Equivocality

The Inheritance of Loss is magnificent. The writing is lovely, but what makes the book great is the fearlessness with which the author addresses the strange and difficult intermixing of rich and poor, white and brown and black, husband and wife, Hindu and Muslim, tribe versus tribe, not just in India but internationally, through the experience of foreign students and illegal immigrants. This book is fundamentally about the way people see each other through their differences, and like any truly good book it’s full of moments where you go, "yes, it’s like that." The difference here is that these moments make you cringe a little to see something ugly so revealed, both in others and yourself.

 

"And what is the purpose of your visit?"

"What should we say, what should we say?" they discussed in the line. "We’ll say a hubshi broke into the shop and killed our brother-in-law," and now we have to go the funeral."

"Don’t say that." An engineering student who was already studying at the University of North Carolina, here for the renewal of his visa, knew this would not sound right.

But he was shouted down. He was unpopular.

"Why not?"

"You are going too far. It’s a stereotype. They’ll suspect."

But they insisted. It was a fact known to all mankind. "It’s black men who do all of
this."

"Yes, yes," several others in the line agreed. "Yes, yes." Black
people, living like monkeys in the trees, not like us, so civilized.

They were, then, shocked to see the African-American lady behind the counter. (God, if the
Americans accepted them, surely they would welcome Indians with open arms? Won’t they be happy to see us!)

…

"No, we cannot give you a visa."

"Why ma’am, please ma’am, I have already bought the ticket ma’am…"

And those who waited for visas who had spacious homes, ease-filled lives, jeans, English,
driver-driven cars waiting outside to convey them back to shady streets, and cooks missing their naps to wait late with lunch (something light—cheese macaroni…), all this time they had been trying to separate themselves from the vast shabby crowd. By their manner, dress and accent, they tried to convey to the officials that they were a pre-selected, numerically restricted, perfect-for-foreign-travel group, skilled in the use of a knife and fork, no loud burping, no getting up on the toilet seat to squat as many of the village women were doing just at this moment never having seen the sight of such a toilet before, pouring water from on high to clean their bottoms and flooding the floor with bits of soggy shit.

 

And I must say that I have been in that embassy waiting line, and I have seen the two classes, and that toilet.

Another major theme of the book is identity. Many of the characters in the book are yearning for simpler times and societies that never existed, that only seemed to exist in the isolated and naively ignorant village society of less connected times. This is perhaps reflected most strongly in the experience of the immigrant in New York, forced to work together with illegals from all over the world:

 

Biju considered his previous fight with a Pakistani, the usual attack on the man’s religion that he’d grown up uttering: "Pigs, pigs, sons of pigs." Now here was Saeed Saeed [an African Muslim], and Biju’s admiration for the man confounded him. Fate worked this way. Biju was overcome by the desire to be his friend, because Saeed Saeed wasn’t drowning, he was bobbing the tides.

Saeed was kind and he was not a Paki. Therefore he was OK?

The cow was not an Indian cow; therefore it was not holy?

Therefore he liked Muslims and hated only Pakis?

Therefore he liked Saeed, but hated the general lot of Muslims?

Therefore he liked Muslims and Pakis and India should see it was all wrong and hand over Kashmir?

No, no, how could that be and—

This was but a small portion of the dilemma. He remembered what they said about black people at home.

Therefore he hated all black people but liked Saeed?

Therefore there was nothing wrong with black people and Saeed?

Or Mexicans, Chinese, Japanese, or anyone else…?

This habit of hate accompanied Biju, and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India.

From other kitchens, he was learning what the world thought of India. Presumably Saeed had been warned of Indians, but he didn’t seem wracked by contradictions; a generosity buoyed him and dangled him above such dilemmas.

 

Indian independence and internalized colonialism. Police corruption and a blind eye to crimes against women. The Gurkha uprising in Bengal and all the enthusiastic stupidity of young rebels convinced they can build a home by destroying it. The utter indifference of the West set against world’s ambivalent fascination with America. Feuds between families, the loneliness and isolation of propriety. The flood of illegal immigrants from Africa, India, Pakistan, China, a whole sub-city of persons with no existence and no rights… Most of the true stories in this book are not happy ones, but they need to be told, and they are told with both compassion and unsparing honesty.

I have thought often about how to explain the developing world, the third world, the poor world to someone in the West who has never been there. This book is a brilliant introduction. Not only is it soaked in the texture of small-town Indian life, not only are all of the petty stupidities and inherited hatreds of the world well represented, but the flip side, our own utter ignorance about what the majority of the world is like, is thoroughly exposed. On top of all that, the writing is beautiful. For all these reasons, I must heartily recommend the book.

This entry was posted on Saturday, February 23rd, 2008 at 1:14 am and is filed under Book Reports, Travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.