Against Decay

AGAINST DECAY
A review of Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry
By Harpreet Singh Soorae

Family Matters is a slowly swelling novel of elegy. It presents the fading away of an individual, a family, a city, and a people. It frames the dissipation of memory, dignity, idealism and race within its story, and contains the quiet struggle of men and women trying to deny the ineluctable coarsening and evaporation of life and community.

Nariman Vakeel is a seventy nine year old Parsi widower. Stricken with Parkinson's disease, he drifts in and out of memories of his youthful illicit love affair with a Goan lady whilst being tended by his stepdaughter, Coomy, and stepson, Jal, in the decaying apartment of his childhood. When Nariman suffers a fall and breaks his ankle, Coomy schemes to pass him over to be cared for by her sister Roxana and her family. Nariman moves into their already cramped home, and the lives of Roxana, her two sons, and husband, Yezad, are brought together, bringing moral and financial pressures, dredging up tensions and secrets from the past.

Nariman's senescent degradation is interrupted in the narrative with flashbacks describing the pining vigils of his former lover after his marriage, a time when he was potent and loved. Now, there is the corporeal humiliation of his geriatric condition: the stench of festering urine in the commode, the soiling of his bed, his children wiping and washing him after defecation. Mistry does not flinch in describing the million moments of indignity that this gentle, elegant and witty man is condemned to by his illness. Nariman's attempts at humour, the wisecracking and punning amidst the smell of shit, whilst he lies naked and as helpless as a baby before his daughter, are beyond poignancy, they are frightening and pathetic. The loss of function and control leads to the repulsion of all in contact with the decaying; what persists is horror and disgust. But the soul inside the decaying body is innocent. It is the helplessness of Nariman in the face of his decomposition that is laid bare here, the final punishment, the ultimate destruction that is the sentence for having lived a life. His punning and jokes are an assertion of self, a defiance of the rot, a meagre rebellion against the might and indignity of decay.

Later in the novel other characters rebel against decay. Yezad meets two young and idealistic journalists in a restaurant. They discuss theatre as an agent for social protest and change, "to awaken the urban poor to their plight."

"Wouldn't work, trust me," said Bhaskhar. "We want you to write something about Shiv Sena. They are our greatest urban menace."
"But don't mention them directly," said Gautam. "Or they'll burn down the hall where we meet."
"Try an allegorical style," said Bhaskar. "Perhaps write in the form of a fable."

The city of old is degrading, Bombay is Mumbai, pogroms have mangled its soul, gangsters and chauvinists are in control. Nariman's puns are protests against the morally neutral and unstoppable decay of his body. The decay of Bombay, the idea of the city as a space of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, is a moral atrophy exacerbated and enacted by human agents, by politicians and bigots. This decay can never be posited as being inevitable or immune to challenge as Nariman's failing body seems to be.

The ecumenical spirit of Bombay is personified by Yezad's boss, Mr Kapur, a Punjabi partition refugee.

At times, Yezad thought the proprietor's passion for Bombay verged on the fanatical. But he also understood that he was pouring into it his yearning for his family's past in Punjab, lost to him forever.

The proud display of the symbols of all religions becomes, for Mr Kapur, an assertion of spirit and self amidst the decay of the moral idea of the city as nutritious, tolerant, giving succour to the diverse masses.

"From now on," said Mr Kapur, "in this shop we will celebrate all festivals: Divali, Christmas, Id, your Parsi Navroze, Baisakhi, Buddha Jayanti, Ganesh Chathurthi, everything..."

At the end of the novel, Yezad becomes an orthodox Zoroastrian. The diminishment of the city has taken blood from his soul, Mr Kapur is murdered by Shiv Sena thugs, and he seeks comfort in the certainties of faith. As he turns inwards, he sees decline, as the Parsi community comes to terms with its diminution, as falling birth rates and assimilation signal the end of the Parsi story. Now, for Yezad, the display of plural religious icons becomes associated with the internal decay of the Parsi people, and Yezad's son explains:

My father has at last decided about the holy pictures. He must have consulted his Orthodox League friends. He returned this afternoon from the meeting and said that all non-Zarathusti images must go - in a Zarathusti home, they interfere with the vibrations of Avesta prayers.

In these two instances we see, alternatively, the display and marginalisation of plural religious iconography as a reaction to, and attempt to resolve, decay. These are symbolic of moral and communal struggles, private and public. Nariman's meagre wit in the face of his inability to control his bowels is a bid to spite immediate physical failure. Yezad's turn to orthodox religion is a reaction to what he perceives as spiritual decay, and the fear that his people will ultimately disappear within a few generations.

Soon after Nariman moves into Roxana's home, she watches her son feeding her father as she hangs washing on a line:

She felt she was witnessing something almost sacred, and her eyes refused to relinquish the precious moment, for she knew instinctively that it would become a moment to cherish, to recall in difficult times when she needed strength.
Jehangir filled the spoon again and raised it to his grandfather's lips. A grain of rice strayed, lingering at the corner of his mouth. Jehangir took the napkin to gently retrieve it before it fell.
And for a brief instant, Roxana felt she understood the meaning of it all, of birth and life and death. My son, she thought, my father, and the food I cooked.

