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CHAPTER-3
COMPASSION FOR THE OTHER HUMAN

Humanism stands for human values. The milk of human compassion flows
unchecked in the fiction of Rohinton Mistry. This compassion is for the
‘other’ – the downtrodden, the destitute and the detested in society. In this,
there is no consideration of caste, creed, colour, sex or status. Mistry is out
and out a humanist who believes in humanitarian values. His kind of
humanism is for the cardinal principle of freedom, fraternity and equality of
all human beings. This was the call given by Rousseau and it became the
manifesto of the French Revolution. In the present world scenario, there is
utmost need to protect the rights of the ‘others’. These could be subalterns,
these could be minorities, these could be war refugees and these could be
immigrants. This is the postmodern concern. In Mistry’s fiction, this human
concern is on the top of his agenda.

Mistry’s first novel Such a Long Journey written in 1991 highlights the
unenviable condition in which the lower middle class Parsis live as against the
hyped image of some leading industrialists like the Tatas and the Godrejs.
The backdrop is the Indian socio-political scenario of the nineteen sixties and
the early seventies. To the outside world, the Parsis might appear to be rich,
but when Gustad, a bank clerk, has to sell his camera to provide medical care
to his daughter, the lid of financial respectability is blown off. The setting
‘Khodadad Building’ is an imaginary Parsi enclave in Bombay, now called
Mumbai. The inhabitants of the Khodadad Building are representatives of a
cross section of middle class Parsis who manifest the anxieties of a religio-
racial minority that is alienated from the mainstream society.
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According to a critic, “The central theme of Such a Long Journey has to do

with the need to embrace emotions, especially sadness, and not run from
them.”1 In a telling flashback, Gustad is shown as having vowed never to shed
tears in his life like his father did at the fag-end of his life. Tears are supposed
to be unmanly. He tries to live by this creed and turns rigid towards his eldest
son Sohrab when the latter does not join the engineering college as Gustad
desired. But events force him to confront his grief and acknowledge the
existence of emotions when he prays for the dead Tehmul but it was “As
much for Tehmul as for Jimmy. And for Dinshawji, for Pappa and Mamma,
for Grandpa and Grandma, all who had had to wait for so long…”2 In this
way, he forgets the frailty shown by his father, and his own egotism divided
narrowly from his determination to act ‘manly’, and becomes a complete
humanist. Similarly, tearing off the black paper towards the end of the novel
shows the demolition of his residual bias against the majority community
surrounding Khodadad building and another step to being a perfect humanist.

Mistry has portrayed the women, who are normally allotted a secondary slot
in our society, with the same humanistic touch, be it Gustad’s wife Dilnavaz
or the aged spinster Miss Kutpitia, who is an eccentric character for the
outside world. In the midst of the father-son stand – off, it is Dilnavaz, who
suffers the most. Sohrab walks out on his father and his family. This is a
shocking moment for his parents. As a mother, Dilnavaz’s utmost desire is to
see her son reconciled to his father and the family re-united. Dilnavaz tries to
seek help from Miss Kutpitia who acts as the community advisor. She
prescribes some mumbo-jumbo. Through this episode, the writer does not
intend to legitimize superstition. In fact, at the end of the novel, Kutpitia’s
room goes up in flames. The point to be noted here is that the writer gives
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such details in the interest of realism in the novel. In any society, there are
such people. This also completes the picture of society.

In Gujarati, the name ‘Kutpitia’ signifies ‘quarrelsome’. She is introduced as

a lonely person who did not allow others to enter her flat. She is “the
ubiquitous witch of fairy stories come to life.” 3 There was a rumour in the
neighborhood about her that she has preserved the dead bodies of her relatives
in her flat. Some believe in this rumour and some do not. But despite the
eccentric and superstitious nature of Miss Kutpitia, she comes out as more
sinned against than sinning. When the children of the building tease her as
being a ‘dakin’ or witch, the readers become aware of the wrong being done
to the aged single women in our society.

Progressing through the narrative, the reader comes to know that she had
adopted her brother’s son after the untimely death of the child’s mother, but
both her brother and the son lost their lives in an accident. She had decided
not to marry so that she could bring up her nephew. Now she is alone in this
vast world. In the neighbourhood she alone had telephone in her flat and she
took thirty paisa for each telephone call – the normal billing rate for telephone
services as charged by the government agency. Though outwardly she looks
very silly but internally she is a very pathetic figure. Despite her eccentricity,
a peep into her past life makes the reader sympathize with her. Mistry’s
compassion is seen in the depiction of this old woman. In fact, Mistry has
focussed a lot on the old people in his other novels like Family Matters and
The Scream also.

