Globalization and Gender: Kiran Desai...

In Guadeloupe-they love us there?

No. (77)

                Restaurant talk also introduces the subject of globalization:

“We need to get aggressive about Asia,” the business men said to each other….big buying power in the middle classes, China, India, potential for cigarettes, diapers, Kentucky Fried…this country is done …(136)

Another aspect of globalization is the journey of basmati rice,(you might know about it if you eat in Indian restaurants) the finest Indian rice to Indian restaurants in America.  It’s  journey parallels Biju’s own:

Looking at a dead insect in the sack of basmati that had come all the way from Dehra Dun, he almost wept in sorrow and marvel at its journey, which was tenderness for his own journey. In India almost nobody would be able to afford this rice, and you had to travel around the world to be able  to eat such things where they  were cheap enough that you could gobble them down without being rich; and when you got home to the place where they grew, you couldn’t afford them anymore (191)

So, this is the story of the three writers that I wanted to talk about. They all use the generic dimensions of the novel to suit their own purposes of history telling, story telling and social documentation. Language is more or less referential, expressing reality as it is perceived. There is however, rich indigenization of the English language to mark it as Rao would have wanted, with the specific origin of Indian Writing in English. Regarding the aspect of “gender” that the title promises to talk about, there is nothing feminist per se in any of these novels, except affirming the radical and iconoclastic identity of Rahel, the girl twin in The God of Small Things. Also, there is little poststructuralist skepticism of narration itself. Language is held as an important mediator between truth, nation and history.