Postcolonial dilemmas in Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss

The paper will try to analyze Kiran Desai’s Booker winning novel The Inheritance of Loss as story dealing primarily about the problems of migration faced by her characters, their tensions and dilemmas. One of the major concerns of diasporic literature is the problem of exile, displacement and the resulting consequences. Uprooting from one’s own home land is an agonizing process that brings numerous material and emotional traumas in the process of re-rooting in an alien land. The characters are often victims of circumstances and by the time they realize the problems, they are exhausted, miserable and frustrated. Even when they come back after their traumatic experiences, like the Judge in the novel, they often develop a sense of distrust and anger. They are in a state of confusion from which they find it difficult to come out. The paper will focus on the experiences of some of the characters in the novel – Jemubhai Patel, the Judge, and Biju, the son of Judge’s cook who is the central character of the novel. The book seems to suggest that true happiness does not lie in material wealth or comforts, but in one’s own dignity, identity and sense of belonging. In the novel, the characters especially Biju has to undergo number of traumatic experiences that brought a lot of material loss, but he has a spiritual gain- the realization of what brings true joy in life.


INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ONLINE OF HUMANITIES (IJOHMN) ISSN: 2395 -5155 Volume III Issue V October 2017
it opens different windows of possibility to have new knowledge. This diasporic experience can be the source of creativity and can give birth to dignified feelings. The distance between abroad and the mother land may act as a stimulator that makes migrants nostalgic and at the same time sensitive to the respective homeland.

The Epigraph
Jorge Luis Borges' poem "Boast of Quietness" is used an epigraph for the novel and it acts as an ode of powerlessness of the poor and those treated inhumanely. It speaks of those who are going back and forth between cultures and homeland as characters in the novel, like the Judge (India and England) and like the cook's son Biju to America and then back to India. There are many Indians who seek a better life abroad and the poem wonders if they ever arrive at whatever destination they think they seek. The longing for another culture other than their own makes them feel alienated and displaced. In Borges' poem, boasting and quietness are oxymoron and the poet creates images that are richly layered with meanings. : "My name is someone and anyone I walk slowly, like one who comes from so far away he doesn't expect to arrive. ("Boast of Quietness") Borges' poem deals with the universality and timelessness of human condition whereas The Inheritance of Loss focuses more on specific people living with specific historic and cultural backgrounds.

Who am I? Where do I belong?
All the characters in Inheritance of Loss suffer from a sense loss and ambivalence that eventually leads them to question their identity. Jemubhai Patel, the former judge, is an embittered person and he often lives in the past. In a flashback, we learn that when he was a young man, he was sent to Cambridge by his family to study law. But, in England, he was ridiculed for his accent.
Young English girls held their nose as he passed insisting he reeked of curry-this rejection fuelled in his soul, a shame and dislike for his heritage, his culture and the color of his skin. "He

INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL ONLINE OF HUMANITIES (IJOHMN) ISSN: 2395 -5155 Volume III Issue V October 2017
Salman Rushdie comments on how working in new Englishes can be a therapeutic effect of resistance, remaking a 'colonial language to reflect the postcolonial experience. In his famous essay "Imaginary Homelands", he explains that far from being something that can simply be ignored or disposed of, the English language is the place where writers can and must work out the problems that confront emerging recently independent colonies: "One of the changes (in the location of Anglophone writers of Indian descent) has to do with attitudes towards the use of English. Many have referred to the argument about the appropriateness towards the use of English. Many have referred to the argument about the appropriateness of this language to Indian stories. And I hope all of us share the opinion that we can't simply use the language the way British did; that it needs remaking for our own purposes---To conquer English may be to complete the process of making ourselves free (17).

Conclusion
Like in other diasporic novels, in The Inheritance of Loss also, the characters are in search of an identity, for love and acceptance in a foreign land. But they find it difficult to locate where they belong to since a diasporic hybridity is, in the words of Radhakrishnan, "a frustrating search for constituency and a legitimate political identity" (312-313). They have developed a sense of loss though in different degrees. The characters are all victims of the so-called 'diasporic dilemmas'.
However, in the final analysis like in the case of Biju the reader also finds some hope of 'true' happiness in his supposedly reunion with his father. Though he has lost much materially and emotionally, there is a spiritual gain. It is pertinent that the novel like a foreshadowing opens with a poetic description of a serene and peaceful landscape dominated by the awe inspiring beauty of Kanchenjunga in the North East Himalayas: "All day, the colors had been those of dusk, mist moving like a water creature across the great flanks of mountains possessed of ocean shadows and depths" (1) and it also ends with an optimistic note when Sai saw the meeting of the cook and his broken son Biju taking place: "The five peaks of Kanchenjunga turned golden with the kind of luminous light that made you feel, if briefly, that truth was apparent. All you needed