I have never been to Kalimpong (not even other parts of India) so I don't know. Has Kiran Desai been honest in her Booker winning novel about the Nepalis of Kalimpong? Anyone from that area?

Hi DP:

You gave me so much insight that now I am flying without wings......

So one quick question to you- is "Writing" the sole factor for Booker Prize???

I think Bengalis are referred to as Bongs, isn't that so?

I too did not like the derogatory portrayal of Nepalis in Desai's book. Though she lived in Kalimpong, she was quoted as saying she would not consider herself or her family as Kalimpong's, perhaps due to displaced colonial superiority complex or because she got picked on by her Nepali mates while growing up.

But the crux of the matter is that, this is, after all, a freaking fiction book. Who gives a flying fudge what one gujju girl thinks in her own little mind. Nepalis in genral, and Kalimpongeys in particular, should not be beholden to what others think of themselves. We are who WE think we are.

Thought some of you might find this interesting:

- http://www.randomhouse.com/boldtype/0599/desai/interview.html

This interview does not directly answer some of the questions or concerns raised on this thread but it does provide some insight into the book and the author.

RSVP,
I wouldn't know the factors determining the winner. But I know I didn't mean 'writing' as a 'sole factor'. And my guess: 'writing' includes language, characterization, structure, creativity, originality, story line and so many other elements. But how would the judges know (or would it even matter to them?) how Nepalis in Darjeeling are?. Since it's a fiction, truth of the story wouldn't probably matter. What do you think?
To me how she presents Nepalis doesn't matter. My perception of us and of Nepalis of Kalingpong/Darjeeling is not going to change just because I read her. For someone from far away, that may not be the case. They will know us the way we are pictured in those famous books.

Dazzling ko keti
Thank God you found her description of Nepalis as "neps" disturbing..otherwise I was going to go postal on you :).

sgy

Negative portrayal of a group of people does do some damage IMO. We have seen fictional portrayals of groups mar people's ideas. Look at cases of the African Americans, American Indians etc.

Anyway...the girl is laughing all the way to the bank so there is no going back there.

Very interesting conversation. Thought some of you might find this interview and the counter-points (next post) interesting:

Source - http://www.rediff.com/news/2006/jan/30inter1a.htm

'Human warmth is such an innate part of India'

January 30, 2006

Meet Kiran Desai

You were born in India and educated here, in England and the United States. Considering your formative years were spent abroad though, is there any particular reason both your books are set in India?

I left India when I was 15, but I have immediate family in Delhi and return every year to the family home, so the connection was never broken. I think my first book was filled with all that I loved most about India and knew I was in the inevitable process of losing. It was also very much a book that came from the happiness of realising how much I loved to write.

The second book isn't a book that is set entirely in India, but one that tries to capture what it means to live between East and West and what it means to be an immigrant. On a deeper level, it explores what happens when a Western element is introduced into a country that is not of the West, which is what happened, of course, during colonial times and is happening again with India's new relationship with the States.
I also wanted to write about what happens when you take people from a poor country and place them in a wealthy one. How does the imbalance between these two worlds change a person's thinking and feeling? How do these changes manifest themselves in a personal sphere, a political sphere, over time?

These are old themes that continue to be relevant in today's world, the past informing the present, the present revealing the past.

I haven't been to Kalimpong or Darjeeling, but your descriptions of both places came across as extremely authentic. Did you actually visit them? Also, with reference to the Nepali insurgence, what sort of research did that part of the book involve?
When I was growing up, my family had a house in Kalimpong that was named Chomiomo after a snow mountain in Tibet, and I briefly went to school in Kalimpong's St Joseph's Convent. My aunt, a doctor in the bazaar, still lives in this town in an old house in which the last inhabitant, a blind English woman, died completely eaten by maggots in her big brass bed, abandoned by her servants.

Kalimpong has a population of Tibetan refugees and a majority population of Nepalis who were brought generations ago to work on British tea plantations. It is a very beautiful place, but the strains were obvious even when we were living there. My aunt lived through the agitation and we left just as the trouble was beginning. I could feel the strains, but I was about 13 then and it was many years before I could understand the reasons behind them as well as behind other conflicts of class and nationality that this book examines.

