The Inheritance of Loss - Kiran Desai [75]
Everyone looked hopeless, the men in the room and the interviewer who had finally turned the shuddering light off—”Voltage low”—and conducted the interview in darkness. “Very good, we will let you know if you are successful.” Gyan, feeling his way out through the maze and stepping into the unforgiving summer light, knew he would never be hired.
“Here we are eighty percent of the population, ninety tea gardens in the district, but is even one Nepali-owned?” asked the man.
“No.”
“Can our children learn our language in school?”
“No.”
“Can we compete for jobs when they have already been promised to others?”
“No.”
“In our own country, the country we fight for, we are treated like slaves. Every day the lorries leave bearing away our forests, sold by foreigners to fill the pockets of foreigners. Every day our stones are carried from the riverbed of the Teesta to build their houses and cities. We are laborers working barefoot in all weather, thin as sticks, as they sit fat in managers’ houses with their fat wives, with their fat bank accounts and their fat children going abroad. Even their chairs are fat. We must fight, brothers and sisters, to manage our own affairs. We must unite under the banner of the GNLF, Gorkha National Liberation Front. We will build hospitals and schools. We will provide jobs for our sons. We will give dignity to our daughters carrying heavy loads, breaking stone on the roads. We will defend our own homeland. This is where we were born, where our parents were born, where our grandparents were born. We will run our own affairs in our own language. If necessary, we will wash our bloody kukris in the mother waters of the Teesta. Jai Gorkha.” The speech giver waved his kukri and then pierced his thumb, raised the gory sight for all to see.
“Jai Gorkha! Jai Gorkha! Jai Gorkha!” the crowd screamed, their own blood thrumming, pulsing, surging forth at the sight of the speech giver’s hand. Thirty supporters stepped forward and also drew blood from their thumbs with their kukris to write a poster demanding Gorkhaland, in blood.
“Brave Gorkha soldiers protecting India—hear the call,” said the leaflets flooding the hillsides. “Please quit the army at once. For when you will be retired then you may be treated as a foreigner.”
The GNLF would offer jobs to its own, and a 40,000 strong Gorkha army, universities, and hospitals.
______
Later, Chhang, Bhang, Owl, Donkey, and many others sat in the cramped shack of Ex-Army Thapa’s Canteen on Ringkingpong Road. A small handwritten sign painted on the side said “Broiler Chicken.” A carom game board was balanced on an oil barrel outside and two creaky tattered soldiers, on bowlegs, originally of the Eighth Gurkha Rifles, played as the clouds shifted and billowed through their knees. The mountains sliced sharply and tumbled down at either side to bamboo thickets gray with distilled vapor.
The air grew colder and the evening progressed. Gyan, who had been gathered up accidentally in the procession, who had shouted half facetiously, half in earnest, who had half played, half lived a part, found the fervor had affected him. His sarcasm and his embarrassment were gone. Fired by alcohol, he finally submitted to the compelling pull of history and found his pulse leaping to something that felt entirely authentic.
He told the story of his great grandfather, his great uncles, “And do you think they got the same pension as the English of equal rank? They fought to death, but did they earn the same salary?”
All the other anger in the canteen greeted his, clapped his anger on the back. It suddenly became clear why he had no money and no real job had come his way, why he couldn’t fly to college in America, why he was ashamed to let anyone see his home. He thought of how he had kept Sai away the day she had suggested visiting his family. Most of all, he realized