Another character of an abnormal mind is Tehmul who stays in the Khodadad

building. He has lost his parents and lives with his elder brother, a traveling
salesman. He is a dim-witted fellow and is lame as his hip got fractured in an
accident. He fell from the Neem tree in the compound while trying to catch a
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kite. Thereafter, the treatment by quacks for the hip injury only worsened his
condition. Now, everybody calls him Tehmul-Langra. Instead of showing
sympathy, he has become the laughing stock of the young and the old. This is
despite the fact that he is always helpful to the neighbours. He is mostly
running errands for them like circulating the builder’s notice for getting the
tenants’ signature etc. Even in his mid-thirties, he does not show any
maturity of mind. He speaks words very fast which makes his speech
incomprehensible like “GonegoneGustadgone. Bus-gone Gustadgone.”4 The
writer intentionally joins words to convey the correct impression of Tehmul’s
speech. Mostly, he is found scratching his groins for which he is derided by
the women. But they do not mind getting him to do odd jobs.

When Sohrab, the elder son of Gustad refuses to join the I.I.T, against the
wishes of his father, and leaves home, Dilnavaz consults Kutpitia and then
according to her instructions, she hangs a lemon and some green chilies on a
string above the front door from inside. But Sohrab does not return. Dilnavaz
is not able to understand as to why Miss Kutpitia’s lime spell is not working
on Sohrab. The old lady orders a modification. Someone must drink the lime
juice. She suggests using Tehmul, who has no brains, so that he would not
even notice the trick. Dilnavaz obeys and prepares the recipe and hopes
Tehmul will wander by. As Tehmul comes near, Dilnavaz offers him the
drink. The lime juice is very tasty. Tehmul wants to have more of it. Dilnavaz
promises to serve him next day.

While Dilnavaz uses him thus, Gustad is the only person who understands
Tehmul. In this, he acts as the representative of the author. Gustad comes to
his rescue when he is being mocked by the prostitutes at the House of Cages
where he has gone with his small savings for sexual gratification. Tehmul
understands very well that at his age, Tehmul has the urge of a youth but the
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mind of a child. Not long thereafter, Gustad also discovers that he was trying
to satisfy his sexual urge upon the life-size doll which Roshan had won in the
school raffle and which had been stolen by Tehmul. At first, Gustad gets
angry but then he realizes Tehmul’s predicament and forgives him: “Gustad’s
anger began to ebb slowly Poor Tehmul. A child’s mind and a man’s urges.
Shunned by the whores, turning to the doll in desperation. Somehow, it
seemed a fitting solution.”5

Even when the end comes for Tehmul, it is Gustad who performs the last
prayer for him. There is no one else, not even Tehmul’s brother with him. He
had been stuck by a brick at the time of the Morcha staged by the residents of
the area. Gustad lifted his lifeless body and took it to his room. After the
death of Tehmul, Gustad gives his final farewell to him, praying softly with
every gesture! When actual death occurs, a close relative or dear friend sits
beside the corpse and whispers the four-lined Ashem Vahoo or the Ahuna
Vairya prayer in the ear of the corpse. So, with covered head he sat, placing
his right hand on Tehmul’s head. He recited the Yatha Ahu Varyo; five times,
and Ashem Vahoo, three times. He kept his eyes closed and started a second
cycle of prayer. His voice was soft and steady, and his hand steady and light
upon Tehmul’s head, and tears ran down his cheeks. He started another cycle,
and yet another and he could not stop the tears. As Tehmul’s association with
Gustad occurs in the very beginning of the novel, a critic has rightly
commented, “Tehmul’s life and suffering throw light on a hitherto unknown
dimension of Gustad’s personality – love for humanity.”6

In Mistry’s fiction, “The Parsi becomes the ‘Other’ because she is depicted as
a traditional, even conservtive, religious-minded person in an Indian
modernity that is supposedly secular. The Parsi inMistry’s works is shown as
resistant to change, as she holds on to belief systes that are antiquated and
 69

irrelevant, given Indian’s move owards secular industrialization and

modernization. One mode of foregrounding Parsi uniqueness is the narrative
emphasis on their rituals. Rituals become the site of the ‘self’/’ ‘Other’ debate
in mistry.”7 This view of the critic may not be quite tenable given the all-
pervasive religious culture. And yet the socio-economic condition of the Parsi
lower middle class portrayed by Mistry in most of his works makes them
eligible for the status of the ‘other’.

Rohinton Mistry is noted for his treatment of the subaltern and the
marginalized. He is for the bestowal of human rights on those who are
generally referred to as the underdog. His protagonists are necessarily
ordinary people, devoid of power and money. Therefore they are subjected to
various sorts of pressures. Apart from the major characters, there are
shopkeepers, vagabonds, ayahs, rogues and such other figures in each one of
his works.

Rohinton Mistry also takes up for depiction, the condition of the prostitutes.
Their abode is called the ‘House of Cages’. Gustad has to go there because
Gulam Mohammad stays in that area where prostitutes carry on their business.
While discussing the matter with Gulam there, Gustad hears Tehmul’s voice
and is surprised to find him with the prostitutes. They had refused to entertain
Tehmul and were making fun of him. Here the wretched condition of the
whorehouses is also put forth by Mistry:

The rooms he could peek into were sordid. Bed, thin

lumpy mattress, no sheet, ceiling fan, chair, table in
one corner, a basin and small mirror, where were the
shunted silk sheets, the air – conditioned rooms,
drinks, refreshments? The luxuries that they talked of
in their stories of this place? Where were the skilled
practitioners of the art said to possess secrets that
could drive a man insane with pleasure? 8
 70

Mistry presents here the harsh reality of the profession. It is not the magic
world of the Arabian Nights but sordid poverty that traps so many women in
this profession.

