Happy families, Leo Tolstoy once famously
wrote, resemble one another; each unhappy family is
unhappy in its own way. In Indian-Canadian writer
Rohinton Mistry’s latest novel, Family Matters, the
reason for the unhappiness in Nariman Vakeel’s Bombay-based
family is fairly typical of many Third World homes:
lack of money and space.
Mistry
however, transforms this tale of a family’s economic
and emotional woes, into a sweeping saga spanning
generations, simultaneously taking us through the
territory of old age with its humiliations and terrors,
the wobbly balancing act of middle age struggling
to support a family, and the uncertain, unquiet emergence
of an adolesence’s burgeoning view of life. The overcrowded
apartment in Pleasant Villa is not just a family residence,
it is a metaphor for life itself, with all its teeming
exuberance and nauseating decay.
The
novel opens with Nariman, a retired English professor,
and his two middle-aged stepchildren, Coomy and her
brother Jal, leading an acrimonious life together
in a crumbling building named, with tongue-lodged-firmly-in-cheek,
Chateau Felicity.
Their
drab, discordant lives are reflected in the dreariness
of their seven-room apartment, adorned with family
portraits wearing "dour grimaces" and heavy wooden
furniture "looming darkly" in the shabby rooms. The
very walls and ceilings of their home, Nariman feels,
"were encrusted with the distress of unhappy decades."
Nariman’s
life, it becomes clear as the novel progresses, has
been one long endurance test. He is now, at 79, battling
the increasing debility of his body, which is failing
under the invasion of Parkinson’s disease, while dealing
with the daily carping of Coomy. Her resentment of
him is expressed through the many rules she has created
to control his life, including two baths a week, not
using the bathroom before notifying her and urging
him to give up his beloved daily walk.
Bitter
and unlovely though Coomy is, Mistry reveals, through
a series of flashbacks, that her anger against her
stepfather has long, deep roots. Nariman not only
replaced a much-loved father, but Coomy was also witness
to her mother’s grief and pain in her marriage to
Nariman. The ruining of her mother’s life has soured
Coomy against her stepfather forever.
A
mild mannered man with a quiet enjoyment for the works
of Coleridge, Longfellow, Shakespeare, and the music
of Bach, Beethoven, and Brahms, Nariman’s remaining
passions are his love for his only child and memories
of his youthful courting of Lucy.
Nariman
disowned Lucy to marry a woman from his community,
chiefly because he was unable to find the inner resources
to fight the unrelenting disapproval of both their
parents toward their union. It was a step that only
resulted in pain for all three of them, Nariman realizes
now, with the clarity of hindsight. His wife has long
since died, but 36 years later, Nariman is still lamenting
his decision to become the husband of a widow with
two small children after decades of loving his "darling"
Lucy. And his reluctance to ignore his former love
when she came back into his life, sowed a legacy of
anger and hatred that still haunts the family.
Nariman’s
daughter, sweet-tempered, warm hearted Roxana, is
the only positive reminder of his ill-fated marriage.
Roxana, her husband Yezad Chenoy and their two young
sons live in a crowded one-bedroom apartment, struggling
along on Yezad’s salary from his job as manager of
a small sporting goods store.
The
Chenoys form a small, nurturing family circle and
Mistry conveys the happiness of their lives without
descending into curdling sentimentality. Having shown
that Roxana and Yezad’s strong love for each other
anchors their homelife, Mistry puts their marital
harmony to its most stringest test when Nariman descends
upon them. He has fallen down and broken his ankle
and Coomy, unable to cope with his nursing needs,
especially his bedpan duties, foists his care, with
the most flimsiest of excuses, on Roxana.
His
daughter undertakes his care willingly, but is soon
caught in a desperate struggle to stabilize her home.
Mistry depicts with infinite detail the slow deterioration
within the members of the family as they adjust to
the emotional and physical needs and the monetary
demands that an elderly invalid can make in an already
straining-to-make-ends-meet household.
Initially,
the two grandsons welcome their beloved grandfather’s
presence in the living room sofa. They take turns
sleeping next to him and love listening to his stories.
