THE story of Kiran Desai's Man Booker Prize, which was awarded in a ceremony held on October 10, is linked by way of trivia as well as by literary inheritance to the story of Indian writing in English. While Kiran was attending the awards dinner, her mother, Anita Desai, who had been shortlisted for the prize three times but never won it, was away in a Tibetan settlement near Dehra Dun, without access to telephone or television.