Apart from these disadvantaged groups, there are also the marginalized
religious communities which do not wield political clout or social dominance
because their number is small. Mistry gives space to them also in his
narrative. Malcolm is the representative character of the Christian minority of
India. He is Gustad’s friend from college days, so the two discuss open-
heartedly the relationship between the Parsis and the Christians. If Malcolm
claims the arrival of Christianity in India nineteen hundred years earlier when
the apostle Thomas landed on the Malabar coast, Gustad refers to the prophet
of the Parsis – Zoroaster, who “lived more than fifteen hundred years before
your Son of God was even born; a thousand years before the Buddha; two
hundred years before Moses”. 9 Gustad also points out that Zoroastrianism
influenced Judaism, Christianity and Islam in a big way. It must be pointed
out here that this discussion is without any shade of rancour.

In his novel A Fine Balance, Mistry broadens his range of characters. It is not
only the Parsi woman Dina Dalal, but also characters from among the rural
people that form the majority in India. Om and Ishvar belong to the lowly
caste of chamars who are treated as untouchables – a plight more pathetic
than that of stray animals. As is widely known, the caste-based animosity has
been the bane of rural landscape for several generations, nay centuries now.
The story of Dukhi Mochi (cobbler) and his wife Roopa has been given in
detail by Mistry to give an idea of life in Indian villages. It forms background
to the life history of Om and Ishvar and narrates the tyranny let loose on the
lower-caste people by the higher-caste ones.
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Dukhi Mochi belonged to the caste of tanners, better known as Chamars. As

is well known, a large segment of Indian population is segregated and
discriminated against merely for being born in the so-called lowly castes.
There is no rationale behind it. After all, one’s birth is not within one’s
control and moreover, placing a job beneath another is an old approach. All
professions are treated as dignified in the West.

Dukhi Mochi, like others of his ilk, depended on the landowning class called
Thakurs. He would attend to the Thakur’s myriad chores and would accept
whatever was paid to him. Once while he was crushing dried chillies on the
orders of Thakur Premji, the mortar broke into two with one part landing on
his foot and injuring it. Unmindful of Dukhi’s injury, the Thakur beat him up
severely with a stick. Naturally, this left Dukhi very sad and angry. 10

Such events were quite frequent. Dukhi decided to change his profession and
take up one which was dignified and paying. He migrated to the nearby city
and became a cobbler. There he met a Muslim tailor Ashraf with whom he
became friendly. He apprenticed his children to him so that they became
tailors and did not suffer the ignominy attached to the profession of chamars.
This was an individual decision but it was something not to the liking of the
landowning class because that would make the lowly caste people
independent. “In the olden days, punishment for stepping outside one’s caste
would have been death. Dukhi was spared his life, but it became a very hard
life. He was allowed no more carcasses, and had to travel long distances to
find work. Sometimes he obtained hide secretly from fellow chamars, it
would have been difficult for them if they were found out. The items he
fashioned from this illicit leather had to be sold in far off places where they
had not heard about him and his sons.” 11
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Dukhi knew well what it meant to raise voice against the mighty upper caste
landlords. There were examples of Bhola, Gambhir, Dayaram; Sita et al.
Bhola was accused of stealing, so the fingers of his left hand were chopped
off. He was considered lucky because the previous year, Chhagan lost his
hand at the wrist and Dosu got whipping for getting too close to the village
well meant for the upper caste people.

Mistry’s humanism makes copious notes of the atrocities let loose on the
downtrodden by the mighty landlords belonging to the upper caste. It is true
that the caste menace has created a big schism in our society. Despite the laws
and land reforms, the poor continue to suffer for minor offences. The plight of
women is particularly dismal. Dukhi’s wife Roopa was raped repeatedly by
the landlord’s chowkidar because she was caught stealing some fruits for her
children from the landlord’s orchard. Another villager Budhu’s wife “refused
to go to the field with the zamindar’s son, so they shaved her head and walked
her naked through the square.”12 A true humanist that Mistry is, he opposes
exploitation of all types.

