyu, the judge hopes to atone for the sins of his past, especially abandoning his family, but in his final moments he beats the cook for failing to save Mutt from thieves.

The elderly cook of Cho Oyu exemplifies the life of India’s lower classes. Years of constant service have rendered his body crooked and his spirit diminished. Without social mobility or the comfort of his late wife, the cook’s only hope resides in his son Biju. He lives vicariously through Biju’s letters from America, where the cook hopes to one day savor modern luxuries. While his son is away, he dotes on “Saibaby” and prepares meals for her and the judge, who treats him with disrespect and low pay. The cook also makes and sells his own bootleg liquor, or chhang, to pad his income and indulge his love of drink. A loquacious man, the cook spins tall tales and brags about his son. He mutters his discontent in the judge’s house: “My bones ache so badly, my joints hurt—I may as well be dead” (3).

His shame grows more pronounced by the end of the novel, when he begs the judge to beat him to death. “‘I’m a bad man,’ cried the cook, ‘I’m a bad man, beat me, sahib, punish me’” (351). Desai illuminates the generational source of the cook’s sorrow in the novel’s denouement, as Biju makes his way back home to his father:

“This way of leaving your family for work had condemned them over several generations to have their hearts always in other places, their minds thinking about people elsewhere; they could never be in a single existence at one time” (342).

Biju, the cook’s son, works a long series of restaurant jobs as an undocumented immigrant in New York City. He came to the city at his father’s urging only to endure enormous anxiety and hardship rather than comfort and prosperity. An inexperienced young man just entering adulthood, Biju knew nothing of the first world, its hostility to his race and nationality, or nattering thoughts of “[t]he green card, the green card—” (90). He works so hard and so long that he feels his identity wasting away:

“Year by year, his life wasn’t amounting to anything at all; in a space that should have included family, friends, he was the only one displacing the air. And yet, another part of him had expanded: his self-consciousness, his self-pity” (293).

When he serves steak to Indian patrons at a fine-dining establishment, his former sense of purity rises up in contrast to their lapsed cultural values. Biju thinks, “You had to live according to something. You had to find your dignity” (151). Biju, reclaiming his identity, determines to work in a restaurant that doesn’t serve beef. The abuses to his body, income, and quality of life continue, however, until Biju sees a return to India as his only escape.

Gyan is Sai’s physics tutor, “a quiet student of accounting” (79) and the hope of his poor Nepali family. His youthful inexperience and passion first manifest as love for Sai, then hatred for the oppression of his people. He joins the Gorkha National Liberation Front after a fit of indecision, when he “finally submitted to the compelling pull of history” (176). His conviction wanes as the violence grows, and his double-mindedness affects his romance with Sai as well. He’s enraged by her Western affectations. He says, “You are like slaves, that’s what you are, running after the West, embarrassing yourself. It’s because of people like you we never get anywhere” (179). Gyan comes from a long line of men also treated like slaves, bound to serve in the English army at the cost of their lives. His generational resentment extends to his father and to himself, and he aches to exert his adult influence upon the world, even if it means civic defiance and betraying his beloved.

Noni (or Nonita) and her sister Lola live in an anglicized enclave of Kalimpong. Noni tutors Sai after she moves from the convent to Cho Oyu. A spinster, Noni sees herself in Sai’s reserved demeanor, which she believes cost her the romance she always craved as a younger woman. She regrets that “[l]ife had passed her by,” because in “those days things had to happen fast for a girl, or they didn’t happen at all” (77). When the GNLF rises up, Noni takes a compassionate view of the Nepalis’ plight, which contrasts with her sister’s alarmism and mistrust.