I couldn't have written this without having grown up in India, but I also couldn't have written it without having left India or without the memories of people who had gone to England in previous generations.

What does it mean to be an immigrant? What does it mean to return or to journey between worlds? There is a parallel between the stories of Nepali immigrants in India and Indian immigrants in the States, all struggling with questions of what it means to be the cheap labour, with the questions of rights and identity.

The political information is accurate to my knowledge and based on my memories and the stories of everyone I know there. Also, the details are accurate: Gobbo the town thief with a relative in the police, the two old cobras living in the jhora ravine, a pair of Afghan princesses, a Swiss priest who ran a cheese making enterprise. I remember him with great affection along with the lovely sweet yoghurt and the chocolate cigars he sold from the dairy.

While writing this book, I wrote all the Kalimpong bits in Kalimpong, staying in a house lent to me during the rainy season. It was very wild and beautiful, rain hammering down, mist and fog. I lived alone and learned both the hard and the beautiful way what it means to be a writer.

You manage to raise pertinent questions related to the immigrant issue, in the novel. The overwhelming tone that comes across is one of bitterness though, felt by most immigrants who leave their home country. Would you agree with that?

I think there's always a degree of loss in being an immigrant. It feels as if one will never be able to tell an entire story ever again. There'll be an aspect of living half a life, having only half a story to tell. We tend to hope for a simplicity of truth, a wholeness which is rarely delivered us.

My book examines lives that are forced, because of circumstance, to be those of hypocrisy, of gaps and fears, or of truths that cannot be simply attained and added up into anything trustworthy. They conflict with other peoples' ideas of things, or they belong to times past and stories that are lost or forgotten.

People deal with situations like this differently. I've seen a lot of insistence on being as American as possible, which I think is something that often comes out of a sense of shame. I've seen a lot of cruelty in the process of leaving and breaking families apart.
What frightens me most, though, is that while there's a lot of crowing about how we're the richest minority group, we tend to leave out the fact that the poorest people of India are also in the States, betrayed not only by the Western world, but by the wealthier group of Indian immigrants.

The divide that exists in India continues overseas. It is to the advantage of everyone on the more powerful side. There's never been an honest attempt in the United States to address the problem of illegal immigration. It suits them to have an underclass as much as it suits wealthier people in India to have a servant class.

A lot of the exchanges between characters - Lola and Noni versus Mrs Sen, for instance - reflect leanings towards cultures not their own. Do you come across that a lot while living abroad?

Yes, while Lola and Noni are Anglophiles and Mrs Sen is a passionate supporter of the United States. I have seen people of the United States and various Western countries, passionately interested in, say, Japan, or India. For different reasons, of course, but still a desire for something beyond their own existence.

There is a certain sympathy in your tone when you describe the desperation experienced by Biju and thousands like him as they stand in line for a visa. What inspired you to come up with that particular aspect of the novel? Have you spoken to people like Biju in the US?

I have stood in line myself at the American embassy many times over and witnessed the scene unfold. I think poverty is so extremely close to us that it's practically the closest thing in our lives although sometimes we refuse to see it.
It's every bite of food we eat that's been picked by someone poverty stricken and every item of clothing we wear. I've seen the efforts made on the Indian side to leave India, I get requests for help in this matter every time I return. And in the States, in every restaurant and shop, in taxis all over Manhattan, I've heard the story on the other side.
I used to live near a bakery like the Queen of Tarts (a restaurant mentioned in her novel)and talked to the people who worked there. And I lived with people from Zanzibar in the neighbourhood that I describe, so that is also taken from real life.

What did you think you wanted to say when you first set out to write The Inheritance of Loss? Do you think you managed to convey all you wanted to?

Ever since I left India to lead this life of going back and forth, certain patterns have revealed themselves, emotional as well as historical. I began to consider the complexity of growing up in India, the changing world of my parents and grandparents, the subsequent direction of my life that is a continuation of those days and the upheavals of that time.