For these reasons, Dukhi decided to send his children Ishvar and Narayan to
the city to learn tailoring at Ashraf’s shop. By putting in a friendly Muslim
character, Mistry tries to underline the bonding between the minorities – one
religion-based and the other caste-based. This friendship is the friendship that
is forged on the plank of humanity. If Ashraf provided timely help to his
friend’s children, they were also helpful to him. In fact, during the communal
riots that broke out in the city, they saved his life as also of his family. When
the marauding ruffians landed at Ashraf’s shop-cum-residence, Ishvar and
Narain responded that the shop was their father’s and not of a Muslim. The
signboard had been re-painted a day before to announce Krishan Tailors in
place of Ashraf Tailoring Shop. The rioters convinced themselves of the
 73

Hindu character of the shop when they saw the picture of deities on the wall
and left. Earlier, in the morning, the neighbouring coal-merchant was also
quite helpful to Ashraf. Thus, neighbourliness and close association brings
human beings closer even though they do not share the same caste or religion.
This is Mistry’s message.

So, Ishvar and Narain returned to the village as tailors. After sometime,
elections were held. Mistry does not mince words in describing the maladies
like booth capturing and coercion of the lower caste people. The lower caste
people are politically conscious. They note that despite new laws banning
untouchability, they are treated worse than animals. Narayan gives vent to his
pain: “I want to be able to drink from the village well, worship in the temple,
walk where I like.”13

He got into a rebellious mood and spoke his mind at the booth about casting
his vote himself instead of handing it over to the goons of the landlord as had
been done earlier. He said, “It is our right as voters.”14 Soon, the goons
arrived and forced him to put his thumb down on the registration paper. For
his insolence, he, along with some others, was taken to the landlord’s farm
and tortured. Mistry gives “heart-rending details of the torture.”15 The goons
let loose a reign of terror in the village. They beat up people at random, raped
women and burned huts. To cap it all, Narayan was killed first and his body
shown to the family members. Not satisfied with this, Dukhi, his wife Roop,
daughter-in-law Radha and the daughters were burnt alive to set an example
for the villagers. Om and Ishvar lived on because they were in the city. This
horrendous picture has upset many readers but surely it is not entirely
imaginary. Through it, Mistry wishes to awaken the conscience of the nation
towards the sad plight of these lower caste people, who are, after all, human
beings.
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When the tailors find a compassionate lady Dina Dalal after being
disappointed by contacts referred to by their Ashraf chacha, they are much
relieved. Driven by hunger and empty pockets, the tailors work ceaselessly
without taking any lunch break for the first week. Only after receiving some
money for their work, they start taking regular lunch or tea break.

Constant work also tells on their spirits. When Dina objects to their smoking
habit on the plea that they may get cancer, Om replies morosely, “We don’t
have to worry about cancer,” said Omprakash, “This expensive city will first
eat us alive, for sure.”16 A heart-rending cry from the millions of homeless
workers in big cities for sure!

Coming back to Om and Ishvar’s life in Bombay, we find that apart from
finding employment, their next worry is to find a home. In Bombay, as in any
big city of India, the problem of finding a shelter over one’s head is very
acute. When Om’s life after marriage is being discussed, they talk about
accommodation. Ishvar has an unlikely place in mind – the veranda in Dina
Dalal’s house. Dina tries to reason with him: “For you and Om, and his wife?
All three on the veranda?”17 In reply she is told by Ishvar how the families are
surviving in far more cramped conditions. Compared to them verandah is a
deluxe lodging:

You come with me; see how families live eight, nine
or ten people in a small room. Sleeping one over on
big shelves, form floor to ceiling. Like third class
railway births or in cupboards on in the bathroom.
Surviving like goods in a warehouse. 18

Long period of stay together has generated fellow-feeling among all. Maneck
frolicks with Om. There is detailed description of how when Dina Dalal was
away, all three of them created such a ruckus that on return Dina found the
house in a mess. But Mistry shows how human sentiment obliterates the
 75

religious differences. Also, the differences due to their differing backgrounds

disappear. Om and Ishvar come from poor, rural background and have had
little education, while Maneck is from a hilly region and comes from a well-
settled middle class family. It is victory of the human sentiment.

We find that the dark shadow on the characters of the novel has not yet
vanished. Ishvar wishes to go home to fix Om’s marriage. Dina allows the
tailors to pay a visit to their native place for wife-viewing and match-fixing
and the tailors depart. About one month after their departure, Maneck, the
student tenant, too proceeds towards the mountains to meet his parents with a
promise to return soon for completing his three-year degree course.

Dina considers Om and Ishvar like her own relations. While they are away for
the purpose of selecting bride of Om, she uses some of her free time to
prepare another bedding for Om and his wife and also tries to complete the
quilt to present both as wedding gifts to the newly-weds. The quilt prepared
with patches of different types of cloth serves as a leitmotif of the novel, as
one corner remains unfinished till the end, hinting at the incomplete lives the
characters have led.

The period of Emergency is considered a dark chapter in the history of the

Idian democracy. The poor people sufferd a lot due to shoddy and dictatorial
implementation of schemes like beautification of cities and population
control. Mistry goes into great detail as he links his narrative to the excesses
of the Emergency period. The tailors reach the town and find Ashraf waiting
on the platform itself, full of pleasure at being together again. From Ashraf
they come to know about the demise of Mumtaz chachi and are full of sorrow
for that. It is not long before Om asks the question, “What about Thakur
Dharamsi? Is that Daakoo still alive?” 19 Ashraf tells them that he has become
very powerful since their departure. A family planning camp is already in
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progress and Dharamsi is all set to make it a success because that would
ensure him political mileage.

