The Inheritance of Loss

by Kiran Desai

  ______

  It wasn’t just Harish-Harry. Confusion was rampant among the “haalf ‘n’ haf” c rowd, the Indian students coming in with American friends, one accent one side of the mouth, another the other side; muddling it up, wobbling then, downgrading sometimes all the way to Hindi to show one another: Who? No, no, it was not they pretending to be other than who and what they were. They weren’t the ones turning their back on the greatest culture the world has ever seen….

  And the romances—the Indian-White combination, in particular, was a special problem.

  The desis entered feeling very ill at ease and the waiters began to smirk and sneer, raising their eyebrows to show them what they thought.

  “Hot, medium, or mild?” they asked. “Hot,” the patrons said invariably, showing off, informing their date they were the unadulterated exotic product, and in the kitchen they laughed, “Ha ha,” then suddenly the unadulterated anger came out, “sala!”

  The evildoers bit into the vindaloo—

  And that vindaloo—it bit them back.

  Faces smarting, ears and eyes burning, tongues becoming numb, they whimpered for yogurt, explaining to the table, “That is what we do in India, we always eat yogurt for the balance….”

  The balance, you know….

  You know, you know—

  Hot cool, sweet sour, bitter pungent, the ancient wisdom of the Ayurveda that can grant a person complete poise….

  “Too hot?” Biju would ask, grinning.

  Weeping, “No, no.”

  There was no purity in this venture. And no pride. He had come home to no clarity of vision.

  ______

  Harish-Harry blamed his daughter for rattling his commitment. The girl was becoming American. Nose ring she found compatible with combat boots and clothes in camouflage print from the army-navy surplus.

  His wife said, “All this nonsense, what is this, give her two tight slaps, that’s what….”

  “Good you did like that,” he had said, but slaps had not worked. “You go, girl!” he said, trying to rise, instead, to the occasion of his daughter being American. “You GO, gurllll!!!” But that didn’t work either. “I didn’t ask to be born,” she said. “You had me for your own selfish reasons, wanted a servant, didn’t you? But in this country, Dad, nobody’s going to wipe your ass for free.”

  Not even bottom! Wipe your ass! Dad! Not even Papaji. No wipe your bottom, Papaji. Dad and ass. Harish-Harry got drunk in an episode that would become familiar and tedious; he sat at the cash register and wouldn’t go home, though the kitchen staff were anxiously waiting so they could get up on the tables and sleep wrapped in the tablecloths. “And they think we admire them!” He began to laugh. “Every time one enters my shop I smile”—he showed his skeleton grin—”’Hi, how ya doin,’ but all I want is to break their necks. I can’t, but maybe my son will, and that is my great hope. One day Jayant-Jay will smile and get his hands about their sons’ necks and he will choke them dead.”

  “See, Biju, see what this world is,” he said and began to weep with his arm on Biju’s shoulder.

  ______

  It was only the recollection of the money he was making that calmed him. Within this thought he found a perfectly reasonable reason for being here, a morality to agree on, a bridge over the split—and this single fact that didn’t seem a contradiction between nations he blazoned forth.

  “Another day another dollar, penny saved is penny earned, no pain no gain, business is business, gotta do what ya gotta do.” These axioms were a luxury unavailable to Biju, of course, but he repeated them anyway, enjoying the cheerful words and the moment of camaraderie.

  “Have to make a living, what can you do?” Biju would say.

  “You are right, Biju. What can I do? Here we are,” he ruminated, “for more opportunity. How can we help it?”

  He hoped for a big house, then he hoped for a bigger house even if he had to leave it unfurnished for a while, like his nemesis Mr. Shah who owned seven rooms, all empty except for TV, couch, and carpeting in white. Even the TV was a white TV for white symbolized success out of India for the community. “Hae hae, we will take our time with the furniture,” said Mr. Shah, “but house is there.” Photos of the exterior had been sent to all the relatives in Gujarat, a white car parked in front. A Lexus, that premier luxury vehicle. On top of it sat his wife looking self-satisfied. She had left India a meek bride, scrolled and spattered with henna, so much gold in her sari she set off every metal detector in the airport—and now here she was—white pantsuit, bobbed hair, vanity case, and capable of doing the macarena.

