Kiran Desai's Novel: The Inheritance Of Loss

A famous 2000 Pulitzer Prize winner Jhumpa Lahiri portrays the lives of the Indians who have immigrant to America, and the second-generation Indian American protagonists searching for the different to fit into a community. As their lives seems to be treed between the Indian-American traditions. Jhumpa Lahiri writes clearly about failed relationships, who weirdly spending their lives together are either doubtful about their love for each other or have an unvoiced love or is there any love that takes their relation too far?

In the novel “ Village By The Sea “ by Anita Desai tells the problem faced in Indian villagers which can be noticed from two characters, Hari and Lila. From the book we can experience the Indian culture and their way of life through the life faced by the characters. I feel that the book is distinctive and special in a way, as it alternates between the view of Hari and Lila. It also has an effect on the readers, when Hari goes to the city of Bombay and Lila is in the village of Thul. From these two point of view we can get the idea of similarities and differences between city and village life.

So is the case of Sarah, the heroine of the novel who stands between the poles of India and England. Sarah is one of the best women characters of all Anita Desai’s novel. She is weak but possesses steady voice. Sarah, Adit’s wife, represents for reconciliatory approach between East and West. She becomes a victim of psychic and social alienation. Sarah oscillates between her

The dominant idiom of Indian writing today is firmly entrenched in pain, anxiety of displacement, nostalgia, yearning to belong to roots, and so on. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things and Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss are two such novels that explore the tragedy of man on several levels using different perspectives. Both the novels are about averted culture-clash tragedies, homogeneity vs. heterogeneity, and about Indian sensibilities.

First, this novel showcases acts of caring for family and friends, during a rough time for all the Indians bringing them closer into one community. The protagonist Sabine displays acts of caring among her friends and family. For instance, near the end of the novel, Sabine helps her mother’s friend, Lalita, despite having a sour relationship with her. Sabine saves Lalita from being arrested by lying to a military officer, thus making Sabine a more confident and brave person. Sabine faces her fear of the military and gains the power she

Immigrants to America face a major challenge when they first arrive. These immigrants from all different backgrounds and cultures feel like outsiders in America because the culture they have been immersed in their entire lives is no longer present in America. In Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake, Ashoke and Ashima Ganguli come to the United States after they have lived in India for nearly thirty years. Ashoke and Ashima are only familiar with the Bengali customs and traditions; they have no sense of the American culture. In America, they have a son Gogol. Ashima and Ashoke surround Gogol in Bengali culture in any way they can in America. Even Gogol grows up in a Bengali household, Gogol identifies more with the American culture throughout his entire adolescence and into his adult life. As Gogol grows older, he tries to avoid his parents at all costs. The direct clash of Gogol’s American culture and his parents’ Bengali culture is what caused the separation between Gogol and his parents.

Jhumpa Lahiri is an author who has been dubbed as a completely unique writer with her own style, as her collection of short stories in her novel Interpreter of Maladies, allows readers to feel sympathetic for the characters in her complex yet relatable storylines. The overarching theme behind her stories is how people experience the twists and turns of life, as they are faced with countless hardships, whether it is immigration issues, spouse issues, or people just trying to search for happiness. However, each character in the different storylines all have such diverse backgrounds that readers may feel sympathetic to a variety of Jhumpa Lahiri’s characters. One character that stands out from the rest is Boori Ma, written in the story of “A Real

Anita Desai, the grand dame of Indian English literature, was born in Mussorie on 24 June 1937, of a Bengali father and a German mother. This identity of her plays a significant role in the portrayal of characters in most of her novels especially Bye, Bye Blackbird as it presents the cultural crises suffered by her main characters due to the East-West encounters. This novel is considered to be most intimately connected to her own experience as she herself has mentioned in an interview thus, “…of all my novels Bye, Bye Blackbird is the most rooted and experienced and the least literary in derivation (Dhawan 92).”