A nasty confrontation with Dharamsi at this family planning camp is followed

by forced vasectomy operation of both Ishwar and Om. One person consoles
Ishvar in the camp that the operation was reversible through very expensive.
“Never mind how expensive- we will get it done! We will sew like crazy for
Dinabai; night and day I will get it reversed for you! Om!” wailed Ishvar. 20
But all his hopes dash to the ground when Thakur Dharamsi spots Om among
the patients, and orders the doctors to remove his testicles. There is no
comfort for Ishvar now. All through the night he howls and weeps. Thus, the
tailors are punished the second time. Once their whole family was burnt alive
and now Om is castrated, killing all his dreams of married life. The humanist
Mistry brings out the pathos of the situation in all its intensity.

After their operation, with great difficulty the tailors reach the Muzaffar
Tailoring Shop and are given the news about Ashraf’s death. But they are too
distraught, to be able to mourn the loss. However, this is not the end of their
misfortune. The dreaded gangrene disease develops in Ishvar’s legs and these
have to be amputated. So, almost four months after coming from the city, the
tailors return with Ishvar sitting on a platform with castors like the beggar
Shankar, with Om, now turned into a eunuch, pulling it with a rope. There is
no scope for poetic justice in Mistry’s novel. It is a realistic novel and the
horrors of life of poor people have been very sympathetically and very
humanely portrayed. A renowned critic approves of Mistry’s humanist stance
in these words:

A Fine Balance is also a text in which Mistry has made

a conscious effort to embrace more of the social reality
of India, so although the novel opens with a Parsi
woman Dina Dalal’s story in Bombay, it soon enlarges
 77

its scope to include her lodger Maneck Kohlah from a

hill station in North India and tailors, Ishvar and
Omprakash, who come to her from a village. The
narrative also encompasses what Walter Benjamin has
called the city poet’s special concern with rag pickers,
beggars and suicide victims/heroes. As their tragic
tales unfold, one gets the impression that Mistry’s text
is attempting to articulate the silences of centuries of
exploitation, domination and oppression of the poorest
of the poor of India.”21

It is remarkable that Mistry locates human feelings even in apparently evil

characters; there is a method in this though. This discovery does not hold
good in case of rich people or politicians. He finds essential goodness in
characters occupying lower stations in life. They may appear to be evil but at
the back lies a history of circumstances which is responsible for making a
mess of their lives. Still, deep within their hearts, they retain the milk of
human kindness.

The character of Ibrahim belongs to this category. He is the rent-collector for

the society apartment block in which Dina Dalal lives. He is described as an
elderly man who looked older than his age. He goes about collecting rent
from various tenants on behalf of the landlord who is not a kind man. He also
looks after court cases involving tenancy. In all, there are six buildings under
his charge.

Mistry’s keen observation notices even the minor things associated with the
character. He started service as a nineteen-year old. He was handed a folder to
keep necessary papers but it was very old one consisting of two wooden
boards bound by a strip of morocco string. Ibrahim could even spot the smell
of its previous owner. “A fraying cotton tape, sewn to the leather, went
around to secure the contents. The dark, creaked boards had warped badly;
when opened they creaked and released a sweaty tobacco odour.” 22 It looked
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more like the “binders carried by disreputable market place jyotshis.” 23

However, after he protested, he was given a new good-looking folder. “With
the new folder under his arm, he could hold his head high and strut as
importantly as a soliciter while making his rounds”, though he was actually
“the landlord’s spy, blackmailer, deliverer of threats and all.” 24

He had served his maser for twenty-four years when he is brought into the
plot of the novel. He had a plastic folder now His landlord has issued a letter
to Dina Dalal objecting to the tailoring work in her apartment. Ibrahim
warned her that she would receive a legal notice if she continued with work.
After some days he came again with a final notice. Dina sprang a surprise on
him declaring that Ishvar was her husband and Maneck and Omprakash their
children and that all the clothes were part of her wardrobe. This was a strange
comment meant to circumvent landlord’s restrictions. But at the same time, it
shows the humanistic bonding between the Parsi lady and her low-caste
Hindu workers.

Upon this, Ibrahim had the temerity to ask for marriage certificate. Naturally,
Dina gave him a mouthful. Ibrahim retreated, “muttering that he would have
to make a full report to the office, why abuses him for doing his job, he did
not enjoy it any more than the tenants did.” 25 Another visit followed from
Ibrahim during which he demanded of her to vacate the premises within forty-
eight hours. This was no serving of legal notice. Instead, there were two
goondas with him for “faster results”, who started destroying clothes and
sewing machines. When Maneck resisted, one ruffian took out his flick-knife.
Ibrahim was aghast because he had not thought that things would go that far.
“Stop it! I was present when you got your orders! There was nothing about
beatings and knives!”, said Ibrahim. 26 The goondas departed after smashing
glass panes of windows.
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Dina and Ishvar castigated Ibrahim for doing this at his age. Ibrahim feels
repentant now and feelings now surge within him.

