The Inheritance of Loss

Two steamer trunks appear in the pivotal gun robbery of Chapter 1 and reappear throughout the novel; “[o]ne was painted with white letters on the black tin that read: ‘Mr. J. P. Patel, SS Strathnaver.’ The other read: ‘Miss S. Mistry, St. Augustine’s Convent’” (8). The GNLF boys carry the judge’s hunting rifles and other contraband off in these trunks, both of which represent the great travels—and losses—of the judge and his family members. The judge’s trunk is imprinted with the name of the ship, the SS Strathnaver, that carried him away from his hometown as a young man bound for Cambridge. The second trunk is Sai’s mother’s, inherited by her daughter Sai. Both attend the same convent, and Sai comes to Cho Oyu with the trunk after her parents’ deaths.

Cho Oyu was “built long ago by a Scotsman, passionate reader of the accounts of that period: The Indian Alps and How We Crossed Them” (13). The Scotsman sells the home to the judge, and it is a fitting retreat for the reclusive, Anglophilic man, with its high altitude and lofty dimensions. The judge considers the place “a sensibility rather than a house” on first viewing, a perfect place where he can be “a foreigner in his own country” (32).