  Twenty-five

  They took Mutt to the Apollo Deaf Tailors to be measured for a winter coat that would be cut out of a blanket, since the days had passed into winter, and while it didn’t snow in Kalimpong, just turned dull, all around the snow line dipped, and the high mountains around town were brindled white. In the morning, they found frost in the runnels, frost on the crest, and frost in the crotch of the hills.

  Through cracks and holes in Cho Oyu, came a sterile smell of winter. The bathroom taps and switches threw off shocks. Sweaters and shawls bristled with aroused fibers, shedding lightning. “Ow ow,” Sai said. Her skin was a squamous pattern of drought. When she took off her clothes, dry skin fell like salt from a salt cellar and her hair, ridiculing gravity, rose in crackling radio antennae above her skull. When she smiled, her lips split and spilled blood.

  Vaselined shiny and supple for Christmas, she joined Father Booty and Uncle Potty at Mon Ami, where, in addition to the Vaseline smell, there was an odor of wet sheep—but it was only their damp sweaters. A thatch of tinsel on a potted fir glinted in the light of the fire that razzmatazzed and popped, the cold smarting beyond.

  Father Booty and Uncle Potty sang together:

  Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder?

  When nobody answered, they shouted all the louder—

  WHO THREW THE OVERALLS IN MRS. MURPHY’S CHOWDER??

  And they all joined in, drunk and wild.

  ______

  Oh, beautiful evening—

  Oh, beautiful soup in the copper Gyako pot, a moat of broth around the chimney of coals, mutton steam in their hair, rollicking shimmer of golden fat, dried mushrooms growing so slippery they’d slither down scalding before you could chomp upon their muscle. “What’s for PUDS?” Lola, when she said this in England, had been unsettled to find that the English didn’t understand…. Even Pixie had pretended to be bewildered….

  But here they comprehended perfectly, and Kesang lugged out a weighty pudding that united via brandy its fraternity of fruit and nut, and they made the pudding holy with a sanctifying crown of brandy flame.

  Mustafa climbed to his favorite place again, on Sai’s lap, turning first his face to the fire, then his behind, slowly softening, until his bottom began to dribble down the chair and he leaped up with a startled yowl, glaring at Sai as if she had been responsible for this indecency.

  For the occasion, the sisters had brought out their ornaments from England—various things that looked as if they might taste of mints—snowflakes, snowmen, icicles, stars. There were little trolls, and elf shoemakers (why were cobblers, trolls, and elves, Christmasy? Sai wondered) that were stored the rest of the year inside a Bata shoe box up in the attic along with the story of the English ghost in a flouncy nightie with whom they used to scare Sai when she first arrived:

  “What does she say?”

  “Hmm, I think she makes a whoo hoo like an owl, whistling low, whoo hooo, sweet and serious. And now and then she says, ‘Care for a drop of sh-e-rr-y, mye dee-a-r?’ In an unsteady, but highly cultivated voice.”

  And there were presents of knitted socks from the Tibetan refugee village, the wool still with bits of straw and burrs that provided authenticity and aroused extra sympathy for refugees even while it irritated the toes. There were amber and coral earrings, bottles of homemade apricot brandy made by Father Booty, books to write in with tr
anslucent sheets of rice paper, and ribbed bamboo spines made in Bong Busti by a tableful of chatty lady employees sharing the tasty things in their tiffins at lunch, who sometimes dropped a pickle… and sometimes the pages had a festive yellow splotch….

