LIFE AND WORKS OF ROHINTON MISTRY
Rohinton Mistry is a writer with great honesty of imagination. He
does not attempt to follow fades and fashions. His writing suggests sensitivity
to the beauty and the fragmentations, the failings and the cruelties of his
world. Much of Mistry’s fiction works with the humanistic premise that the
universal lies in the ordinary. This is the trajectory he has chalked out for
himself in the course of his brief but meteoric literary career.1
Mistry has enjoyed acclaim from critics both
at home and abroad. Many put him on a par with Salman Rushdie, Vikram Seth, Anita Desai, Charles Dickens, Victor Hugo, Joyce, Thomas Hardy and
Chekhov.
‘Rohinton
has emerged as a significant literary figure during the 20th
century. He is a socio-political novelist who has emerged as a formidable
writer on world literary scene.’2 Mistry, a great novelist and short-storywriter, was born into a
Parsi family on July 3, 1952 in Bombay (now Mumbai), India's biggest city and
heavily populated place in the world. Now as a naturalized citizen of Canada, Mistry lives in Brampton,
Ontario. He grew up as a member of middle class Parsi
community of Bombay. His father, Behram Mistry, worked in advertising and his
mother, Freny Jhaveri Mistry, was a housewife. Cyrus Mistry, his younger
brother, is a well known dramatist and short story writer.
Mistry earned a B. A. in Mathematics and
Economics at the University of Bombay. In his late teens he joined a music
school to learn music theory and composition. Music was the link that led him
to meet his future wife Freny Elevia. In 1975, at the age of 23, he immigrated
to Canada. Soon after going there he married Freny who had moved there a year before.
‘Mistry Chose this self exile because he
felt that there was not much of a future in India, for persons like him, who
were poor in economy and also an alien by culture and community. Soon after his
arrival in Toronto, he started working as a clerk at the Imperial Bank of
Commerce’3, but, after three years, he and his wife, joined studies
at the University of Toronto, and earned his graduation in English and
Philosophy.
In 1983 he began his literary career. Encouraged by his wife, he set out to win a university literary
contest by writing his first short story One Sunday. He devoted several days to the
story, entered it
in the University of Toronto's Hart House Literary Contest and earned first
prize. The same prestigious award he also won the
following year for his short story Auspicious
Occasion. He became the first person to win two such prizes. He still
worked at the bank. Despite
his status as a relative novice, his literary stature continued to rise when he
won The Canadian Fiction Magazine's
Annual Contributor's Prize for 1985. Afterwards, with the aid of a Canada Council grant, he left his job to
become a full-time writer. Two years later, his
collection of eleven short stories, Tales
from Firozsha Baag was published by Penguin Books Canada in 1987. Later on
it was published as Swimming Lessons and
Other Stories from Firozsha Baag in the United States. This work was short listed for Canada's Governor
General's Award for best fiction.
Mistry’s contributions to literature include Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987) or Swimming Lessons and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag, Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995), Family Matters (2002) and The Scream (2006). His novels and short
stories have been widely appreciated and are bestowed with numerous awards and
recognition. His debut novel, Such a Long
Journey, is the story of a Bombay bank
clerk who unwittingly becomes involved in a fraud committed by the government.
It won the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book and the Governor
General's Award, and was short listed for the Booker Prize. His second novel, A Fine Balance deals with the State of Emergency in India in the 1970s. It
also won many prestigious awards, including the Commonwealth Writers
Prize for Best Book; the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction and the
Giller Prize, as well as being short listed for the Booker Prize, the
International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and the Irish Times International
Fiction Prize. In fact this novel is considered to be the best work of Mistry.
Mistry’s Third
novel Family Matters tells the story of an elderly Parsi widower
living in Bombay with his step-children. It was short listed for the 2002 Man
Booker Prize for Fiction. His work received its broadest exposure, however, when Oprah Winfrey selected
Family Matters as her Book Club
selection in December 2001. Mistry was a finalist for
the 2011 Man Booker International Prize, which recognizes an author's entire
body of work. In October 2011, he was awarded the 2012 Neustadt International
Prize for Literature. He has a rare achievement to his credit. He is the only
author, all of whose novels have been short listed for the Man Booker Prize. With just
only four works Mistry has gained immense recognition as a literary figure.
Mistry practices Zoroastrianism and belongs to the Parsi community. The
Parsis are a petite religious community in India. They are descended from the religious
followers of Zoroastrianism who fled from Iran to avoid forced conversion to
Islam. The unpopular position of the Parsis at the end of British rule
in 1947 influenced another Parsi Diaspora, this time to the West. Mistry’s
literature reflects his position as a member of a twice-displaced people. His
Parsi roots have had a strong influence on his growth and development as a
writer and his works mostly deal with the pathos and culture of the Parsis in
India. His writings give a glimpse into the life of the people of his community
and their experiences as a minority in a highly diverse society.
