The Inheritance of Loss

“Could fulfillment ever be felt as deeply as loss? Romantically she decided that love must surely reside in the gap between desire and fulfillment, in the lack, not the contentment. Love was the ache, the anticipation, the retreat, everything around it but the emotion itself.” 

One of the words in the novel’s title, loss, is the subject of Sai’s meditation. Loss defines love, and love defines loss, a principle that the remainder of the story bears out as characters extend their affections over long distances, both literal and metaphorical.

“A great amount of warring, betraying, bartering had occurred; between Nepal, England, Tibet, India, Sikkim, Bhutan; Darjeeling stolen from here, Kalimpong plucked from there—despite, ah, despite the mist charging down like a dragon, dissolving, undoing, making ridiculous the drawing of borders.” 

Kalimpong, the novel’s primary setting, lies at the seat of great territorial strife in the Himalayan region. The countries listed have seized and ceded territory from each other for the purposes of trade, armed conflict, and imperial interests (particularly in the case of England, which ruled India until its independence in 1947). Migration and map-drawing are central themes throughout the novel.

“Jemu picked up the package, fled to the deck, and threw it overboard. Didn’t his mother think of the inappropriateness of her gesture? Undignified love, Indian love, stinking, unaesthetic love—the monsters of the ocean could have what she had so bravely packed getting up in that predawn mush. The smell of dying bananas retreated, oh, but now that just left the stink of fear and loneliness, perfectly exposed.” 

The judge sails for Cambridge with a banana his grieving mother packs in his bag; he is immediately ashamed that the fruit has rotted in the heat and disturbed his cabinmate with its smell. His shame in being Indian has already planted hooks in him, as this scene demonstrates, but it masks his fear of being alone and afraid.