  ______

  More rum. Deeper into Lola’s intoxication, when the fire died low, she became serene, drew a pure memory from the depths:

  “In those old days, in the fifties and sixties,” she said, “it was still a long journey into Sikkim or Bhutan, for there were hardly any roads. We used to travel on horseback, carrying sacks of peas for the ponies, maps, hip flasks of whiskey. In the rainy season, leeches would free-fall from the trees onto us, timing precisely the perfect acrobat moment. We would wash in saltwater to keep them off, salt our shoes and socks, even our hair. The storms would wash the salt off and we’d have to stop and salt ourselves again. The forests at that time were fierce and enormous—if you were told a magical beast lived there, you’d believe it. We’d emerge to the tops of mountains where monasteries limpet to the sides of rock, surrounded by chortens and prayer flags, the white facades catching the light of the sunset, all straw gold, the mountains rugged lines of indigo. We’d stand and rest until the leeches began working into our socks. Buddhism was ancient here, more ancient than it was anywhere else, and we went to a monastery that had been built, they said, when a flying lama had flown from one mountaintop to another, from Menak Hill to Enchey, and another that had been built when a rainbow connected Kanchenjunga to the crest of the hill. Often the gompas were deserted for the monks were also farmers; they were away at their fields and gathered only a few times a year for pujas and all you could hear was the wind in the bamboo. Clouds came through the doors and mingled with paintings of clouds. The interiors were dark, smoke-stained, and we’d try to make out the murals by the light of butter lamps….

  “It took two weeks of rough trekking to get to Thimpu. On the way, through the jungle, we would stay in those shiplike fortresses called dzongs, built without a single nail. We’d send a man ahead with news of our arrival, and they’d send along a gift to welcome us at some midpoint. A hundred years ago it would have been Tibetan tea, saffron rice, silk robes from China lined with the fleece of unborn lambs, that kind of thing; by then, for us, it would be a picnic hamper of ham sandwiches and Gymkhana beer. The dzongs were completely self-contained, with their own armies, peasants, aristocrats, and prisoners in the dungeons—murderers and men caught fishing with dynamite all thrown in together. When they needed a new cook or gardener, they put down a rope and pulled a man out. We’d arrive to find, in lantern-lit halls, cheese cauliflower and pigs in blankets. This one man, in for violent murder, had such a hand for pastry—Whatever it takes, he had it. The best gooseberry tart I’ve ever tasted.”

  “And the baths,” Father Booty joined in, “remember the baths? Once, when I was on a dairy outreach program, I stayed with the mother of the king, sister of Jigme Dorji, the Bhutanese agent and ruler of the province of Ha, who lived next to you, Sai, at Tashiding—he became so powerful that the king’s assassins killed him even though he was brother of the queen. The baths in their dzong were made of hollowed-out tree trunks, a carved slot underneath for heated rocks to keep the water steaming, and as you soaked, the servants came in and out to replace the hot stones and give you a scrub. And if we were camping, they would dig a pit by the river, fill it with water, lower hot stones into it; thus you splashed about with all the Himalayan snows around and forests of rhododendrons.

  “Years later, when I returned to Bhutan, the queen insisted I visit the bathroom. ‘But I don’t need to go.’

  “‘No, but you must.’

  ‘“But I don’t NEED to go.’

  ‘“Oh, but you MUST.’

  “So I went, and the bathrooms had been redone, all modern piping, pink tiles, pink showers, and pink flush loos.

  “When I came out again, the queen was waiting, pink as the bathroom with pride, ‘See how nice it is? Did you SEE?’

  “Why don’t we all go again,” said Noni. “Let’s plan a trip. Why not?”

  ______

  Sai got into bed that night in her new socks, the same three-layered design that sherpas used in mountaineering expeditions, that Tenzing had worn to climb Everest.

  Sai and Gyan had recently made an excursion to see these socks of Tenzing, spread-eagled in the Darjeeling museum adjoining his memorial, and they had taken a good look at them. They had also studied his hat, ice pick, rucksack, samples of dehydrated foods that he might have taken along, Horlicks, torches, and samples of moths and bats of the high Himalayas.

  “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 he was made to wait with the bags so Hilary could take the first step on behalf of that colonial enterprise of sticking your flag on what was not yours.

  Sai had wondered, Should humans conquer the mountain or should they wish for the mountain to possess them? Sherpas went up and down, ten times, fifteen times in some cases, without glory, without claim of ownership, and there were those who said it was sacred and shouldn’t be sullied at all.

