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| Kiran Desai Piotr Drabik from Poland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Kiran Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss is set in the 1980s against the backdrop of political unrest in the Himalayan town of Kalimpong, near the Nepalese border.
The story weaves together the lives of a retired judge, his granddaughter, a cook, the cook’s son working in America, and a young schoolteacher, showing how their fates intersect in a world shaped by history, migration, and upheaval.
Life at Cho Oyu
The novel begins in Cho Oyu, a once-grand but now crumbling colonial-era house located in Kalimpong. Here lives Jemubhai Patel, a retired judge who spends his old age in bitterness and isolation. He is an aloof and severe man, withdrawn from both the world and the people closest to him. Living with him is his orphaned granddaughter Sai, sent to his care after her parents, who had been working abroad, died in a tragic accident.
Also residing in the house is the judge’s long-serving cook, whose name is never given. The cook is devoted to his employer but dreams constantly of a better future for his only son, Biju, who has emigrated to the United States.
Life in Cho Oyu is lonely and subdued. The judge is cold and emotionally distant, Sai is young and searching for connection, and the cook carries on with quiet resignation, hoping that Biju will find success abroad and rescue them all from their stagnant existence.
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| Kiran Desai Piotr Drabik from Poland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
The Judge’s Past
The judge’s life story is revealed gradually through flashbacks. As a young man, he was sent to Cambridge to study law, a rare privilege at the time.
He expected the opportunity to elevate himself socially, but instead he encountered constant racism and humiliation in England. These experiences scarred him deeply, filling him with shame about his Indian identity.
When he returned to India, the judge brought with him not confidence but bitterness.
He married a young woman but treated her with cruelty and contempt, never forgiving himself for his own humiliations or allowing intimacy into his life. His harshness, self-loathing, and obsession with Western ways created a legacy of loneliness that haunts him even in old age.
Sai’s Story
Sai, the judge’s granddaughter, is a central figure in the novel’s present-day narrative. Orphaned and uprooted, she arrives at Cho Oyu as a schoolgirl, unfamiliar with her grandfather and his rigid ways. Unlike him, Sai has been educated in convent schools and retains an openness to the world. She is curious, impressionable, and eager for warmth in the cold atmosphere of Cho Oyu.
Her quiet, sheltered life changes when she begins lessons with a young mathematics tutor named Gyan. Their relationship starts with shared interests and conversations and soon blossoms into romance. For Sai, Gyan becomes a symbol of youthful love and hope in an otherwise isolated existence.
Gyan and the Insurgency
Gyan is a Nepalese youth from the local community, intelligent but restless about his place in society. At first he is charmed by Sai and drawn into her world. Their romance grows tender, marked by long talks, walks, and the joy of young love.
But as the Gorkhaland movement gains strength in Kalimpong, Gyan becomes more politically involved. The movement seeks recognition and rights for the Nepalese-speaking population in the region. Increasingly swept up in its rhetoric, Gyan begins to view Sai and her privileged background with resentment. Her English education, her Westernized manners, and her life in the judge’s colonial house all come to symbolize the injustices he wants to resist.
The growing unrest drives a wedge between them. Gyan, torn between affection and ideology, begins to criticize Sai harshly. Their once-tender love turns into conflict, leaving Sai bewildered and heartbroken.
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| Kiran Desai Yaffa, CC BY-SA 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
The Cook and His Hopes
The cook in Cho Oyu is a hardworking, humble man who has spent his life in service to the judge. His greatest hope lies in his son, Biju, whom he has sent to America to seek a better future. The cook boasts to others about his son’s supposed success abroad, clinging to dreams of prosperity and upward mobility through migration.
Unaware of Biju’s real struggles, the cook continues to imagine that his son is thriving in New York, believing that one day he will return triumphant. His faith in Biju’s success becomes the emotional anchor of his own difficult life.
Biju’s Life in New York
Biju’s story runs parallel to the events in Kalimpong. Having emigrated to America, Biju finds himself living as an undocumented worker, constantly under threat of deportation. He takes one menial restaurant job after another, moving through grim kitchens where immigrant laborers are exploited and poorly paid.
From French restaurants to Indian kitchens, Biju works in exhausting conditions, always invisible, always struggling. Despite his hopes for success, he is never able to rise beyond survival. He feels the deep loneliness of displacement, caught between a home he left behind and a country that will never truly accept him.
His story is one of hardship, not triumph. The glamour of America that his father imagines is nothing but a harsh cycle of exploitation and invisibility.
The Invasion of Cho Oyu
As political unrest intensifies in Kalimpong, the insurgents arrive at Cho Oyu. They raid the judge’s home, humiliating him and exposing the fragility of the life he has tried to build. Once a powerful figure, he is now reduced to a frightened old man facing young revolutionaries who threaten the very order he once upheld.
The invasion of Cho Oyu marks a turning point in the household. Sai, too, feels the weight of the turmoil as her relationship with Gyan collapses completely. The peace of her secluded world is shattered by both personal heartbreak and political violence.
Unraveling Relationships
Sai is left devastated by Gyan’s betrayal and the hostility of the insurgents. She cannot reconcile the warmth she once felt in her first romance with the anger and suspicion Gyan now directs at her. The innocence of her love story gives way to the harsh realities of a divided society.
Meanwhile, the judge retreats further into his own bitterness, haunted by memories of his youth and his failures as a husband, father, and man. His past continues to weigh heavily, even as the present unravels around him.
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| Kiran Desai Piotr Drabik from Poland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons |
Biju’s Decision to Return
In New York, Biju grows weary of his endless cycle of exploitative jobs. After years of struggle with no progress, he decides to return to India. His journey back is marked not by triumph but by disillusionment, as he carries with him nothing to show for his years abroad.
Biju’s return is meant to reunite him with his father, but it is tinged with defeat. He has inherited not success but loss, echoing the experiences of others in the story.
The Closing Scenes
The novel draws to a close with the characters facing uncertain futures.
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The judge remains a man consumed by bitterness, his life defined by isolation and regret.
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Sai endures the pain of lost love and disillusionment, her innocence shattered by both politics and personal betrayal.
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Gyan remains caught in the currents of nationalist fervor, his relationship with Sai left broken.
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The cook waits anxiously for his son, not yet realizing the extent of Biju’s failures abroad.
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Biju finally returns to Kalimpong, exhausted and empty-handed, hoping only for the comfort of reunion with his father.
There is no neat resolution. Instead, each character is left with the consequences of a fractured world, where dreams are eroded by history, migration, and upheaval. What connects them all is not fulfillment but an inheritance of loss—a legacy of disappointment, estrangement, and unfulfilled longing.
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