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Life is not a Benetton ad By Shiri Lev-Ari Tags: Kiran Desai, Man Booker Prize  "Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss?" This question is asked at the beginning of Kiran Desai's novel, "The Inheritance of Loss." Apparently, loss can be inherited - the loss of property, of souls, of love, of opportunities. Kiran Desai, the author of this marvelous novel, was born in New Delhi, India. Desai, 37, wrote "The Inheritance of Loss" over a period of eight years. Initially, the novel was some 1,500 pages long, but she managed to shorten it to a few hundred. Publishers in England rejected her manuscript. In the United States, by contrast, she was given a warmer welcome and, ultimately, the book was published by an American company, Hamish Hamilton. Although few copies (no more than 3,000) were sold, Desai was short-listed for Britain's Man Booker Prize in October 2006 and was later declared the winner, thereby becoming the youngest author to be awarded a Booker Prize. "The Inheritance of Loss," which has been published recently by Am Oved in Hebrew translation (by Meir Ben-Shalom), addresses almost all the major issues troubling the world today: globalization, multiculturalism, economic inequality, terrorism, violence, fundamentalism, and national resistance movements. The novel's main character is Sai, a 16-year-old orphan, who is sent to live in what was once the luxurious home of her grandfather in the Indian town of Kalimpong, in the Himalayas. Her grandfather, a graduate of Cambridge, is a retired judge and a recluse, no longer in touch with his wife or his daughter, who is now bankrupt. He lives with his dog, Mutt, and his cook, who has an inferiority complex, but draws strength from his love for his son, Biju. The cook sends Biju to America to forge a new life for himself. Sai meanwhile falls in love with Gyan, her math tutor, who later joins an underground Nepalese group. The novel also describes Biju's experiences in the foul-smelling basements of various Manhattan restaurants. An illegal immigrant, he prepares food, is paid starvation wages and lives in a tiny, stifling room in New York City with other migrant workers. The restaurant where he works offers its clientele a true culinary experience, Desai writes ironically: On its upper floor, the patrons enjoy colonial cuisine, while the poor natives (Colombian, Ecuadorian and Gambian) are on the lower floor. In America, we read in the novel, every ethnic group reinforces its own stereotype. Advertisement Desai, whom I interviewed by telephone from her home in New York, explains that her novel represents a very long journey. Her original idea had been to write a book that would embody her own personal quest, and would be intimately connected to the traditional story of the immigrant. However, she quickly understood that she would only be able to grasp and present her personal story by describing the complex relationship between India, England and America. Thus, Desai returned to the early journeys to the West made by her own parents and grandparents. She wrote about her adolescence in the Westernized sector of India's society, because, she admits, she often felt alienated in her native country. As a child, Desai lived for lengthy periods of time with relatives in the Himalayan mountains, and her grandfather was, in fact, a judge who studied at Cambridge. Her father is a businessman, and her mother, Anita Desai, is also a writer; Kiran's maternal grandparents embody both East and West, with roots in Bengal (her grandfather) and Germany (her grandmother). When she was 14, Kiran's parents separated and she went to live with her mother in England for a year. Suddenly, she understood what it meant to come from a poor country. She was astonished by the hostility she encountered on English streets, having grown up with the idea that the English must have felt guilty about colonialism in India, and would therefore treat Indians nicely. Instead, she was greeted with cries of "Go home!" - i.e., back to India. Even today, she sometimes encounters that sort of reaction outside London. Next, Kiran traveled with her mother to Massachusetts. After enrolling to study science at a university in Virginia, she discovered how she much she enjoyed writing. At 22, she began writing short stories, some of which were published in The New Yorker. One was included in the anthology of modern Indian literature, "Mirrorwork: 50 Years of Indian Writing 1947-1997," edited by Salman Rushdie. In 1998, her first book, "Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard" appeared. "The Inheritance of Loss," for which she received the Booker Prize, was published in 2006. Author of 14 books, Kiran's mother, Anita Desai, has been nominated three times for the Booker Prize but has never won it. Whenever she stays in the home of her mother - whom Kiran admits has had a major influence on her - the young writer says she is particularly prolific. According to her, it is an ideal place for writing. The multicultural bubble Most of the characters in "The Inheritance of Loss" deal with their cultural identity. The grandfather is a dyed-in-the-wool Anglophile and despises anything that reminds him of India. Sai's teachers, Lola