Summary
The text opens on an estate in Kalimpong in the northeastern Himalayas. Sai, a seventeen-year-old girl, reads a vintage issue of National Geographic while her grandfather, judge Jemubhai Patel, plays chess by himself. An entitled, surly man, the judge scolds his cook for poorly preparing the afternoon tea, though the condition of the estate reveals that he is clearly in a state of poverty.
Young Nepali guerillas emerge from the mist to steal the judge's guns. They examine the house, mocking its dilapidated state before commandeering firearms and several colonial luxuries, such as alcohol. The judge, Sai, and the cook allow them to go for fear of violent retribution, and against his better instincts, the cook reports the robbery to the police and complies with their investigation. In the cook's hovel, they find a carefully maintained collection of letters from the cook's nineteen-year-old son, Biju, an undocumented restaurant worker in New York City. The cook expresses pride in his son and assumes that because Biju cooks "Angrezi khana," or English food, he must occupy a high social position abroad.
However, Biju actually works at a hot dog stand with other undocumented immigrants until the store manager dismisses them when instructed to do a green card check on his employees. Biju goes from job to job, dismissed for various reasons, such as fighting with a Pakistani co-worker, to delivering food cold, to racially-loaded complaints that he "smells."
Sai came to live with the judge after her parents, an interfaith couple who joined the Soviet aerospace program, were killed in a car accident in Moscow. The missionary nuns who cared for Sai in their convent school took her to the judge, her closest living relative who had not officially disowned her parents. Though the mountain estate confuses and frightens Sai, she is pleased to escape the abusive nuns.
Sai's arrival triggers the judge's flashback to when he departed India for England and the racism he endured while studying at Cambridge. Leaving behind his family and his fourteen-year-old wife, Jemu is disgusted by his parents' expressions of love and affection, such as giving him home-cooked food for the trip and a lucky coconut to throw over the side of the ship. He tries to distance himself from all things Indian, growing ashamed of his accent and appearance, until he does not speak and dissociates from his own body.
Biju delivers takeout to a group of privileged Indian college students protesting gentrification, who externally side "with the poor people who wished them gone." However, they hope to one day become "gentry" and will likely ignore the voices and complaints of poor people. These students anger Biju, who cycles home through the dirty streets of New York City to the rat-infested basement he shares with other undocumented immigrants. The electricity goes out in the apartment, and the men scream in frustration.
Analysis
The text personifies the mountain where the judge and Sai reside and the mist that "seemed human," which shrouds their home. This literary device establishes that the remote mansion, Cho Oyu, impacts the lives and identities of its inhabitants. The judge, Sai, and the cook are isolated from society and cling to the remnants of an imagined colonial past.
Sai reads old issues of National Geographic, a periodical about exploration, anthropology, and science, fueling romantic ideas about travel and exploration. The article Sai reads is about the reclusive giant squid, a metaphor for her isolation.
The text uses the motif of movies to indicate how the characters feel about themselves and perform roles and identities situationally. For example, the teenage guerillas imagine they are the protagonists in a movie scene when they come to Cho Oyu. By assuming macho attitudes, they act out an inauthentic, melodramatic role. Similarly, Sai gives the mirror a "perfect movie star kiss," and the cook begs for his life like he is acting out to a script "passed down through generations." To appear emotionally compelling, he cries on command, like an actor. When Sai first joins the judge's home as a young girl, she remarks that his dog is "elegant like a film star."
The text uses evocative imagery to comment on the judge's post-colonial identity. For example, his mansion is in complete disrepair, as it was not built to withstand the Himalayan climate. The judge's Cambridge University diploma is stained and dusty. Cambridge is one of the most prestigious universities in the world and is also a remnant of English colonialism in India. Still, the social capital the judge earned by attending Cambridge is irrelevant in 1980s Nepal. Similarly, the judge finds himself socially inconsequential; no one visits him, and the guerillas mock his inability to speak Nepali.