My maternal grandmother was German, left before the war and never returned. My grandfather was a refugee from Bangladesh. On my father's side, my grandparents came from a village in Gujarat. My grandfather travelled all the way to England for an education. The characters of my story are entirely fictional, but these journeys as well as my own provided insight into what it means to travel between East and West and it is this I wanted to capture.

The fact that I live this particular life is no accident. It was my inheritance.
As for whether I'm content with the book -- I always have the feeling that something got away. Where is that thing - the sublime novel? What would it feel like to hold that in my hands? Whenever I come across it as a reader, I read trembling. Like any art form, when it's great, the person experiencing it exists in a form of grace. I hunger for that feeling as a writer as well as a reader.

Do you read other authors while working on a novel of your own?

I try and read authors who are not working out of the same landscape. I find if I do, their sensibility seeps into my own. But I'm catching up now. Of course, I read other things. (Winfried Georg) Sebald, (Haruki) Murakami, (Isaac Bashevis) Singer, (Saul) Bellow, older writers like (Junichiro) Tanizaki and Patrick White. A wonderful treasure of a book I think everyone should read is Earth and Ashes by Atiq Rahimi, an Afghan writer. It's a complex book that seems to capture all of what is happening in Afghanistan, although it's tiny in pages. A wonderful, wonderful book.

Every seventh person in India appears to be working on a debut novel at the moment. Have you read any contemporary Indian fiction - specifically, Indian writers living in India - that has moved you recently?

Yes, it's nice to know that whatever they're saying, the novel is not dead in India. I just re-read Upamanyu Chatterjee's English, August and was impressed by it all over again. Arundhati Roy, of course. Amit Chaudhari. Mahasweta Devi in translation. I read my Ruskin Bond like everyone else in India. I think with the entire body of his work, like (R K) Narayan's, he provides us with a bedrock of what it is to be Indian, in the sweetest possible incarnation of its meaning.

What is your earliest memory of India, and the one that last struck you about the country?

My earliest memory dates back to baby days in Chandigarh and like most childhood memories, they are domestic. Sitting under the table pulling the toes of all my older siblings and parents in turn. Utter happiness. I remember my father whistling in his bath and calling me his three-in-one ice cream, chocolate-vanilla-strawberry. Of sitting, a very little girl, in my mother's lap, layers of soft, old Bengali striped sari, playing with the bangles she wore, one on each wrist, a book in front, and her voice which is an utterly beautiful voice, reading.

My most recent impression was of a city that, while changing rapidly, still feels old, the light, the dust, the domes of tombs between the high rises, so many more years older. Delhi will always have its history at its back. The glitz everyone talks about still seems isolated to me, contained in a few neighbourhoods, in some shops and restaurants. While one class talks in dollars and euros, poverty is as old as ever, deeply entrenched. Despite this, my impression was also of a happy city.
Human warmth is such an innate part of India, and good humour. I miss it terribly now that I am back in New York.

Considering the value of your earlier work, you don't really need to do these media road trips (Kiran Desai was recently in Delhi to do a number of interviews with the Indian media?). Why do you?

I keep it down to a bare minimum because it doesn't exactly go with the way in which I write, which is in a very quiet and isolated fashion. And it doesn't exactly go with my personality. I'm trying to get out of some readings as I write this. But publishers expect it these days.

I think it's become an inevitable part of being a writer. It's a funny thing because, of course, it takes a completely different talent to write than it does to perform.
Some writers have the amazing ability to do both. I just saw Rushdie, and after him Seth, and thought that if they hadn't wanted to write, they might have easily become actors.

Are you satisfied with the way your work has developed, as a writer? Do you see yourself continuing to write more in future?

I think this book is better than the last, but certainly I don't think it's perfect. It's the hardest thing to write a perfect book. Yet, of course, as a reader, I hunger for it. It's a constant desire and I know I'll write another book for that reason.
Each book is its own challenge and I find myself at exactly the same level of trepidation and doubt as when I began the last time around.
Writing, for me, means humility. It's a process that involves fear and doubt, especially if you're writing honestly. I imagine businessmen feel smug at least twice a day. Writers? The moments are rare.