Ibrahim could conrol himself no longer. Putting his hand over his face, he
made a peculiar sound. It was not apparent immediately that he was trying to
cry noiselessly. ‘It’s no use,’ his voice broke. ‘I cannot do this job, I hate it!
Oh, what has my life become!’ He felt under the sherwani and pulled out his
kerchief to blow his nose.

‘Forgive me, sister,’ he sobbed. “I did not know when I brought them, that
they would do such damage. For years I have followed the landlord’s orders.
Like a helpless child. He tells me to threaten somebody, I threaten. He tells
me to plead, I plead. If he raves that a tenant must be evicted, I have to repeat
the raving at the tenant’s door. I am his creature. Everybody thinks I am an
evil person, but I am not, I want to see justice done, for myself, for yourself,
for everyone. But the world is controlled by wicked people, we have no
chance, we have nothing but trouble and sorrow…” 27

Thus, human side is not totally eclipsed in the people at the lower rung of the
society.

In his third novel Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry portrays the life of
Nariman Vakeel, an old Parsi who retired as professor of English literature.
By taking up an old person as a protagonist of the novel, Mistry is making a
humanistic statement. Ageism is paradoxical in that it is a dehumanizing
humanist ideology in so far as it rests on the unacknowledged essentialisation
of the human as young, powerful, attractive and rational, particularly where
the human character as a protagonist is considered. Viewed from this angle,
the old people are driven to the outer margins of the properly human. The
 80

bedridden old man Nariman is portrayed as another specimen of neglected

humanity and in this lie embedded the humanist credentials of the author.

The story of the novel moves around a lower middle class Parsi family of
Bombay. The head of the family Nariman Vakeel suffers from Parkinson’s
disease. He stays with his step-children Jal and Coomy in the building called
Chateau Facility. The siblings are well-past their marriageable age, though
they continue to be unmarried. They are the children of the first husband of
his wife Yasmen. His own daughter from his wife Yasmeen is Roxana who
lives with her husband Yezad and children Murad and Jehangir in Pleasant
Villa purchased by the professor for them. This house also becomes the bone
of contention between Roxana and Nariman’s step-children. Much against the
advice of his step-children, Nariman goes out and while crossing the road,
falls and breaks his ankle. He is taken to the hospital and put in a cast. Thus,
he is confined to bed.

Prof. Nariman has little worthwhile to do at this age and with his hip broken.
He lies on the sick-bed and reminisces about his past life. At the age of forty,
he had been forced by a domineering father to ditch his Christian girlfriend of
many years and marry a Parsi widow. The Parsi fastidiousness about
maintaining the purity of blood is well known. It is because of this that the
total number of the Parsis the world over is around one lac only and in India
around sixty thousand. The Indian Government was forced to set up a
committee for suggesting measures to avoid extinction of this race. Mistry, by
highlighting the plight of the old people does not only remind the world about
the largely old-people constituting the Parsi clan but also brings into play the
humanitarian approach.

How one’s near and dear ones shy away from looking after the old is clearly
brought out by Mistry in this novel. After a two-day stay in the hospital,
 81

Nariman is brought back home in an ambulance. Later, the doctor attending

on him says the ankle would take some more weeks to get right. The news
dampens Coomy’s spirits as she is already fed up with looking after the old
man, particularly at moments of nature’s call. So, a week after the fall, the
professor is shifted to his daughter Roxana’s small flat and assured that it was
for a few days only. Surprisingly, she had not been informed about the
accident earlier. As the days drag on, Coomy gets the feeling that Nariman
might be sent back by Roxana to her. So, in order to wash her hands clear of
the responsibility, she hatches an ingenious plan, according to which her
brother Jal deliberately damages the roof of Nariman’s room so that the
plaster falls down. Both of them now visit Roxana and deliver the disturbing
news of a leaking overhead tank the water from which is supposed to have
seeped through the roof making it impossible to host Nariman there in near
future. As expected, Yezad and Roxana are a worried lot now. They want
some financial support from Coomy which the latter refuses straightaway
leading to exchange of some unpleasant words between the two parties. Thus,
financial considerations create differences between the two families.