The cook repeats how he only lives to see his son, Biju, his source of pride. When discussing how the Scotsman who built Cho Oyu used local laborers to realize his dream, the text comments that "the price for such romance had been high and paid for by others." The cook, who has internalized romantic ideas of exploration abroad, uses his son to realize his own dreams. Though the cook does not know it, Biju struggles and sacrifices in New York City.
Biju tracks the various restaurants at which he worked by listing the type of cuisine served there, such as French fine dining, and then the nationalities of the people working in the kitchens, who are primarily from the Global South and impoverished countries. Biju is curious about his coworkers' origins and asks them questions about their home countries, creating a mental map of the world. Biju's curiosity mirrors the inflatable globe Sai receives at Cho Oyu, which symbolizes her interest in, and ignorance of, the world beyond.
Mr. Mistry, Sai's father, proposed to his wife inside a crumbling Mughal tomb. He was a Zoroastrian, and his fiancée was a Hindu; interfaith relationships were scandalous during this period. The proposal's location in a Mughal tomb is significant and demonstrates the themes of culture clash and postcolonialism. The Mughal empire, a multicultural and religious colonial empire, ruled much of South and Central Asia before England established the British Raj. Mr. and Mrs. Mistry came of age following the dissolution of the British Raj, which forced Indian people to negotiate their cultural histories and identities in a complex, post-colonial context. Mr. Mistry's interest in the space program mirrors the romantic colonial ideas of unprecedented exploration of uncharted lands that inspired "the Scotsman" to build Cho Oyu.
Sai and her mother were both raised in convent schools run by Catholic missionary nuns. The convent schools are places of both multiculturalism and cultural hegemony. For example, the crucifix hanging in the convent features the crucified Jesus, the central Christian figure, wearing a dhoti, a Hindu garment, visually blending the two religious traditions. However, the nuns criticize the local Indian population, calling them "shameful" and "dirty" and refusing to acknowledge the impact of poverty and colonialism on their lives. Ironically, the nuns who run Sai's convent school consider themselves holy and charitable. Yet, they brutalize the children in their care with cruel punishments for benign offenses and for simply practicing their culture, such as speaking Hindi.
When the judge left for Cambridge as a young man, the ship's boarding platform was divided into "Indians and Europeans." This segregation visually symbolizes that the judge felt forced to choose between these two ostensibly disparate identities. When he throws the package of food his mother packed for him into the ocean but refuses to throw the ceremonial coconut, he chooses to embrace a "European" identity, which he believes is superior.
Jemu describes the houses in England as grey. Likewise, Sai imagined Moscow, where her parents lived, as a "grey, masculine" city. This imagery implies that these post-colonial cultures and environments were unwelcoming and hostile to Indian immigrants like Mr. and Mrs. Mistry, Jemu, and Biju.
In Jemu's section, the text uses obscure synonyms for common words, such as "borborygmus" (stomach rumbling). This unusual vocabulary evokes Jemu's anxiety over being considered intelligent, competent, and educated by his Cambridge contemporaries, who judge his accent and country of origin.
The text describes Noni and Lola's house in detail, listing their eccentric, eclectic collection of objects, such as Tibetan tables, Russian paintings, and English clothing. These descriptions illustrate the upper-class Bengali sisters' multifaceted, anxious cultural identities.
Ironically, Noni and Lola only feel safe in their home with Budhoo, their Nepali security guard who worked for the sisters for years. However, when tensions between Nepal, India, and England rise, Noni and Lola debate dismissing him simply because he is Nepali.
When Biju returns home, the electricity goes out. He screams, though no one is listening, which parallels the judge's fit of rage when his lights go out. Though Biju and the judge lead remarkably different lives, they both experience the same frustration of a power outage, which they are unable to remedy. The text then describes the filthy streets of New York City in winter. These descriptions draw a parallel between poverty in India and America. Though many characters, such as the cook, consider the entirety of Western countries to be wealthy and privileged and post-colonial nations, such as India and Nepal, to be entirely impoverished, these scenes show that things aren't so simple.