Source: - http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2006/01/kiran-desai-interview_20.html

Kalimpong: An Inheritance of Loss!
Vimal Khawas

As a fellow local of Kalimpong, I was compelled to get hold of Kiran Desai’s ‘Inheritance of Loss’ that came into limelight after it clinched through the Booker Prize, 2006. Several reviews in national dailies, reputed magazines and internet, floating around of late, many praising the literary merit of the novel while others criticising her mocking attitude towards Nepali speakers and Kalimpong, supplied added impetus to me to lay my hands on the award winning work. The novel, although not directly based, has a foundation in Kalimpong Town located in the western part of Darjeeling Hills in Eastern Himalayas. 

Reading through the pages, I immediately had an impression that there was an ample scope for any educated locals to be annoyed given the manner in which the author has handled Kalimpong, its diverse ethnic groups, and the on-going Gorkhaland Agitation of the 1980s. The narratives clearly highlight her lack of correct understanding of the socio-cultural and economic dynamics operating in the area. Among many of the qualms that have perturbed the educated locals in Kalimpong forcing them to launch protests across spaces of the town, few of them may briefly be summarised.

First, Kalimpong is not as bad during monsoons as highlighted by Kiran Desai. Although it rains heavily and at times spontaneously during the period, the dreadfulness of reptiles, lizards, moths, rats and such other insects are the only imaginations, far from reality. The town is located at an altitude of over 1,250 metres and has a moderate climate ranging from between 15°C to 25°C in summer and 7°C to 15°C in winter, offering year round comfort. Hence, there is no question of sub-tropical organisms bothering humans except during exceptional circumstances. 

Second, the author has been unable to differentiate between the Nepali speakers who have been bonafide Indian citizens and those who are Nepali citizens but working in Kalimpong on a seasonal basis. Moreover, her parallel treatment of the immigration issue in United States conveys a bad impression to the global readers about Indian Nepalis living in Kalimpong and elsewhere in Darjeeling Hills. American immigrants and Indian Nepali speakers in Darjeeling hills cannot be compared. Kalimpong along with other parts of Darjeeling was once a unit of Sikkim. While Kalimpong was snatched away by Bhutan for a brief period, other parts of Darjeeling Hills were taken over by Nepal and subsequently Darjeeling Hills including Kalimpong was taken over by British India. Hence, it is historically obvious, the region was bound to evolve as a melting pot of ethnic diversity- Lepchas, Bhutias, Nepalis, and Bengalis. Further, the development of market, introduction of tea and trade with Tibet from Kalimpong gradually encouraged other social groups- Biharis, Marwaris, Tibetans and others- to find spaces for themselves in the region. Therefore, signaling time and again that Indian Nepalis are immigrants from Nepal will not hold good. 

Third, the novel gives the impression that Indian Nepali speakers of Kalimpong were brought from Nepal generations ago to work on British tea plantations. This is simply not true. Out of the total functioning tea gardens in Darjeeling Hills Kalimpong sub-division accommodates only four of them. They were introduced in Kalimpong much after the British left India. Kalimpong is largely an agrarian economy. Paddy, maize, millet, buckwheat, ginger, cardamom, orange, and more recently horticulture and floriculture are the backbones of regional economy of Kalimpong. Hence, Nepali speakers in Kalimpong did not migrate as plantation labourers but as subsistent agriculturists. Further, migration had been taking place across the area much before the British set their foot in the region. 

Fourth, Inheritance of Loss talks of Gorkhaland Agitation but fails to understand many facets of the movement’s dynamics. It traces its root to the merger of Sikkim into the Indian Union and also the rising insurgencies in the north-east India. Such error on the part of author only reflects the fact she did not do her history homework properly. Ethnic discontentment in Darjeeling started long before the country saw its independence – around 1907 if not earlier. Moreover, mention of communal divide during the agitation is totally uncalled for. There were no instances of any kind of political harassment-s on communal lines. It was largely a united struggle against the age-old state regression. On rare occasions, however, resident Bengalis were suspected as agents of state and the ruling comrades, whom Gorkhas hated the most then. She, however, declares in one of her recent interviews “The political information is accurate to my knowledge and based on my memories and the stories of everyone I know there”.

