The Inheritance of Loss

My book club met this evening to discuss Kirin Desai’s The Inheritance of Loss, which won the Booker Prize last year. The discussion was rich as we tackled the complexity of this novel over a delicious Indian dinner.
One passage about a young Indian man living as an expatriate in New York and contemplating returning to India, grabbed my attention: “they returned and found they’d missed the entire last quarter of a lifetime, their parents like photograph negatives. After the initial excitement was over, it often became obvious that the love was gone; for affection was only a habit after all, and people, they forgot, or they became accustomed to its absence.”

The subject of this passage has been on my mind recently, as I am preparing to be abroad for a full nine months, away from the familiarity and affection of friends and family. Last year, after graduating from Smith, I went overseas to work in East Africa and stayed there for 7 months. When I returned, my experience was similar to the description in the passage… While my friends and family were excited to have me back at home, there was a palpable disconnection. I had been away for a while and had gone through a life-changing experience. I had so much I wanted to share, but what I really wanted others to understand that was not relatable through words, stories, and pictures. Also, life did not stop for others while I was gone. They had changed and grown and had intense life-experiences—too much to casually discuss over dinner. And keeping in touch by email during my months away only captured so much… There was so much missed on both ends. Recently, I find myself pondering this difficult transition experience of last year. Perhaps I am lucky that I have already gone through this once, and this time, I am more prepared to manage the challenge of time and distance…