Kiran Desai's Booker Prize winning novel "Inheritance of Loss" is much talked about in various media, including literary symposiums, festivals and book reviews published widely across the world. (The Booker Prize is a highly prestigious award in Britain.) Desai’s command over language, lucidity in expression and the art of weaving the plots together to make a novel are certainly praiseworthy. Her postcolonial brainstorming of the lives of migrants whose gripping accounts tell of their hardships, confusions and the erosion of trust and faith among mankind make the novel lively and compelling reading.

Her creative craftsmanship reaches new heights when it comes to exposing the characters in an entirely different situation in the foreign land--be it in the west or within the Indian sub-continent. Like the characters of noted American novelist Henry James, Desai’s characters land in a new place to experience and suffer. While retired judge Jemmubhai Patel encounters a racist England of 50s, other characters like Biju encounter horrible basement life at the world's busiest city of New York in the United States. For Sai, the principal character, and perhaps the Kiran’s mouthpiece, every place she visits is a new land

Another facet of the novel is Desai’s successful experiment with “streams of consciousness.” She uses the technique to inform us about Jemmubhai’s past. Whenever the retired judge in his dilapidated mansion encounters other’s youthful dispositions, he goes down memory lane to tell us of his past.

The novel deals with a simple but tumultuous story of Sai, an Indian orphan girl who grows from her teenage years to a young woman when the 324 page novel ends abruptly, without unifying her with her tutor sweetheart, Gyan. After the untimely demise of her parents in Russia, Sai has to return to her maternal grandfather in the north-eastern Indian hilly town of Kalimpong. During the course of learning Physics, she falls in love with Gyan, the descendant of Nepal who later disappears from the scene and the readers are informed that he had joined the ethnic insurgency.

In a parallel narrative the readers are taken to New York to see the troubled life of Biju who had high aspirations while coming to the land of plenty. His father, who has been the cook for the judge since he was 12, informs us of Biju at times. His high expectations reflect the state of the mind of the migrants' families back in their respective homes. In the Kalimpong neighborhood, she tries to bring nationalities from many different places so that she could talk about migration, their cultures and the intercultural relationships. The novel is successful in arguing about the postcolonial chaos and despair, shabby modernity, and the unavoidable circumstances that result from unjust societies of the present times through characters like Biju, Jemmubhai and Gyan.

However, her metaphorical issue of discussion -- multiculturalism-- seems to falter on the ground as she fully fails to give justice to the societies she attempts to talk about in the novel that received rave reviews in the west, but got some critical reviews back in the Indian-subcontinent. She is neither fully truthful in explaining the socio-political problem of Kalimpong, where most of the events of the novel take place, nor the bordering nation of Nepal from where Gyan evolves in her novel nor the troubled basement life of illegal migrants in the heart of New York. Readers argue that despite her efforts, Desai failed to fully examine the cross-cultural realities in the novel as she found little time to explore them.

Take for instance her portrayal of Nepal and the Nepali people. Through characters Lola and Noni, she informs the readers "these Neps (meaning Nepali people) can't be trusted. And they don't just rob. They think absolutely nothing of murdering, as well (page 45)". Sadly, there is no evidence that justifies the statement in the novel. Despite the occasional incidences of bloodshed during the Maoist insurgency, history attests to the fact that Nepal has always been a peaceful country and the Nepalese the most hospitable and friendly people.

In another instance, Desai talks about the hatred between Pakistanis and Indians in the foreign land. “It (America) was a country where people from everywhere journeyed to work, but oh, surely not Pakistanis! Surely they would not be hired. Surely Indians were better liked …Beware, the cook wrote to his son. Beware. Beware. Keep away. Distrust… Desis (meaning Indians) against Pakis (Pakistanis). Ah, old war, best war.”

In yet another instance, Desai tries to briefly report the sour Indo-China relations of the eighties. Even if true, Desai could have just avoided them as they have no significant role at all in the development of the novel. All they do is inform the readers about her lack of knowledge in history and the bias towards the Indian neighbors.

Although Desai has said in the novel that her characters are purely fictional, she can't deny her thoughts that come through the mouth of her characters. Characters may be fictional but the ideas, no matter who tells them in the work of art, are always of the writer and that the writer should take responsibility of whatever idea is delivered to the readers.

Desai has thus completely missed the intercultural competence. Instead of acquiring the background knowledge about Nepali tradition, religion, norms and values, culture and lifestyle of the Gorkhalis in Darjeeling and the Nepalese in Nepal, and comparing it with her own Indian culture and trying to seek what is common between the two cultures and moving towards peace, tolerance and reconciliation, she remains adamant, like her protagonist Sai, throughout the novel. Her incompetence in reflecting the ethnic background often creates a gap between the lines for the readers who belong to the territory she has explained in the novel. Only readers who are not familiar with the culture of Indian sub-continent would find the novel arresting.

If the targeted readers are like that of the Victorian era and they are bound to kitchen areas, this writer has nothing to say further. But if the novel is for readers from the global village, it should accurately reflect the history and that the cultures and ideas should be politically correct. In the world of literature the principle of ‘art for art’s sake’ still rules the roost. Sad for Desai, the modern readers of literature have established interdisciplinary approach as the way of reading. Desai, thus, still needs to grow and learn the values of the intercultural relationships if she is to become a literary ambassador, or wants to sit down for the next venture.