Apart from materialistic attitude of contemporary society, Mistry, in a true

humanist vein, focusses on the emotional life of the old man as a critic avers,

Sympathy, compassion and humanity are in fact the

keywords to the comprehension of this book. The
compassion for the dalits and the other unfortunates
first center-staged in A Fine Balance has come to
ripeness in Family Matters, making it till date Mistry’s
finest novel. A novel in which the human touch
redeems the shortcomings noted in the chapter devoted
to it in this text, and makes it a vehicle in which Mistry
has indeed transcended both the self and the other. The
self being both the persona of the writer and also his
Parsi self; the other being the wider world. Here all
three have come together in an epiphanic moment that
 82

speaks across national, ethnic and gender boundaries,

with a voice that cannot be denied. 28

Mistry’s sympathy is not reserved for his co-religionist Nariman only but is
also for the Catholic Christian Lucy. When Lucy was denied her Parsi lover
Nariman, the jilted girl was shaken and actually went off her mind. She also
stayed in the same residential complex, so the affair became the talking point
of the community. She would behave like any dejected male lover. In this, she
was quite bold. A number of times, Nariman’s wife noted the girl standing at
a distance and waiting for the professor. Naturally, she could not have liked
this state of affairs. One such scene is described graphically by the novelist,
based on Nariman’s stream of consciousness. The Professor wanted to go
down since he had heard Lucy’s song and as always, calm her and persuade
her to leave. His wife Yasmeen had been cooperating so far but his time she
hid the towel to prevent Nariman from going down:

Clever move on Yasmin’s part, he thought, feeling no

resentment for her – what right did he have to resent?
He was the one behaving unreasonably; she had been
the model of patience and understanding on so many
evenings, tolerating the farce. For farce was what it
would have seemed to her and to their neighbours in
Chateau Felicity: the sight of Lucy on the pavement,
staring up at the window where he stood. And then,
when his remorse would drag him downstairs, to have
to observe the two of them together, no doubt looking
like a lovesick couple. Poor Yasmin, he thought as he
scoured the house, searching for a shirt, underwear,
anything. And poor Lucy, holding her twilight vigils
for him…to what purpose? 29

Clearly, Mistry’s protagonist is torn between Lucy and Yasmin. The former’s
love was denied to him by his parents because Lucy was a Christian. He did
not have the courage to walk out on his parents. He tried to bring Lucy round
 83

now but Lucy was made of a different stuff. She started following Nariman
when he went to college.

From this time, her pursuit had begun in earnest. And there was no reasoning
with her. She telephoned him at work, at home, wrote letters, even waited at
the college gate for him on some days. He told her what she was doing made
no sense, when they had decided months ago that it was best to end it.

“You decided,” she said. “I thought it as a mistake. I

still do. I still believe you love me. Admit it. I know
that something is still possible between us.” 30

The two clashed with one another. In an inebriated condition, Lucy climbed
on to the top floor roof of the complex and positioned herself precariously on
the ledge. She started singing a song. Yasmin could not bear this and went up
to reason with her but in the heat of the moment, as she stepped on to the
ledge, a slight movement and down they went crashing against the hard floor
with a thud. That was how both of them got killed. This is indeed a moving
account of a love-story gone wrong. What Mistry seems to point out here is
the regressive, traditional attitude of parents who do not allow their children
to follow their heart simply because of the religious differences.

Humanists, right from the Renaissance times, have valued freedom, as a critic
states, “Among the various themes that became popular during the
Renaissance owing to the impact of humanism were the ideals of liberty and
love, the ideals of perfect courtier, gentleman, citizen, or magistrate, as also
the centrality of man in the universe and his responsibility to set up an ideal
society informed by the humanistic values.”31 The French Revolution of 1789
was staged on the basis of philosophy of Rousseau, whose cardinal principles
were Liberty, Equality and Fraternity – clear humanist ideals. These have
stood the test of time and won the support of all wise men over the ages.
 84

Yezad is the one who goes against the humanist principle of respecting the
rights of a fellow human beings. He fails to respect the right of a fellow
human being to his individual choice and right to life. The reference is to Mr.
Kapur, his employer who wishes to live upto his humanist principles. But
Yezad, in order to meet domestic expenses raised due to the upkeep of his
father-in-law Prof. Nariman Vakeel, thinks of the devilish plot which
misfires and results in Kapur’s death. But a confirmed humanist that Rohinton
Mistry is, he would not let go of Yezad as a hopeless blackguard. There is
essential quality of human-ness in everyone. So, he undergoes the mental
torment of repentance.

From the philosophical angle, the question as to what is right and what is
wrong has always vexed thinking minds. Something that appears right to a
person may not appear so to another. In such circumstances, the ethical
rightness assumes two faces – ‘subjective right’ and ‘objective right’, as
Bertrand Russell would say. Now, whereas subjective right is clear and
definite to one, the objective right or good is indefinable because it depends
upon a faculty of ethical intuition that some admit of whereas others do not.
Russell tends to discount moral intuition because it can be deconstructed to
mean social criticism or praise plus personal emotions of love and hate.

But Yezad has, what we call, the qualms of conscience. He used to tell his
sons the story of his father’s valour in displaying loyalty to the bank in which
he worked during fierce riots in the city. For this, he was rewarded with a
clock that hung in their house and which Yezad zealously guarded as a
valuable symbol of honesty and bravery of his late father. His father-in-law
told the mythical story of Faridoon and Zuhaak to the grandchildren. This
story symbolizes the eternal nature of the struggle between good and evil.
 85

This clash occurs in the life of Yezad also and he decides to repent for it in his
own way, devoting himself to prayer and rituals.