Mistry’s writings are
markedly nostalgic. They deal with the
streets of Bombay, the Parsi way of life, the people of the city and
even the politics of India. They depict the diverse facets of Indian
socio-economic life and culture as well as the life, customs, and religion of
the Parsis. They start with a family and gradually widen into the social,
cultural, and political backdrop. The
characters change and develop subtly. They have a remarkable capacity to
survive. The details of their experience are chronicled with a painter's
sensibility. Their interweaving narratives are totally engrossing. A Parsi
himself, Mistry for the most part has set his fiction in India, and has focused
on the aspirations, heroism, weaknesses, and marginality of the Parsi community
with sympathy, humour, and love. Critics have praised Mistry's ability to present a fresh perspective on his
native land. Jagdish Batra is of the view:
While choosing the time-tested method of
conventional story-telling, Mistry could very effectively communicate his point
of view on the intractable complexities of life in India.5
Tales from Firozsha Baag is Mistry’s first
collection of eleven interrelated short stories. It was warmly greeted by critics and general
readers alike for its insights into the complex lives of the Parsi inhabitants
of Firozsha Baag, an apartment building in Mumbai. This collection examines the
nature of communal and personal identity from a Parsi perspective. A narrator
presents the events and details of the characters' struggles to find their
identities in the postcolonial India, as well as immigrants' attempts to adapt
to their new worlds in places like Canada. These stories
cover a broad range of subjects and tones: from poignant to surreal; ghostly to
hilarious. Nandini Bhautoo- Dewnarain observes:
Most of the stories in this volume are marked by the use of
dialogic narrative modes as they introduce the voices, tones and rhythms of the
community’s language and its social practices. These multi-voiced and dialogic
narrative modes enable multiple perspectives within each of the stories, thus
effecting a potentially post modernist explosion.6
Here ‘Mistry uses the narrative technique of memory and
remembering.’7 In short, this fantastic collection is ‘a study in
human relationships. Although the community living within the precincts of the
building is Parsi, yet this fact does not deprive the stories of their
universal character. Besides, there are also inter-faith and inter-race
dealings.’8
Mumbai is the
background of Rohinton Mistry’s debut novel Such a Long Journey. The citizen
and the nation, the public and the private spaces of identity, the family and
the political corruption are the major themes of this novel. It is loosely based upon a series of real
events that took place in India during the Indira Gandhi administration in
1971. It deals with basic and serious issues of life. It gives extremely detailed description of the lives of Gustad and
his family in their apartment in Bombay. It is an intricate tale of ‘a few middle class
characters in the contemporary India.’9
In
Such a Long
Journey Mistry narrates a pathetic and rather gloomy
story of the protagonist, Gustad, who is a bank employee. ‘Though he has to
confront hardships in life, he has some dreams about the future prosperity of
his family’10. He has three children. Sohrab and Darius are his sons. Roshan is his
daughter. The name of his wife is Dilnavaz. This bank clerk with the members of
his family lives happily at Khodadad Building. Gustad’s happiness does not last
long. A series of tragic events take place in his life. The sudden
disappearance of his bosom friend, Major Jimmy Bilimoria from Khodadad
Building, Sohrab’s refusal to enroll himself as an IIT student and Roshan’s illness upset him. He has to face problems at every
stage of life. His dreams are shattered. The end of the novel is symbolic. It
symbolizes a new beginning: ‘Much of the noise from the road was shut out, save
the persistent crunch of gravel. He stood upon the chair and pulled at the
paper covering the ventilators. As the first sheet tore away, a frightened moth
flew out and circled the room.’11
A Fine Balance is Mistry's masterpiece. It
explores the effects of the state of emergency on the lives of ordinary
people in 1970s India. Set in
Mumbai, this novel is a powerful and painful examination of a humanity
beset by social and political repression. It poses the question of the
possibility of the existence of atrocious acts and beliefs in the face of the
world’s beauty. In A Fine Balance
India's social injustice appear as the villain.
This fantastic
composition is the tale of four strangers forced into sharing an apartment in
1975 Bombay. It shows how these four main characters, Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, Omprakash Darji and
the young student Maneck Kohlah, come together.
Despite the social, religious and many other types of barriers,
they develop their relationships. The story of the novel revolves around Dina.
She is a widow who refuses to return to the home of her domineering brother
after the death of her husband. She allows two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash Darji, to share her apartment. Their homes have been burnt by the
government because of their attempts to rise out of the caste of leather
workers. Maneck is a Parsi student. He suffers from alienation from his family.
