FAMILY MATTERS (A PUNNING TITLE) BY THE CANADIAN WRITER OF INDIAN DESCENT tells the story of a middle-class Parsi family in Bombay. Nariman Vakeel, a retired professor of English, has Parkinson’s disease. He lives with his stepson, Jal, and stepdaughter, Coomy, in a spacious – if somewhat dilapidated - flat in a block called Chateau Felicity in Bombay.
One afternoon, Nariman falls during a walk. Unwilling to be lumbered with his care, Coomy forces her married half-sister, Roxana, to care for Nariman. Roxana is Nariman’s only child from his forced marriage to Coomy and Jal’s mother. She lives in a much smaller flat in Pleasant Villa. The names of the residences are reminiscent of the Raj. Nariman, affectionately called ‘Chief’, establishes a rapport with his younger grandson, Jehangir, probably a self-portrait of Mistry.
A sub-plot emerges – Nariman had been in love with a Goan girl, Lucy Braganza. His family forced him to marry a Parsi widow, Yasmin, with two children (Jal and Coomy). Abandoned, Lucy degenerates into a half-crazed waif bitterly resented by Yasmin. The deeply ethical Nariman is unable to free himself from all sense of obligation to Lucy. Roxana, the most attractive character in the book, is torn between love for her father, memory of her mother’s unhappiness and the demands of her own family life. Her husband, Yezhad, works at the Bombay Sporting Emporium, but his salary is not enough to sustain the family – even without Nariman. The family’s financial problems mount.
Yezhad conceives a highly complex plot to coax his boss, Vikram Kapur, to enter politics and leave him, Yezhad, in charge of the shop on a higher salary. He instigates his boss to confront the local Shiv Sena and employs two actors to impersonate Shiv Sena activists. The plan goes disastrously wrong when the real Shiv Sena turn up and kill Kapur. Yezhad hands over, to Kapur’s widow, the money that Kapur had put aside for his political campaign. She unjustly accuses Yezhad of pilfering. There is irony here as Yezhad is unwilling to face his inadvertent part in the death of his boss. He turns to his Parsi faith for solace and ethical guidance.
Mistry describes the ethical core and rituals of the Parsi faith with loving care. The descriptions of the Fire Temple are vivid. He also shows how rituals of the sacred thread worn by male Parsis symbolise the ties that bind family and religion.
Meanwhile, to deter Nariman’s return to the family house, Coomy orders Jal to smash the ceiling and pretend there has been a flood on the roof. This initially comic scheme leads to tragedy as the neighbour, Edul Munshil, an incompetent handyman, is let loose to repair the damage. In the ensuing chaos, both Edul and Coomy are killed when a roof beam collapses. Jal, freed from his bullying sister, offers Roxana and Yezhad the use of the flat. They sell their tiny flat for the exorbitant sums Bombay real estate fetches and have enough funds for Yezhad not to work any more. Free to pursue his newly rediscovered faith, Yezhad becomes a narrow-minded ritualistic bigot. This lends another layer of irony. Yezhad’s bellicose religiosity ruins the lives of his adolescent sons, just as Nariman’s life had been ruined by his family.
Music is a central metaphor in the book. There are beautiful passages about the effect of Bach and Schubert on Nariman. Mistry depicts the eliding of comedy and tragedy almost like Schubert’s bittersweet songs. Nariman’s death while listening to his neighbour, Daisy Ichhaporia, playing the violin provides a coda. If the book has a message it is that art offers the same solace as religion but without the narrowness and chauvinism.
The stepdaughter, Coomy, is the least pleasant character but no-one is a complete villain or hero. Mistry paints credible portraits of fallible human beings and weaves their lives together in a gamut of pity, tragedy, humour, and above all, dramatic irony in which all the schemes of the characters come unstuck and the only salvation is from accidents or perhaps divine grace. The only real villains are the Shiv Sena, a Hindu nationalist group hostile to other communities – Parsi, Christian, Muslim.
Several minor characters are endowed with memorable traits, such as Husain, the Muslim messenger at the Sporting Store where Yezhad works, a victim of the Shiv Sena instigated anti-Muslim riots. Another is the pavement letter-writer, Vilas Rani, who – for a fee – writes letters for Husain and other illiterate labourers to their families in the villages. The illegal lottery lady, Villie, is also a fine vignette. Her story is woven with Yezhad’s when the illegal lottery in which Yezhad has won a small fortune is suddenly closed down, leaving him penniless.
Over the course of the narrative, Nariman becomes less central as he deteriorates and other characters emerge. Yezhad’s sons take up the narrative in the last two chapters in their diaries. This creates the possibility of new plots being played out beyond the book’s ending, generating a sense of renewal and openness.
The book manages to catch, within a narrow domestic compass, tragedy and comedy and good and evil of far broader reach than its apparently small palette of humdrum lives. Mistry is a master of the craft.
– Golden Langur
