The Loneliness of Kiran Desai

Kiran Desai, one of the multimillion cohort of Indians whose first language is English, feels alienated and sees her alienation a result of being a foreign language speaker in her own country. By this measure, of course, most Indians are foreign language speaker in that they do not speak Hindi as their first language. Yet, though no doubt some of them feel alienated also, many do not, just as many Indian English speakers do not.

Kiran Desai, I submit, feels alienated because it is her nature to feel alienated.

Kiran’s argument is more sophisticated than that of the Moroccan lady I discussed here earlier. Kiran ascribes her alienation not to the (presumed) demeaning function of agreeing (being compelled?) to speak to the Bwanas in the Bwanas' language, but to the fact that while, growing up in the Himalayan foothills, she experienced a kind of forking of consciousness: she found her body in the Indian hills ("reality") while her mind dwelt in the English flatlands ("novels"). Those English flatlands were of course not accessible to those around her without the literature bug. This -- she feels -- made her “odd”: it made it impossible for her to share her inner world with the physical persons around her.

But her condition is not different in this regard from that of others with oddball interests: that of a Pole in Poland who loves the opera, or an American in America who plays role playing games. However that a tragically felt sense of alienation must result from this condition is not immediately apparent. It could, of course, if one has the proclivity to feel alienated to begin with. But then a person with the proclivity will manage to feel alienated in all and any circumstances; and if he or she is intelligent, won't lack for presumed external reasons to blame for the condition.

This proclivity to feel alienation is no more than the obverse of the so called desire to belong.

This appears to be a strong desire with some people. I am not sure, however, what the term “to belong” might mean. The concept seems to me a muddle. The fact that we instinctively assume that we know what it means, and react to it emotionally, only hides from us the obvious truth that the phrase, simply put, means nothing. Consider this quote from Illakowiczowna, returning to Poland after 6 years of exile during WW2:

"This (experience) cannot be compared to anything else on earth, believe me: that every encountered man is familiar, that he greets us, smiles, gets angry in our way. That one wants nothing from these people: no profit, no popularity, not even decent treatment; that one desires nothing except that they exist, and that they be familiar."

The term familiar appears to mean here a certain state of Illakowiczowna's mind; it is hard to see how the ability to reach it can be anything other than a property of her own mind.