Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

Achootan didn’t want a green card in the same way as Saeed did. He wanted it in the way of revenge.

"Why do you want it if you hate it here?" Odessa had said angrily to Achootan when he asked for sponsorship.

Well, he wanted it. Everyone wanted it whether you liked it or you hated it. The more you hated it sometimes, the more you wanted it.

This they didn’t understand.

The restaurant served only one menu: steak, salad, fries. It assumed a certain pride in simplicity among the wealthy classes.

Holy cow. Unholy cow. Biju knew the reasoning he should keep by his side. At lunch and dinner the space filled with young uniformed busi-nesspeople in their twenties and thirties.

"How would you like that, ma’am?"

"Rare."

"And you, sir?"

"Still mooin’."

Only the fools said, "Well done, please." Odessa could barely conceal her scorn. "Sure about that? Well, all right, but it’s going to be tough."

She sat at the corner table where she had her morning tea and aroused the men by tearing into her steak.

"You know, Biju," she said, laughing, "isn’t it ironic, nobody eats beef in India and just look at it – it’s the shape of a big T-bone."

But here there were Indians eating beef. Indian bankers. Chomp chomp. He fixed them with a concentrated look of meaning as he cleared the plates. They saw it. They knew. He knew. They knew he knew. They pretended they didn’t know he knew. They looked away. He took on a sneering look. But they could afford not to notice.

"I’ll have the steak," they said with practiced nonchalance, with an ease like a signature that’s a thoughtless scribble that you know has been practiced page after page.

Holy cow unholy cow.

Job no job.

One should not give up one’s religion, the principles of one’s parents and their parents before them. No, no matter what.

You had to live according to something. You had to find your dignity. The meat charred on the grill, the blood beaded on the surface, and then the blood also began to bubble and boil.

Those who could see a difference between a holy cow and an unholy cow would win.

Those who couldn’t see it would lose.

So Biju was learning to sear steaks.

Blood, meat, salt, and the cannon directed at the plates: "Would you like freshly ground pepper on that, sir?"

"You know we may be poor in India, but there only a dog would eat meat cooked like this," said Achootan.

"We need to get aggressive about Asia," the businessmen said to each other. "It’s opening up, new frontier, millions of potential consumers, big buying power in the middle classes, China, India, potential for cigarettes, diapers, Kentucky Fried, life insurance, water management, cell phones – big family people, always on the phone, all those men calling their mothers, all those mothers calling all their many, many children; this country is done, Europe done, Latin America done, Africa is a basket case except for oil; Asia is the next frontier. Is there oil anywhere there? They don’t have oil, do they? They must…"

The talk was basic. If anyone dared to call them Fool! they could just point at their bank accounts and let the numbers refute the accusation.

Biju thought of Saeed Saeed who still refused to eat a pig, "They dirty, man, they messy. First I am Muslim, then I am Zanzibari, then I will BE American." Once he’d shown Biju his new purchase of a model of a mosque with a quartz clock set into the bottom that was programmed, at the five correct hours, to start agitating: " Allah hu Akbar, la ilhaha illullah, wal lah hu akbar. …" Through the crackle of the tape from the top of the minaret came ancient sand-weathered words, that keening cry from the desert offering sustenance to create a man’s strength, his faith in an empty-bellied morning and all through the day, that he might not fall through the filthy differences between nations. The lights came on encouragingly, flashing in the mosque in disco green and white.

"Why do you want to leave?" Odessa was shocked. A chance like they had given him! He surely didn’t know how lucky he was.

"He’ll never make it in America with that kind of attitude," said Baz hopefully.

Biju left as a new person, a man full to the brim with a wish to live within a narrow purity.

"Do you cook with beef?" he asked a prospective employer.

"We have a Philly steak sandwich."

"Sorry. I can’t work here."

"They worship the cow," he heard the owner of the establishment tell someone in the kitchen, and he felt tribal and astonishing.

Smoky Joe’s.

"Beef?"

"Honey," said the lady, "Ah don’t mean to ahffend you, but Ah’m a steak eater and Ah AAHM beef."

Marilyn. Blown-up photographs of Marilyn Monroe on the wall, Indian owner at the desk!

The owner was on the speakerphone.

"Rajnibhai, Kem chho? "

"What?"

" Rajnibhai? "

"Who aez thees?" Very Indian-trying-to-be-American accent.

" Kem chho? Saaru chho? Teme samjo chho? "

"WHAAT?"

"Don’t speak Gujerati, sir?"

"No."

"You are Gujerati, no?"

"No."

"But your name is Gujerati??"

"Who are you??!!"

"You are not Gujerati?"

"Who are you??!!"

"AT amp;T, sir, offering special rates to India."

"Don’t know anyone in India."

"Don’t know anyone???? You must have some relative?"

"Yeah," American accent growing more pronounced, "but I don’ taaalk to my relateev…"

Shocked silence.

"Don’t talk to your relative?"

Then, "We are offering forty-seven cents per minute."

"Vhaat deeference does that make? I haeve aalready taaald you," he spoke s 1 o w as if to an idiot, "no taleephone caalls to Eeendya."

"But you are from Gujerat?" Anxious voice.

"Veea Kampala, Uganda, Teepton, England, and Roanoke state of Vaergeenia! One time I went to Eeendya and, laet me tell you, you canaat pay me to go to that caantreey agaen!"

Slipping out and back on the street. It was horrible what happened to Indians abroad and nobody knew but other Indians abroad. It was a dirty little rodent secret. But, no, Biju wasn’t done. His country called him again. He smelled his fate. Drawn, despite himself, by his nose, around a corner, he saw the first letter of the sign, G, then an AN. His soul anticipated the rest: DHI. As he approached the Gandhi Café, the air gradually grew solid. It was always unbudgeable here, with the smell of a thousand and one meals accumulated, no matter the winter storms that howled around the corner, the rain, the melting heat. Though the restaurant was dark, when Biju tested the door, it swung open.

There in the dim space, at the back, amid lentils splattered about and spreading grease transparencies on the cloths of abandoned tables yet uncleared, sat Harish-Harry, who, with his brothers Gaurish-Gary and Dhansukh-Danny, ran a triplet of Gandhi Cafés in New York, New Jersey, and Connecticut. He didn’t look up as Biju entered. He had his pen hovering over a request for a donation sent by a cow shelter outside Edison, New Jersey.

If you gave a hundred dollars, in addition to such bonus miles as would be totted up to your balance sheet for lives to come, "We will send you a free gift; please check the box to indicate your preference":

1. A preframed decorative painting of Krishna-Lila: "She longs for her lord and laments."

2. A copy of the Bhagavad Gita accompanied by commentary by Pandit so-and-so (B.A., MPhil., Ph.D., President of the Hindu Heritage Center), who has just completed a lecture tour in sixty-six countries.