This epiphany is composed carefully, the detail (a grain of rice strayed, lingering at the corner of his mouth) is rendered with care, the tender gestures between generations catalyse a moment of realisation. The epiphany is an instant of heightened awareness or insight, a confluence of sensory, emotional and introspective enlightenment that stalls time for the individual. It takes the feeling character out of time through the intensity generated by the knowledge of the moment. The image of grandson feeding grandfather which begets this experience for Roxana solidifies for us as readers as a picture, just as a photograph captures image through colour, shape, perspective, chemical, light, and form, crystallising into solid image.

Later, Mr Kapur shares with Yezad his passion for collecting photographs of old Bombay.

Great way of running a business, thought Yezad. A proprietor who races off to buy photographs...He examined the print: the foreground showed a canopy of trees; beyond it, a row of graceful bungalows. In the background, behind the residences, was a maidaan and more foliage.

Later, Mr Kapur explains his passion in breathless and idealistic terms:

Think of this Yezad: we'll always have the photographs. Our city is preserved in them. And the record will remain for those who come after us.

Before his death, he gifts to Yezad three photographs of his childhood area, Hughes Road.

The photographs are solidified epiphanies that work, to the eyes of Mr Kapur and Yezad, as signifiers of what has been lost in their city. When Roxana has a sense that watching her son feeding her father represents all that life means, we speculate that life is a current of quotidian existence punctuated by fleeting and fragile moments of understanding. While Roxana's epiphany apprehends her present time momentarily, the photographs of Bombay which excite Yezad's memories of his earlier days are stalled compositions of the past that disjoint time. They agitate him in the present and catalyse nostalgia. His memories remind him of the passing of time. They suggest decay as process, decay and degradation as the sentence that is given out to us for living.

Decay as a metaphor for life. Yezad's embrace of the certainties of faith, Nariman's jokes, Mr Kapur's ecumenical displays and nostalgic photographs, are all attempts to quell decay and degradation. In Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry weaves the lives and memories of one Parsi family into a novel of humanistic dignity, as individuals kick against decay; the decay of flesh into death, the decay of family into death, the decay of surrounding morality, and the decay around and ahead of us in time.

Harpreet Singh Soorae lives in Birmingham, England

Agree with this take? Have a different point of view? Discuss this novel and Harpreet's reading of it here