Further, it is clear from her writing that Desai could not familarise herself with Nepali language as she never uses Nepali proverbs and jargons to substantiate the local characters of Kalimpong, although she uses Hindi slang here and there. She, however, boasts of living and studying in Kalimpong before they left the place. One of the recent reviews further tells us that the author lived in Kalimpong for six weeks in 2002 for the purpose of research while she was in the process of writing her novel.

Needless to say, however, as one of the editorials in a leading news daily rightly pointed out, “Art is a point of view; it is reality recast and dramatised through imagination and, if it hurts, one must simply pretend it is fiction, which it is in any case”. Fellow locals in Kalimpong should have to be logical and be in charge of their emotions. It’s a fiction and nothing more than that! Further, one also need not forget that she is a fiction writer and not a historian.

** Vimal Khawas is Associate Fellow, Council for Social Development and Senior Research Scholar, School of International Studies,JNU, New Delhi**

Sorry the formatting on the last post got messed up. I don't want to re-post since I have already used more than what I think should be my fair share of disk space for the day so please check this link - http://jaiarjun.blogspot.com/2006/01/kiran-desai-interview_20.html for a better formatted and more legible version of the very iteresting points raised by Mr Khawas.

Thank you Captain for the article. I had already read her interview.Very true (and good) that she is just a ficton writer--NOT a historian.

DP - Not sure if you have seen this one as well, but I thought it was interesting how she described her book as " a shadow book rather than a book about red-blooded substance".

Meet the Author : Kiran Desai

And this interview from Charile Rose. She is in the third segment - please forward to 42:00 minutes in the program - the first two segments are with other guests.




(Forward to 42:00)

Hi DP:

I also did not mean that you lauded Ms. Desai for her writing skill only, as you said it is not the sole factor.

I am glad that there are few people like yourself, who have so unbiased perception of anything, but one quick question to you do you feel the same if she pictured the similar instances to the city where you born, grew up and spent some part of your life??? Not to forget here, she spent some part of her life on that area to rule out the notion of a historian but a fiction writer.

Well, what can we say more when there is a big heritage behind her surname, education to name few....

Anyway, thanks DP for sharing with us.

Thank you Captain. No, I hadn't watched those pieces.

RSVP,
I enjoy/love reading (even though the opportunity cost(time) of it is high here/at this point of time, at least for me). I always try to view the author, style, and content independently (I may read a book, like the style and not necessarily the story itself).I truly believe that an author, even of fiction, of that category should be careful/honest while depecting real places and real people.
To answer your question about my town, I come from a village adjacent to a town. Despite thousand shortcomings (natural, social, economical.....), I love it more than any place else. I believe most people feel the same way.
I don't think I louded Desai for anything. I enjoyed reading her book even though I didn't believe it's content. I enjoyed her like I enjoyed Arundhati Roy, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Monika Ali. Of course, they all have different perspectives and styles.
Do you not think it's my turn now to ask you a question? How do you feel about all this? You mostly asked me my views inadequetly expressing your own.
It's been nice communicating with you, Captain, and others in this thread.

Amendum:
I love it more than any place........I believe most people feel same way about their places/cities/towns.

Hi DP:

Many thanks for your response!

Regarding my turn, let me start with my reverse question to you of how you feel if some one tries to picture the place where you born and raise as the opposite as it is. I think you lauded her on winning a booke prize and also her excellent writing, but that is not what I am satisfied with the writer. What matters writing is the essence of writing. Just because someone has a priviledge heritage on the field of literature and has over prized education, so winning booker prize or similar makes no sense. There are so many other good deserving writers than her for such recognition.