and Noni, also live in a totally Anglo-style environment (the daughter of one of them is a BBC broadcaster), and the cook sends his son to America, which gives him the strength to continue living. Nevertheless, most of the protagonists' encounters with the West end in failure and a feeling of humiliation. Kiran admits in our conversation that she was very lucky to have grown up in two worlds. As a young girl, she read Jane Austen and the Bronte sisters. When she left India, the Western world she encountered was not so strange to her, yet she suddenly understood what it meant to be an Indian in the Western world. No matter how lucky you were, when you stood in line for a visa, you felt shame and degradation, she recalls. Desai became profoundly aware of the gaps between natives and immigrants. When I note that she does not seem very optimistic about the vision of a multicultural society, she replies that this vision was actually anything but rosy, nothing like a commercial for the United Colors of Benetton. One day, she says, you eat sushi, the next day tacos, and you feel culturally enriched and open to the entire world. Although it is difficult to argue with such a picture, moral questions remain about the human beings hidden behind this picture-perfect image, who are so adversely affected by reality. Desai notes that the people who make her clothes live in a very different world, and the same is true for those who prepare food in restaurants. New York women can go out to work and feel as though they are modern feminists. But, Desai asks, how are they able to lead this kind of life? Because of women like Noni in her book, who come to America from one of the world's poorest countries. There is much hypocrisy, the author stresses, in the discourse about multicultural society. Desai adds that it is hard to write about such things because she herself comes from an affluent sector of society; she has easy access to multiculturalism and appreciates how pleasant it is to live in that self-satisfied milieu. Nonetheless, she finds it hard to look at herself in a truly profound way and see the truth. Desai admits to feeling ambivalent all the time, when she thinks about the place in which she grew up in contrast to where she is living now. This is apparently a typical feeling in connection with the immigrant experience, and it prompts people to try to reinvent themselves. In their new society, they have many opportunities to do so, Desai explains. It is easy to abandon your old identity and adopt a new one that has already been created for you. There is something about immigration that makes you feel as though the "earth is constantly burning" under your feet. Until age 14, Desai lived in New Delhi and also, at times, in the mountains. Nowadays, she visits her homeland often; her father and brother still live there. When Desai first arrived in America, she thought she would spend more time in her new home; however, because of her writing, she says she finds herself returning to India frequently. When she reached the conclusion that she wanted to write, she explains, she also realized that she would have to return to India, because she wanted to use it as a backdrop for her work. As an adult, she has forged a new relationship with India. I asked if she preferred life in the U.S. to life in England, and whether America was perhaps a "softer" solution to Great Britain, which made her dislike herself in the past. In response, Desai points out that the "historical baggage" of Indians in England is very heavy. At times, as they are aware, immigrants must carry on their shoulders the full burden of the British- Indian relationship. America, however, is a land of immigrants and it is easier to be a newcomer there, according to Desai, who adds that it is easier to adopt the American lexicon of immigration. Nevertheless, even for someone like her, a member of India's educated class, immigration to America still involves a journey from the world's "poorer half." I point out that she sometimes depicts how social gaps in Indian society are mirrored in America: Those who were poor in India remain poor in America. She comments that class divisions in Indian society are still very powerful. Since India's economy joined the free market in the 1990s, many members of the local middle class have become very rich, while the poor remain as poor as ever. The rich spend their holidays in Singapore, buy elegant homes in New Delhi, lead a life of luxury, go to expensive restaurants, translate the prices into dollars or euros and say: "Hey, this is really cheap, this costs only $5." It is then, she says, that you realize a new culture has emerged in India, and you suddenly understand that there are two basic social classes in the world: the class of the money-makers and the class of the money-losers. And, she concludes, it does not really matter where in the world you are living at that particular moment. Bookmark to del.icio.us   Grass is greener For the cannabis-growing residents of Lebanon, recent fighting has been a blessing. Piggy bank savings Welfare Minister Herzog unveils a plan to open savings accounts for every Israeli child.   1.   Iron and Clay 12:21  |  Dror 10/05/08

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