home about contact policies submissions feature archives audio visual writing reviews forums art film & television food literature music society & culture elsewhere desilit parabaas sasialit sawnet upper stall	AGAINST DECAY A review of Family Matters by Rohinton Mistry By Harpreet Singh Soorae Family Matters is a slowly swelling novel of elegy. It presents the fading away of an individual, a family, a city, and a people. It frames the dissipation of memory, dignity, idealism and race within its story, and contains the quiet struggle of men and women trying to deny the ineluctable coarsening and evaporation of life and community. Nariman Vakeel is a seventy nine year old Parsi widower. Stricken with Parkinson's disease, he drifts in and out of memories of his youthful illicit love affair with a Goan lady whilst being tended by his stepdaughter, Coomy, and stepson, Jal, in the decaying apartment of his childhood. When Nariman suffers a fall and breaks his ankle, Coomy schemes to pass him over to be cared for by her sister Roxana and her family. Nariman moves into their already cramped home, and the lives of Roxana, her two sons, and husband, Yezad, are brought together, bringing moral and financial pressures, dredging up tensions and secrets from the past. Nariman's senescent degradation is interrupted in the narrative with flashbacks describing the pining vigils of his former lover after his marriage, a time when he was potent and loved. Now, there is the corporeal humiliation of his geriatric condition: the stench of festering urine in the commode, the soiling of his bed, his children wiping and washing him after defecation. Mistry does not flinch in describing the million moments of indignity that this gentle, elegant and witty man is condemned to by his illness. Nariman's attempts at humour, the wisecracking and punning amidst the smell of shit, whilst he lies naked and as helpless as a baby before his daughter, are beyond poignancy, they are frightening and pathetic. The loss of function and control leads to the repulsion of all in contact with the decaying; what persists is horror and disgust. But the soul inside the decaying body is innocent. It is the helplessness of Nariman in the face of his decomposition that is laid bare here, the final punishment, the ultimate destruction that is the sentence for having lived a life. His punning and jokes are an assertion of self, a defiance of the rot, a meagre rebellion against the might and indignity of decay. Later in the novel other characters rebel against decay. Yezad meets two young and idealistic journalists in a restaurant. They discuss theatre as an agent for social protest and change, "to awaken the urban poor to their plight." "Wouldn't work, trust me," said Bhaskhar. "We want you to write something about Shiv Sena. They are our greatest urban menace." "But don't mention them directly," said Gautam. "Or they'll burn down the hall where we meet." "Try an allegorical style," said Bhaskar. "Perhaps write in the form of a fable." The city of old is degrading, Bombay is Mumbai, pogroms have mangled its soul, gangsters and chauvinists are in control. Nariman's puns are protests against the morally neutral and unstoppable decay of his body. The decay of Bombay, the idea of the city as a space of tolerance and cosmopolitanism, is a moral atrophy exacerbated and enacted by human agents, by politicians and bigots. This decay can never be posited as being inevitable or immune to challenge as Nariman's failing body seems to be. The ecumenical spirit of Bombay is personified by Yezad's boss, Mr Kapur, a Punjabi partition refugee. At times, Yezad thought the proprietor's passion for Bombay verged on the fanatical. But he also understood that he was pouring into it his yearning for his family's past in Punjab, lost to him forever. The proud display of the symbols of all religions becomes, for Mr Kapur, an assertion of spirit and self amidst the decay of the moral idea of the city as nutritious, tolerant, giving succour to the diverse masses. "From now on," said Mr Kapur, "in this shop we will celebrate all festivals: Divali, Christmas, Id, your Parsi Navroze, Baisakhi, Buddha Jayanti, Ganesh Chathurthi, everything..." At the end of the novel, Yezad becomes an orthodox Zoroastrian. The diminishment of the city has taken blood from his soul, Mr Kapur is murdered by Shiv Sena thugs, and he seeks comfort in the certainties of faith. As he turns inwards, he sees decline, as the Parsi community comes to terms with its diminution, as falling birth rates and assimilation signal the end of the Parsi story. Now, for Yezad, the display of plural religious icons becomes associated with the internal decay of the Parsi people, and Yezad's son explains: My father has at last decided about the holy pictures. He must have consulted his Orthodox League friends. He returned this afternoon from the meeting and said that all non-Zarathusti images must go - in a Zarathusti home, they interfere with the vibrations of Avesta prayers. In these two instances we see, alternatively, the display and marginalisation of plural religious iconography as a reaction to, and attempt to resolve, decay. These are symbolic of moral and communal struggles, private and public. Nariman's meagre wit in the face of his inability to control his bowels is a bid to spite immediate physical failure. Yezad's turn to orthodox religion is a reaction to what he perceives as spiritual decay, and the fear that his people will ultimately disappear within a few generations. Soon after Nariman moves into Roxana's home, she watches her son feeding her father as she hangs washing on a line: She felt she was witnessing something almost sacred, and her eyes refused to relinquish the precious moment, for she knew instinctively that it would become a moment to cherish, to recall in difficult times when she needed strength. Jehangir filled the spoon again and raised it to his grandfather's lips. A grain of rice strayed, lingering at the corner of his mouth. Jehangir took the napkin to gently retrieve it before it fell. And for a brief instant, Roxana felt she understood the meaning of it all, of birth and life and death. My son, she thought, my father, and the food I cooked. This epiphany is composed carefully, the detail (a grain of rice strayed, lingering at the corner of his mouth) is rendered with care, the tender gestures between generations catalyse a moment of realisation. The epiphany is an instant of heightened awareness or insight, a confluence of sensory, emotional and introspective enlightenment that stalls time for the individual. It takes the feeling character out of time through the intensity generated by the knowledge of the moment. The image of grandson feeding grandfather which begets this experience for Roxana solidifies for us as readers as a picture, just as a photograph captures image through colour, shape, perspective, chemical, light, and form, crystallising into solid image. Later, Mr Kapur shares with Yezad his passion for collecting photographs of old Bombay. Great way of running a business, thought Yezad. A proprietor who races off to buy photographs...He examined the print: the foreground showed a canopy of trees; beyond it, a row of graceful bungalows. In the background, behind the residences, was a maidaan and more foliage. Later, Mr Kapur explains his passion in breathless and idealistic terms: Think of this Yezad: we'll always have the photographs. Our city is preserved in them. And the record will remain for those who come after us. Before his death, he gifts to Yezad three photographs of his childhood area, Hughes Road. The photographs are solidified epiphanies that work, to the eyes of Mr Kapur and Yezad, as signifiers of what has been lost in their city. When Roxana has a sense that watching her son feeding her father represents all that life means, we speculate that life is a current of quotidian existence punctuated by fleeting and fragile moments of understanding. While Roxana's epiphany apprehends her present time momentarily, the photographs of Bombay which excite Yezad's memories of his earlier days are stalled compositions of the past that disjoint time. They agitate him in the present and catalyse nostalgia. His memories remind him of the passing of time. They suggest decay as process, decay and degradation as the sentence that is given out to us for living. Decay as a metaphor for life. Yezad's embrace of the certainties of faith, Nariman's jokes, Mr Kapur's ecumenical displays and nostalgic photographs, are all attempts to quell decay and degradation. In Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry weaves the lives and memories of one Parsi family into a novel of humanistic dignity, as individuals kick against decay; the decay of flesh into death, the decay of family into death, the decay of surrounding morality, and the decay around and ahead of us in time. Harpreet Singh Soorae lives in Birmingham, England Agree with this take? Have a different point of view? Discuss this novel and Harpreet's reading of it here