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Sai
The cook’s son. At the cook’s urging, Biju travels to New York City in order to earn money and make a better life for the family’s future generations. He hops from one restaurant job to another, either due to green card inspections, customer complaints about his smell, or his own distaste for the business owners and customers. He comes to confront his own bias in globalized America when he meets Saeed Saeed, a Pakistani man he admires. Biju also recognizes his own values: he quits his job at a restaurant that serves steak because he realizes that he needs to live according to the principles of his family and his religion. This then brings him to the Gandhi Café, where he meets Harish-Harry. Biju is optimistic and at times gullible, but he also becomes worn down by the life of an illegal immigrant in New York City, whom he calls a “shadow class.” Eventually Biju becomes so exhausted from being overworked and taken advantage of that he decides to return to India, even though he knows he will likely disappoint his father. Biju thus embodies the yearning for home that many of the characters experience.
Biju Quotes in The Inheritance of Loss
The The Inheritance of Loss quotes below are all either spoken by Biju or refer to Biju. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
An accident, they said, and there was nobody to blame—it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed.
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Chapter 14
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This habit of hate had accompanied Biju, and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India.
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Chapter 17
Quotes
The more pampered you are the more pampered you will be the more presents you receive the more presents you will get the more presents you receive the more you are admired the more you will be admired the more you are admired the more presents you will get the more pampered you will be—
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You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. […] The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore.
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Chapter 22
Quotes
One should not give up one’s religion, the principles of one’s parents and their parents before them. No, no matter what. […] Those who could see a difference between a holy cow and an unholy cow would win. Those who couldn’t see it would lose.
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Chapter 48
Quotes
He felt everything shifting and clicking into place around him, felt himself slowly shrink back to size, the enormous anxiety of being a foreigner ebbing—that unbearable arrogance and shame of the immigrant.
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Biju Quotes in The Inheritance of Loss
The The Inheritance of Loss quotes below are all either spoken by Biju or refer to Biju. For each quote, you can also see the other characters and themes related to it (each theme is indicated by its own dot and icon, like this one:
).
Chapter 2
Quotes
An accident, they said, and there was nobody to blame—it was just fate in the way fate has of providing the destitute with a greater quota of accidents for which nobody can be blamed.
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Explanation and Analysis:
Chapter 14
Quotes
This habit of hate had accompanied Biju, and he found that he possessed an awe of white people, who arguably had done India great harm, and a lack of generosity regarding almost everyone else, who had never done a single harmful thing to India.
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Chapter 17
Quotes
The more pampered you are the more pampered you will be the more presents you receive the more presents you will get the more presents you receive the more you are admired the more you will be admired the more you are admired the more presents you will get the more pampered you will be—
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You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. […] The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore.
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Chapter 22
Quotes
One should not give up one’s religion, the principles of one’s parents and their parents before them. No, no matter what. […] Those who could see a difference between a holy cow and an unholy cow would win. Those who couldn’t see it would lose.
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Chapter 48
Quotes
He felt everything shifting and clicking into place around him, felt himself slowly shrink back to size, the enormous anxiety of being a foreigner ebbing—that unbearable arrogance and shame of the immigrant.
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