Well, perhaps I am seeing from one perspective, and may be I am not seeing from the other side. As I have not read it yet to just to accuse her writing, but I have at least some sense of understanding of what do you mean by writing. What I was bit offended was the social interpretation of Nepalese living in Darjeeling, a tiny part in the state of West Bengal where Nepalese are treated as a third class citizen by few ruling Indians, a typical indian perception to any Nepalese as a Kanchha,Bahadur, Watchman, Kanchhi and etc. And it is so sad to see the same in the book by distinguished writer as her.

Well, thanks for sharing once again DP. I enjoyed sharing with you too...!!!

By the way, my question was not how is your place rather how do you feel if someone picture your place (where you born and raised) as opposite as it is......

I am so glad to know that you do feel same as me, Janani Janma Bhumischa Swargadap Gariyashi....

RSVP,
That's exactly my original posting is about-- questioning her portrayal of Darjeeling/Kalingpong and Nepalis there.Her failure in admitting (in characterization) that there are honest and intelectual Nepalis in that area.
Winner Booker is not easy. There should be a certain standard in writing to even get anywhere near that name. One wins and that doesn't mean that there're not equally good (or even better) ones out there.
By the way, I hated her first book--I mean the style.

This from yesterday's Hindustan times:

- http://www.hindustantimes.com/news/181_1858953,0008.htm

Kiran Desai's Inheritance outrages Nepali readers

Indo-Asian News Service

Kathmandu, December 4, 2006


Indian-origin author Kiran Desai's bestselling novel The Inheritance of Loss, that won the Man Booker prize for fiction this year, has created a hullabaloo in Nepal with readers calling her insensitive, colonial and prejudiced.

The 34-year-old's second novel moves from Kalimpong, a sleepy town in east India, to Britain and the US, recording racism, the plight of the Asian illegal immigrant in the west and the insurgency spearheaded by the Gorkha National
Liberation Front in eastern India.

A large number of the characters in the novel are people of Nepali origin and their depiction has angered Nepalis, who accuse her of having a warped vision.

A strong protest came from Nepali author and educator DB Gurung, who was educated in eastern India.

While reviewing the Inheritance for the Kathmandu Post last week, Gurung came down heavily on the portrayal of the Nepali diaspora, calling it the result of "living a bastardised life inside and out of India that Desai seems unable to acclimatise herself (to) either in the western milieu or her own home".

The Nepali author says Desai has portrayed the Nepali inhabitants of Kalimpong as "crook, dupe, cheat and lesser humans" while the "truth" is that the hill community still retains its language, culture and dignity despite exploitation by the "hungry jackals from the plains of Calcutta".

Gurung has also taken exception to Desai's creation of Biju, the son of a Nepali cook, struggling as an illegal immigrant in New York.

"I have seen many Indian engineers and executives doing the same sort of job or selling hotdogs in the streets of Los Angeles, New York, Chicago and Washington," he wrote scathingly. "They would perhaps make more poignant characters than Biju."

Letters from enraged readers began pouring in, agreeing with Gurung.

Calling Desai "schizophrenic", Dinesh Kafle said contrary to her "prejudice-ridden characterisation" of Nepalis, the community had been able to preserve their dignity at all times.

"Had any Nepali writer written the same about Indians, it would have been a political issue," Kafle added. "Her book is a direct attack on the dignity of the Nepali people."

Nepalis are also expressing anger at Desai's reference to Mohammad Ali Jinnah and Buddha.

"Desai thinks of Mohammad Ali Jinnah only as a pork eater and states that Lord Buddha died (due to greed) for pork. She has a chronic deficiency of an adult perspective," said one letter.

Nepali readers are also protesting the "de-consecration" of Mt Kanchenjunga, the third highest peak in the world, and Bhairav, one of the most-revered religious icons in Nepal.

Desai writes of the Kanchenjunga "glowing a last brazen pornographic pink" while the Hindu icon is described as a demon with hungry fangs, brandishing an angry penis.

Gurung also takes to task Hermione Lee, chair of the Booker judges, asking her to "wake up" and realise that the novel she praised for its humanity is a "slander and brazen attack on the Nepali community and their dignity".

I don't share the sentiments expressed by those quoted in that article, but thought this might add a perspective to the issue from the other side of the border.