  Twenty-six

  It was after the new year when Gyan happened to be buying rice in the market that he heard people shouting as his rice was being weighed. When he emerged from the shop, he was gathered up by a procession coming panting up Mintri Road led by young men holding their kukris aloft and shouting, “Jai Gorkha.” In the mess of faces he saw college friends whom he’d ignored since he started his romance with Sai. Padam, Jungi, Dawa, Dilip.

  “Chhang, Bhang, Owl, Donkey,” he called his friends by their nicknames—

  ______

  They were shouting, “Victory to the Gorkha Liberation Army,” and didn’t hear him. On the strength of those pushing behind, and with the momentum of those who went before, they melded into a single being. Without any effort at all, Gyan found himself sliding along the street of Marwari merchants sitting cross-legged on white mattress platforms. They flowed by the antique shops with the thangkhas that grew more antique with each blast of exhaust from passing traffic; past the Newari silversmiths; a Parsi homeopathic doctor; the deaf tailors who were all looking shocked, feeling the vibrations of what was being said but unable to make sense of it. A mad lady with tin cans hanging from her ears and dressed in tailor scraps, who had been roasting a dead bird on some coals by the side of the road, waved to the procession like a queen.

  As he floated through the market, Gyan had a feeling of history being wrought, its wheels churning under him, for the men were behaving as if they were being featured in a documentary of war, and Gyan could not help but look on the scene already from the angle of nostalgia, the position of a revolutionary. But then he was pulled out of the feeling, by the ancient and usual scene, the worried shopkeepers watching from their monsoon-stained grottos. Then he shouted along with the crowd, and the very mingling of his voice with largeness and lustiness seemed to create a relevancy, an affirmation he’d never felt before, and he was pulled back into the making of history.

  Then, looking at the hills, he fell out of the experience again. How can the ordinary be changed?

  Were these men entirely committed to the importance of the procession or was there a disconnected quality to what they did? Were they taking their cues from old protest stories or from the hope of telling a new story? Did their hearts rise and fall to something true? Once they shouted, marched, was the feeling authentic? Did they see themselves from a perspective beyond this moment, these unleashed Bruce Lee fans in their American T-shirts made-in-China-coming-in-via-Kathmandu?

  He thought of how often he wished he might line up at the American embassy or the British, and leave. “Listen Momo,” he had said to a delighted Sai, “let’s go to Australia.” Fly away, bye-bye, ta-ta. Free from history. Free from family demands and the built-up debt of centuries. The patriotism was false, he sudd
enly felt as he marched; it was surely just frustration—the leaders harnessing the natural irritations and disdain of adolescence for cynical ends; for their own hope in attaining the same power as government officials held now, the same ability to award local businessmen deals in exchange for bribes, for the ability to give jobs to their relatives, places to their children in schools, cooking gas connections….

  But the men were shouting, and he saw from their faces that they didn’t have his cynicism. They meant what they were saying; they felt a lack of justice. They moved past the godowns dating from when Kalimpong was the center of the wool trade, past the Snow Lion travel agency, the STD telephone booth, Ferrazzini’s Pioneer in Fast Food, the two Tibetan sisters at the Warm Heart Shawl Shop; past the comics lending library and the broken umbrellas hanging oddly like injured birds around the man who mended them. They came to a stop outside the police station, where the policemen who could usually be found gossiping outside had vanished indoors and locked the door.

  Gyan remembered the stirring stories of when citizens had risen up in their millions and demanded that the British leave. There was the nobility of it, the daring of it, the glorious fire of it—”India for Indians. No taxation without representation. No help for the wars. Not a man, not a rupee. British Raj Murdabad!” If a nation had such a climax in its history, its heart, would it not hunger for it again?

  ______

  A man clambered up on the bench:

  “In 1947, brothers and sisters, the British left granting India her freedom, granting the Muslims Pakistan, granting special provisions for the scheduled castes and tribes, leaving everything taken care of, brothers and sisters––––