Volu m e II - Purdue University Calumet

BBC, and a neighbor’s daughter is in the United States working for CNN. But Biju, the disillusioned
product of a different class, struggles to make a living when he leaves India and arrives in the United States.
However, he quickly learns that without money, education, and class to begin with, an Indian may never
find his fortune in the States; or in any other part of the world for that matter.
Of course, Desai could just tell readers about the travels of her characters, but she chooses to take
her readers to most of these places as they are being visited and explored by her characters. This gives life to
the misery and confusion that they experience in other lands so different from India. By bringing these
situations to life using flashbacks, flash-forwards and changes in setting, she makes readers care and feel the
troubling problem of displacement in a real way. Not only does she show readers the transcontinental
spread of a people displaced by colonialism, but she also delves into the dilemma of place, homeland, and
belonging.
Through her narrative, readers become aware of the reality of each character and of the fact that
each of them has felt the effects of post-colonialism; some more than others. By bringing readers into the
homes and lives of the characters separately, Desai shows how these effects are felt differently but intensely.
Gyan’s situation is such that we notice the differences between his upbringing and Sai’s immediately, yet we
also notice the similarity of despair and unhappiness in their current circumstances. Both are poor, but they
suffer differing levels of poverty. Gyan lives in a miserable home that seems on the edge of falling apart in a
poor section of the city of Kalimpong near Cho Oyu. Sai and the judge wear their poverty in a different
way by living on an estate that seems brilliant to Gyan’s eyes but in reality is falling apart. Gyan’s misery
resides in his inability to find a job like so many other Indians. Sai’s unhappiness lies in the absence of a real
parent and the reality of a failed relationship with a young man who leaves her because of his feelings of
inferiority and desire to join the Ghorkha protests. The judge’s wretchedness is rooted in his loneliness; in
his inability to build a relationship with anyone besides his dog, Mutt.
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