The Inheritance of loss vis a vis Globalisation

Just finished a marathon run of Shantaram, The Namesake and The Inheritance of loss. Three excellent pieces of work catering to a different set of human emotions we encounter somewhere down in our lives. Three contrasting tales yet so similar in their themes : someone trying to find his roots, someone moving away from his roots and someone whose roots were uprooted and yet in the end planted firmly in an alien culture and environment.

On Shantaram, I found it sometimes too long a tale to tell. Well it might have to do with my own preference for shorter and crisper books. Too many adventures, too many wise guys cracking up wise sayings one after the other. I lost him somewhere in the middle. Nevertheless, an outright engaging book. An ensemble of dialogues even Tarantino would be proud of.


Not meandering away, I move to the book "Inheritance of Loss". A book so comforting yet so disturbing. So subtle yet so powerful. Making light weather of heavy weather. It may sound cliché to sound cliché but it justs comes out as a breath of fresh air. An old order falling apart and a confused new generation growing up yet growing away from its roots. Set in 1980s it is still highly contemporary. Not to mention how the author, Kiran Desai manages to give a light punch to our current crops of problems. A situation which will surely bring the house down is how Saeed(an Africant immigrant in US)'s mother lets half of his town know about his son's achievement in being in US. And guess what hordes from his town land up in his doorsteps on illegal visas.

One of my interpretations suggested that as a brave new breed of Indians today thriving on a popular culture set of multiplexes, mobile phones etc and forever on a hunt for green to greener pastures, some things more priceless are slipping out of our hands. May be we are just turning out to be immigrants in our countries. Globalisation do strike down somewhere real hard with its repercussions. A round world which is precisely flat. Flat to the point that you might just fall off on its edges. Biju's father whose reputation and social standing sky rocketed in the sleepy town of Kalimpong when his son landed in States while his son was coming in terms of harsh truths of a new order in his life. A generation gap so resounding in our times equivalent to deep and wide gorges in times of technology and money flow happening too fast.

A generation of twenty somethings whose interaction about life itself with his old ones are dying out. A generation which might be growing up with no roots.