Indian Love

But he continued to remember: when he located his cabin, he found he had a cabinmate who had grown up in Calcutta composing Latin sonnets in Cattullan hendecasyllables, which he had inscribed into a gilded volume and brought along with him. The cabinmate’s nose twitched at Jemu’s lump of pickle wrapped in a bundle of puris; onions, green chillies, and salt in a twist of newspaper; a banana that in the course of the journey had been slain by heat. No fruit dies so vile and offensive a death as the banana, but it had been packed just in case. In case of What? Jemu shouted silently to his mother.

In case he was hungry along the way or it was a while before meals could be properly prepared or he lacked the courage to go to the dining salon on the ship, given that he couldn’t eat with a knife and fork-

He was furious that his mother had considered the possibility of his humiliation and thereby, the thought, precipitated it. In her attempt to cancel out one humiliation she had only succeeded in adding another.

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, unaesthetic love - the monsters of the ocean could have what she 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.

Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

Este excerto é um dos mais interessantes e dramáticos deste romance, em que a herança deixada pelas circunstâncias, sejam elas quais forem: os pais, o amor, a família, o país e civilização, a emigração para uma vida melhor, a pertença a uma etnia ou um grupo, o clima, as monções - acaba por se revelar uma forma de perda ou de solidão.