New Delhi: When Kiran Desai won the MAN Booker Prize for her novel, The Inheritance of Loss, the coveted prize not only brought fame to the little-known author, it also lifted sleepy little town Kalimpong - situated in the folds of the great Himalayas - into global limelight.
One would have thought that all the attention would have made the citizens of Kalimpong proud, but that was not to be.
The people of Kalimpong are unhappy about what they call "dark portrayal" of the town in Desai's book. "The ugly and negative depiction" of Kalimpong in the novel has left the people dismayed and unhappy, so much so that they have now launched an agitation and threatened to burn the book in public.
The residents insist that the place is quiet, with nothing particularly exciting, and the riots and communal divides as described in Desai's magnum opus is something unheard of for them.
The citizens of Kalimpong have taken offence to the author's condescending remarks about their beloved town, the least of which is the Gorkhaland agitation for a separate Gorkha homeland in the '80s. Residents also dismissed Desai's suggestion of a communal divide as "hogwash".
The residents say they are "shocked and upset" with the bitter and insensitive portrayal of this small town. They say they have been robbed of their dignity, especially when Desai mentions the ethnic Nepalese being treated "like a minority in a place where they are the majority."
They are also amazed that she has taken actual characters from the town and twisted their names to suit her novel. Even though Desai's novel is almost semi-autobiographical, the locals are buying none of it.
Desai's readers and critics, however, claim that this part is the charm of the novel, as it describes the emotional realities of the lives of the fated characters in the novel. Western critics feel authors who dare to describe bitterly their experiences in India have always faced a social barrier as far as their writings are concerned.
For instance, when Monica Ali's Brick Lane hit the stands, shopkeepers in East London agitated for what they called was a veiled attack on their way of life. Closer home, author Arundhati Roy invited the wrath of the locals and the ruling Communist Party in Kerala for her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things.
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