Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

At this point he grew circumspect, meticulous in every other area of his life – his work, his bath, his hair-combing – uneasy with the realization of how simple it would really be for him to skid from control and jeopardize his career to commit a final violent act.

Spring came to Bonda in milk-swilled colors and newly hatched caterpillars, lizards, and frogs hopped and crawled about in adorable baby size. He could bear her face no longer, bought her a ticket, and returned her to Gujarat.

"I can’t go," Nimi said, waking from her stupor. She could take it for herself – in fact it would be like a balm, a dark place to hide herself – but for her family – well, the thought of their shame on her behalf was too much to bear.

"If I don’t send you back," he had said to her at this point, in a tone almost kind, "I will kill you. And I don’t want to be blamed for such a crime, so you have to go."

Six months later a telegram arrived in Bonda to announce the arrival of a baby.

Jemubhai got drunk that night and not out of joy. Without seeing his child, he was sure what it would look like: red as a blister, going off like a kettle, spilling liquids, waves of heat and anger emanating from it.

Far away, Nimi was staring at her daughter. She was fast asleep, and in those early months of life, peace seemed to be deeply anchored in her nature.

"Your wife is ready to return. She is rested," wrote the uncle in the haveli, hopefully. He had mistaken the reason for Nimi’s arrival home and attributed it to Jemubhai’s concern for his wife’s health, because it was appropriate, after all, to have a daughter return for the birth of a first child. They hoped this baby would bring the father back to their community. He was influential now – he might help them all.

Jemu sent money with a letter. "It will not be suitable," he replied. "My work is such. No schools. Constant travel…"

The uncle turned his niece from the door. "You are your husband’s responsibility," he said angrily. "Go back. Your father gave a dowry when you married – you got your share and it is not for daughters to come claiming anything thereafter. If you have made your husband angry, go ask for forgiveness."

Please come home, my dear, my lovely girl.

She had lived the rest of her life with a sister who had not married as successfully, as high up, as Nimi. Her brother-in-law resented every bite that entered Nimi’s mouth. He watched for signs that she was growing fat under his generous care.

Jemubhai’s father arrived to plead.

"Our family honor is gone. We are lucky Bomanbhai is dead, thank God. It’s the scandal of the town."

"Why are you talking like this?" he said to his father. "You’re following the script of a village idiot. She is unsuitable to be my wife."

"It was a mistake to send you away. You have become like a stranger to us."

"You are the one who sent me and now you come and say it was a mistake! A fine thing." He had been recruited to bring his countrymen into the modern age, but he could only make it himself by cutting them off entirely, or they would show up reproachful, pointing out to him the lie he had become.

His father stayed only two nights. They didn’t talk much after the first conversation, and Jemubhai asked no questions about anyone in Piphit, since he realized that it would have been a mockery to do so. But when his father left, Jemubhai tried to give him some money, shabbily trying to transfer it between hands. He wouldn’t take it, turned his face, and climbed into the car. The judge felt he should call him back, was about to, the words began in his throat – but then he didn’t say anything and the driver took his father back to the station where, not so long ago, Nimi had, unknown to herself, seen Nehru.

War broke out in Europe and India, even in the villages, and the news of the country disintegrating filled the newspapers; almost a million were dead in riots, three to four million in the Bengal famine, thirteen million were evicted from their homes; the birth of the nation was all in shadow. It seemed appropriate.

The judge worked harder than ever. The departure of the British left such a vacuum of power, all Indian members of the ICS rose to the very top, no matter what side they had taken in the independence movement, no matter their talents or expertise.

Somewhere, in the course of those dusky years, a second telegram arrived, the telegram that preceded the telegram about Sai’s impending arrival at Cho Oyu.

A woman had caught fire over a stove.

Oh, this country, people exclaimed, glad to fall into the usual sentences, where human life was cheap, where standards were shoddy, where stoves were badly made and cheap saris caught fire as easily -

– as a woman you wanted dead or -

– well, as a woman who wanted to kill herself -

– without a witness, without a case -

– so simple, a single movement of the hand -

– and for the police, a case so simple, just another quick movement of the hand -

– the rupees made an oiled movement between palms -

"Oh thank you, sir," said a policeman.

"Nothing to thank me for," said the brother-in-law.

And in a blink of an eye you could have missed the entire thing.

The judge chose to believe it was an accident.

Ashes have no weight, they tell no secrets, they rise too lightly for guilt; too lightly for gravity, they float upward and, thankfully, disappear.

These years were blurry for many, and when they came out of them, exhausted, the whole world had changed, there were gaps in everything – what had happened in their own families, what had happened elsewhere, what filth had occurred like an epidemic everywhere in a world that was now full of unmarked graves – they didn’t look, because they couldn’t afford to examine the past. They had to grasp the future with everything they had.

One true thing Jemubhai learned: a human can be transformed into anything. It was possible to forget and sometimes essential to do so.

Now Jemubhai wondered if he had killed his wife for the sake of false ideals. Stolen her dignity, shamed his family, shamed hers, turned her into the embodiment of their humiliation. Even they couldn’t accept her then, and her life could only be useless after that, and his daughter could only be useless and absurd. He had condemmed the girl to convent boarding schools, relieved when she reached a new height of uselessness and absurdity by eloping with a man who had grown up in an orphanage. Not even the relatives expected him to pay any attention to her again -

He hadn’t liked his wife, but that was no excuse, was it?

Then he remembered a moment long ago when he had indeed liked her. He was twenty, she fourteen. The place was Piphit and they were on a bicycle, traversing gloriously down a slope through cow pats.

Sai had arrived so many years later, and though he had never properly admitted the fact to himself, he knew he hoped an unacknowledged system of justice was beginning to erase his debts.

"Mutt," his voice splintered. "My funny love. My naughty love. My funny naughty love." Over the mountains he went searching.

… Joined by Sai and the cook.

When Mutt went missing, Sai, who had hidden her loss of Gyan first in a cold and then in the madness of the hillside, found a disguise so perfect, even she was confused as to the origin of her misery. "Mutt Mutty Mutton chop," she yodeled wildly, in a way she could never ever have publicly proclaimed her own unhappiness. She felt grateful for the greatness of this landscape, walked on trying to recover the horizon – for it felt as if the space bequeathed her at the end of a romance that had promised a wide vista – well, it was nonexistent. Sadness was so claustrophobic.