The novel Jasmine by Bharati Mukherjee is an incredible story about the transformation and life experiences of a Panjabi girl from India. The life of Jyoti is told from her point of view when she is twenty-four years old, and pregnant with the baby of Bud Ripplemeyer, a crippled banker who is more than twice Jyoti’s age. During the span of two months in Iowa, Jyoti narrates her biographical experiences in Punjab and in America as she strives to become independent. Jasmine illustrates that when one’s relationships go through changes, it will impact one’s identity.

In this novel, Bharati Mukherjee explores what happens to a gendered character that has been “smashed by hammer blows, and melted down”. Does mobility and nomadism really offer a female character a way of redefining her identity and her relationship to home. Desirable Daughters utilizes unusual measures of self-portraying material in a migrant novel of self-discovery that combines components of fairy- tale-like myth with an intense mystery-thriller plot. “Desirable Daughters” as the title proposes, one kind of daughter, which parents would be pleased and proud of and for whom each parent would desire. The three sisters, who are the daughters of Motilal Bhattacharya and the great grand-daughters of Jai Krishna Gangooli, belong to a traditional Bengali Brahmin family. Padma, Parvathi and Tara are typical names of Shakti (Goddess of Hindu) do not flaunt the some ethical and moral values but have the courage to carve a position for them. They are a blend of both traditional and modern

The novel is divided into two sections, referred to as part one and part two. the first section of the novel portrays everyday life of an Indian family with their daughter Uma as the main character of the section. Throughout part one of the novel, the author tries to take the reader into a journey across the Indian social practices and family relationship. She does this through the way she portrays different members of the Indian family and other individuals who are depicted as different members of the Indian society. In this section, the reader can see the family structure, family members responsibilities, and expectations from other members of the family and the society in general. Apart from showing the reader the family life, she also tries to present situations and topics that shows the reader some important issues regarding the Indian educational system and the society attitudes towards it. Desai does this by portraying an Indian family which priorities men’s education over women’s. This is seen first through mama who is a house wife expected to stay home and take care of her family while her

All her novels have themes chiefly exploring the human psyche to its deepest depths. Anita Desai’s exploration of female domains historically, the family and the home, as well as her focus on female

Bharati Mukherjee’s female protagonists are immigrants and suffer cultural shock but they are anxious to establish their identity by undertaking their heroic journeys that is why Bharati Mukherjee received considerable critical attention from almost all the quarters of the globe in a relatively short period of just twenty five years. Even though she has been acknowledged as a voice of expatriate immigrants, sensibility, and a close observation of her novels reveals that she has written all the novels with predominantly feminist views. Mukherjee’s depiction of women and their different relationships portray the dominance of practical practices in traditional society, as well as the forms of liberation and empowerment which are available to women in their Diaspora’s situation.

Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss is deliberately hallmarked by its abundance of juxtapositions within the text. Sai and Gyan, the atmospheres of Kalimpong and the Gorkha National Liberation Front Movement, as well as the colonial and postcolonial world are placed side by side to evoke deep contrasts. The protagonist, Sai Mistry, undergoes a personal development process that is the product of her life circumstances, her interactions with Gyan, as well as her experience living amidst the Gorkha National Liberation Movement. On one hand, Sai’s experience growing up in a sheltered environment adds innocence to her personality. On the other hand, her experience as an orphan and the influence of the Judge-- a bitter retiree who believes

Bharati Mukherjee an established, diasporic women writer has made her corpus in immigrant sensibility and cross-cultural crisis not only in American or Canadian context but also in India. All her previous novels or stories deal with the women protagonists in assimilation of alien cultures in alien lands. But Miss New India is purely set within India but the western cultural effects have played a vital role in developing the themes. It creates a new orientation of woman identity dealing with the conservative thoughts of patriarchal system and modern western life style cultural effects in growing India. It deals with various issues such as rape, international terrorism, false charges of murder, police brutality, arranged marriage system, teenage runaway, divorce life, gay life in India, prostitution, art of theft, suicide, role of outsourcing of Indian economy, the art of photography, homelessness, telecom centers (call center life), immigrating in India and assimilation in Indian culture.