His family has lost its property during the partition of India in 1947. He also
joins the apartment as paying guest of Dina Dalal. The narrative deals with
their background and the hardships they endure. One critic called the novel
India's version of Les Miserables. It
seems apt enough. The opening of the novel is interesting: ‘The morning express
bloated with passengers slowed to a crawl, then lurched forward suddenly, as
though to resume full speed. The train’s brief deception jolted its riders. The
bulge of humans hanging out of the doorway distended perilously, like a soap
bubble at its limit.’12
In 2002, he published his third novel Family Matters. It again has Mumbai as its background. This new
novel takes us to Bombay in the mid-1990s. In this wise and compassionate
novel, Mistry has once again created a beautifully realized world. As his
unforgettable characters confront situations over which they have no control,
their tragedies and their triumphs ultimately become our own. Family Matters
has all the richness, the gentle humor, and the narrative sweep that have
earned Rohinton Mistry the highest of accolades around the world. It focuses on
the past and present life of a retired professor, Nariman Vakeel, and his
difficult, complicated familial relationships.
At the centre of the book is Nariman Vakeel. He is a
seventy-nine-year-old Parsi widower and the patriarch of a small discordant
family. He suffers from Parkinson's
disease and haunted by memories of the past. He lives with his two middle-aged
step-children, Jal and Coomy. They are children of his wife’s first marriage.
Coomy is bitter and domineering and her brother, Jal, mild-mannered and
acquiescent. Coomy hates Nariman whom she considers the cause of her mother’s
suffering and death. When Nariman's illness is compounded by a broken ankle,
Coomy plots to turn his round-the-clock care over to Roxana. She succeeds. Now
Nariman begins to live with Roxana, her husband, Yezad, and their two young
sons, Murad and Jehangir. Roxana, Murad and Jehangir love and take care of
Nariman. It is only Yezad who feels that Nariman is an additional burden on his
family. ‘By the time Nariman dies, his death appears ‘natural’ and timely, both
in terms of the people around him and the narrative. His is a life lived fully,
having traversed love, rejection, grief, guilt, generosity, disease, desertion
and redemption.’13
The Scream is the most recent offering
by Mistry. It is a novella. It is narrated by an aging, isolated resident of a Mumbai apartment building. The story plumbs its protagonist's struggle with aging and
isolation. The 48 pages cover an old protagonist’s sometimes touching and at
times comic whine on his neglect and repulsion by his own family.
There are some controversies
related to Mistry. In 2002, Mistry cancelled his United States
book tour for his novel Family Matters because he and his wife
were targeted by security agents at every airport
he visited. They thought that he is a Muslim. The humiliation was unbearable to
him. Another controversy is that his novel Such
a Long Journey was allegedly against the Mumbai University. The Shiv Sena's
student wing lodged complaint against this book to the Vice-Chancellor of
Mumbai University and burnt copies of this book at the university gate. The
book was eventually withdrawn by the Mumbai University owing to the vigorous
protest.
Critics have frequently focused on the
similarities and differences in the writings of Mistry and Rushdie. Both are part of the Indian Diaspora, a term
used to describe the growing number of Indian-born authors who write about
their native land from abroad. Whereas Rushdie's work is often surreal and
cast in fantastic tones, Mistry's writing is characteristically grounded in
firm, sometimes glaringly harsh realities. Rushdie’s magic realism is Realism with a capital ‘R’ in the works of Mistry
Rohinton Mistry, no
doubt, is an exceptional writer. His ability to present a fresh perspective on his native
land has been appreciated. His work examines a side of India not often seen elsewhere in literature.His style of writing is simple, direct, refined and conventional.
REFERENCES:
1. Nandini
Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Rohinton Mistry An
Introduction (New Delhi: Foundation Books, 2007), p. 2.
2. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Perspectives on the Novels of Rohinton Mistry, (New Delhi:
Sarup& Sons, 2006) p.29.
3. P. Selvam, Humanism in the Novels of Rohinton Mistry, (New Delhi: Creative
Books, 2009), p. 16.
4. Jaydipsingh K Dodiya, ‘A Fine Balance
Between Hope and Despair Through a Long Journey: A Critical Study of Rohinton
Mistry’s Such A Long Journey and A Fine Balance’, The Novels of Rohinton Mistry, A Critical Study, ed. Jaydipsingh K
Dodiya (New Delhi: Sarup& Sons, 2004) p. 2.
5. Jagdish Batra, Rohinton Mistry: Identity, Values and Other Sociological Concerns
(New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2008) p.7.
6. Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Rohinton Mistry An Introduction (New
Delhi: Foundation Books, 2007), p. 5.
7. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Perspectives on the Novels of Rohinton Mistry, (New Delhi:
Sarup& Sons, 2006) p.31.
8. Jagdish Batra, Rohinton Mistry: Identity, Values and Other Sociological Concerns
(New Delhi: Prestige Books, 2008) p.49.
9. Jaydipsingh Dodiya, Perspectives on the Novels of Rohinton Mistry, (New Delhi: Sarup&
Sons, 2006) p.47.
10. Ibid., p.47.
11. Rohinton Mistry, Such a Long Journey, (London, Faber & Faber, 1991), p. 399.
12. Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance, (London, Faber & Faber, 1996), p. 3.
13. Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Rohinton Mistry An Introduction (New
Delhi: Foundation Books, 2007), p. 39.
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