Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

But now, all those who in peaceful times had enjoyed his company and chatted about such things as curd, mushrooms, and bamboo were too busy or too scared to help.

"We cannot allow a threat to our national security."

"What about my home? What about my dairy, the cows?"

But they were as illegal as he was.

"Foreign nationals can’t own property and you know that, Father. What business do you have owning all of this?"

The dairy was actually in the name of Uncle Potty, because long ago, when this tetchy little problem had come up, he had signed the papers on behalf of his friend…

But empty property was a great risk, for Kalimpong had long ago been demarcated an "area of high sensitivity," and according to the laws, the army was entitled to appropriate any unoccupied land. They paid rock-bottom rent, slapped concrete about, and filled the homes they took over with a string of temporary people who didn’t care and wrecked the place. That was the usual story.

Father Booty felt his heart fail at the thought of his cows being turned out in favor of army tanks; looked about at his craggy bit of mountainside – violet bamboo orchids and pale ginger lilies spicing the air; a glimpse of the Teesta far below that was no color at all right now, just a dark light shining on its way to join the Brahmaputra. Such wilderness could not incite a gentle love – he loved it fiercely, intensely.

But two days later, Father Booty received another visitor, a Nepali doctor who wished to open a private nursing home and without being invited to do so, walked through the gate to gaze at the same view Father Booty had looked out on and caressed it with his eyes. He examined the solidly constructed house that Father Booty had named Sukhtara. Star of Happiness. He knocked his knuckles against the cowsheds with the approval of ownership. Twenty-five rich patients in a row… And then he made an offer to buy the Swiss dairy for practically nothing.

"That isn’t even the cost of the shed, let alone the main house."

"You will not get any other offers."

"Why not?"

"I have arranged it and you have no choice. You are lucky to get what I am giving you. You are residing in this country unlawfully and you must sell or lose everything."

"I will look after the cows, Booty," said his friend Uncle Potty. "No worries. And when the trouble is over, you return and take up where you left off."

They sat together, Father Booty, Uncle Potty, and Sai. In the background, a tape of Abida Parveen was playing. " Allah hoo, Allah hoo Allah hoo. …" God was just wilderness and space, said the husky voice, careless with the loss of love. It took you to the edge of all you could bear and then – it let go, let go… " Mujhe jaaaane do… ."All one should desire was freedom. But Father Booty wasn’t comforted by Uncle Potty’s assurance, for it had to be admitted that his friend was an alcoholic and undependable. In a drunken state he would allow anything to happen, he might sign on any line, but it was Father Booty’s own fault: why hadn’t he applied for an Indian passport? Because it was just as silly as NOT applying for an American or a Swiss? He felt a lack in himself, despised his conformity to the ideas of the world even as he disagreed with them.

A mongoose loped like water over the grass, matching the color of the evening, only its movement betraying it.

Anger strained against Sai’s heart. This was Gyan’s doing, she thought. This is what he had done and what people like him were doing in the name of decency and education, in the name of hospitals for Nepalis and management positions. In the end, Father Booty, lovable Father Booty who, frankly, had done much more for development in the hills than any of the locals, and without screaming or waving kukris, Father Booty was to be sacrificed.

In the valleys, it was already night, lamps coming on in the mossy, textured loam, the fresh-smelling darkness expanding, unfolding its foliage. The three of them drank Old Monk, watched as the black climbed all the way past their toes and their knees, the cabbage-leafed shadows reaching out and touching them on their cheeks, noses, enveloping their faces. The black climed over the tops of their heads and on to extinguish Kanchenjunga glowing a last brazen pornographic pink… each of them separately remembered how many evenings they’d spent like this… how unimaginable it was that they would soon come to an end. Here Sai had learned how music, alcohol, and friendship together could create a grand civilization. "Nothing so sweet, dear friends – "Uncle Potty would say raising his glass before he drank.

There were concert halls in Europe to which Father Booty would soon return, opera houses where music molded entire audiences into a single grieving or celebrating heart, and where the applause rang like a downpour…

But could they feel as they did here? Hanging over the mountain, hearts half empty – half full, longing for beauty, for innocence that now knows. With passion for the beloved or for the wide world or for worlds beyond this one…

Sai thought of how it had been unclear to her what exactly she longed for in the early days at Cho Oyu, that only the longing itself found its echo in her aching soul. The longing was gone now, she thought, and the ache seemed to have found its substance.

Her mind returned to the day of the gun robbery at Cho Oyu – the start of everything going wrong.

How foolishly those rifles had been left mounted on the wall, retired artifacts relegated to history, seen too often to notice or think about. Gyan was the last one to take them down and examine them – boys liked things like that. Even the Dalai Lama, Sai had read, had a collection of war games and toy soldiers. It hadn’t occurred to her that they might be resurrected into use. Would there be crimes committed that would, when dot was linked to dot, be traced to their doorstep?

"My grandfather used to go hunting," Sai had told Gyan, trying to impress him, but why had she been proud? Of something that should be shaming?

The cook had told her the stories:

"A great shikari he was, Saibaby. He was very handsome, and he looked very brave and stylish on his horse. The villagers would call him if there was ever a man-eater around."

"Was there often one?" Goose pimples.

"Oh, all the time. Rrrr-rrrr, you would hear them, and the sound was of wood being sawed. I can remember waking up and listening. In the morning you could see pug marks by the river, sometimes even around the tents."

The cook couldn’t help but enjoy himself, and the more he repeated his stories, the more they became truer than the truth.

The police had come to investigate the crime and, in the cook’s quarter, sent Biju’s letters flying…

"They had to do it," said the cook. "This is a serious matter."

The seriousness was proved when, one morning not long after Father Booty heard the news of his exile, the subdivisional officer arrived at Cho Oyu. The judge and Sai were on the lawn and he had to search to locate them within the camouflage of their own shadows and the shadows of leaves.

"The perpetrators are still absconding," said the SDO surrounded by three policemen with guns and lathis, "but please don’t worry, sir. We will nip this in the bud. Crack down on antisocial elements.

"You know, my father was also a great shikari," he continued over tea. "If only he had been less adept, I told him, you would have left something for us as well! Isn’t it so? Ha ha," he laughed, but his laugh would have registered bright pink on the litmus test. "Justice Sahib, you shikaris were too good, lions and leopards… Now if you go into the forest and if you see a chicken that has escaped from somewhere, you are lucky, no?"