But the boys increasing hunger for filling food and
the angry scenes between their parents destroys the
peace of the home and drives the younger son into
devising a dangerous strategy to increase his family’s
income.
As
Nariman gradually fades away into the passive state
of the bedridden invalid, the novel places Yezad on
center stage. A loyal, kind husband, father and son-in-law
to begin with, the stress of adjusting to the intimate
sights and smells of Nariman (Squeamish readers be
warned: This is probably the only novel I have ever
read where bathroom functions receive such detailed,
frequent descriptions) in their lives chips away his
basic good nature.
Surly
remarks and raging shouts become Yezad’s only means
of venting the helplessness he feels at Coomy and
Jal’s selfish foisting of Nariman upon his family
and his sorrow as he watches his wife droop with exhaustion
brought on by overwork and undereating. The question
of hiring help to take over some of the chores of
looking after her father is not even a consideration
when the weekly budget only allows for a choice between
bread or butter. Yezad’s guilt over his inability
to bring in more money to supplement the extra expenses
thrusts him, like his younger son, into a crooked
alley. In the end, after much suffering and sudden,
violent deaths, Roxana’s family does find partial
redemption, albeit at a price.
Enriching
and enlivening the absorbing narrative of Nariman’s
family, are some of the most amusing and endearing
people ever to live in fiction since Charles Dickens.
Like the ever optimistic, but bumbling Micawber, there
is Edul Munshi, the hopelessly incompetent but easygoing
resident handyman of Chateau Felicity, who wields
the contents of his tool box with all the skill of
the proverbial bull in a china shop. Another hilarious
character is Villie Cardmaster, otherwise known as
the Matka Queen of Pleasant Villa, who spends her
spare time betting on the illegal game of Matka, freely
using her bizarre dreams as lucky omens.
Yezad’s
friend Vilas Rane, who works at a book store and has
a side job as a writer of letters for the illiterate
immigrant laborers thirsting for news from home, is
an unforgettable character. Rane, who sees himself
as a friend to all humanity, reads and writes in Marathi,
Gujarathi and Hindi, letting the river of births and
deaths, accidents and quarrels, infidelity and illness,
"flow through his consciousness, allowing the episodes
to fall into place of their own accord, like bits
of coloured glass in a kaleidoscope." When his clients
run out of money, but still have important news to
convey, Rane continues to fill the pages, writing
for free.
Setting
his story a few years after the violent explosion
of the Babri Masjid riots that shook Bombay, Mistry
uses the city not merely as a backdrop for his story,
but as a living example of the decay and corruption
co-existing with friendship and kindness among its
citizens, often evoking the emotional, mental, and
physical condition of his characters. Like the varied
people who immigrated to it, Bombay too has had a
very different past, a serene and green existence,
Mistry shows us tantalizing glimpses in the antique
photographs that Mr. Kapur, Yezad’s employer, obsessively
collects, because he wants to preserve his beloved
city’s "time of innocence."
Mr
Kapur’s epiphany as he observes the commuters on a
crowded suburban railway station reinforces his faith
in the inherent sense of fellowship that pervades
the city. Mr. Kapur notices one man running alongside
a moving train with raised arms, obviously having
missed getting on. Passengers, hanging from the doorway,
let go of one hand and pull him in. For a few seconds
he swings dangerously, gripping the hands of strangers,
before squeezing his way into a tiny foothold of space.
Mr Kapur sees this miraculous reaching out of hands
repeated many times, and realizes that it is normal
commuter behavior. "Whose hands were they, and whose
hands were they grasping? Hindu, Muslim, Dalit, Parsi,
Christian?" he asks Yezad. "No one knew and no one
cared. Fellow passengers, that’s all they were."
Family
member, employee, neighbor, or co-traveller, we are
all fellow passengers in this strange and quixotic
journey called life. By letting us live through one
family’s twisted, comic-tragic attempts to redeem
its past and re-write its future, Mistry teaches us
that families, like cities, can only survive if nourished
by one another’s caring.