Yezad has evidently become an object of pity. His elder son Murad thinks his
father, who takes to prayer and rituals with a vengeance towards the end of
the novel, has “gone over the edge…deep into the abyss of religion.” 32
Jehangir, the younger son, can mark that the prayer is not bringing any relief
to his father and he wonders, “If only Dada Ormuzd could help me
understand! Why must prayer and religion lead to so many fights between
father and son? Is that His will?” 33 Which, in effect, means our inability to
translate religion beyond rituals in our life. “You’re becoming more and more
fanatical,” says Murad. “I don’t understand what’s changing you, Daddy.”
“You will, as you get older. It’s a spiritual evolution. You will reach a stage in
your life when you too thirst for spirituality.”34

A critic rightly comments, “Jehangir is a choric comment on the futility of

factitious and facile faith. He yearns for a genuinely humane order that
touches the innermost depths of the self and is not confined to spaces marked
by his father in the drawing room.” 35 There is no doubt that Mistry’s humanist
credentials come into play at every step in this novel.

This kind of humanism finds affinity with the existential humanism of J.P.
Sartre, who had been criticized for portraying weak characters: “Existentialist,
when he portrays a coward, shows him as responsible for his cowardice. He is
not like that on account of a cowardly heart or lungs or cerebrum, he has not
become like that through his physiological organism; he is like that because
he has made himself into a coward by actions. […] There is always a
possibility for the coward to give up cowardice and for the hero to stop being
a hero.”
 86

As in the other novels of Mistry, people belonging to the lower middle class
have a formidable existence: “Their life is beset with a thousand and one
problems: their clocks stop, the taps run dry at six in the morning, their
grocers cheat them regularly and getting adequate accommodation is well-
nigh impossible. In this crowded city, even kholis in a modest chawl are
rented out in shifts of 8 to 12 hours. The train travel for the daily commuters
involves no less than Tarzan’s antics.” 36 It is for such people that Mistry’s
heart bleeds. Indeed, he is a true humanist.

In the anthology Tales from Firozsha Baag, Mistry’s humanism is evidenced

in the general treatment of the residents of the enclave. There is no distinction
made by the writer on the basis of religion. His only concern is to underline
the predicament of human being. Therefore, we have the maid servant
Jaykalee, handyman Francis and such other characters who complete the
picture of the neighbourhood. When it comes to the Parsis, a different picture
emerges before the readers because the Parsis have been looked upon as an
elite class, anglicized and having a fair number of rich industrialists like the
Tatas, the Godrejs, and the Wadias etc. In this anthology, we find Parsis just
like common Indians. If in the first story ‘Auspicious Occasion’, Rustomji
gets the shock of postcolonial reality in which the Parsis do not enjoy the
privileges of the colonial times, the second story ‘One Sunday’ “deals with
the notion of the Parsis as subalterns, but seen as elites, by those even more
subaltern in the Indian social order.” 37 The critic Nilufer Bharucha is a Parsi
herself and therefore, should know better about this community. We come
across Parsis like Najamai and Boman who deserve our pity.

The story ‘The Ghost of Firozsha Baag’ focuses on the servant-master

relationship, in which the violation of humanistic principles normally takes
place. Mistry puts the servant first. The masters here have been referred to as
 87

‘seth’ and ‘bai’ and the servant is a maid named Jacqueline, popularly called
Jaakaylee because her Christian name is not easy on the tongue of ordinary
people. Besides Jaakaylee, there are other servants also in the Baag locality –
the Muslim servant who is mentioned just once in the story ‘One Sunday’ as
also Francis, who has a considerable role in the same story. In fact, the whole
story moves around him. He can be looked upon as the central character of
the story just as Jaakaylee is of ‘The Ghost of Firozsha Baag’. There are
references to the Hindu maid servants like Tanoo and Gajra. These domestic
helpers worked in Rustomji’s house which is the locale of the story
‘Auspicious Occasion’.

In the ‘The Ghost of Firozsha Baag’ the narrator is Jacqueline herself. The
reader gets to know the master-servant relations through her point of view. In
order to make the narration realistic and authentic, Mistry has very carefully
selected the idiom of her speech. More than a silent stream of consciousness
laid bare before the reader, it appears to be the babble of a garrulous maid.
That is the kind of picture that emerges before the reader and by all accounts,
presentation of such a character should be the motive of the writer also as in
the following extract:

Curry is boiling nicely smells very tasty. Bai tells me

don’t forget about curry, don’t burn the dinner. How
any times have I burned the dinner in forty nine years,
I should ask her. Believe or don’t believe, not one
time.38

Mistry’s use of phrases like ‘burn the dinner’, literal translations of native
usage further livens up the language.

In the depiction of this character, Mistry’s humanist leanings are laid bare.
Jaakaylee came from Penjim to Bombay, leaving her family and native
 88

village, in order to earn bread for herself at the age of fifteen. Life here has
not been a bed of roses as her frequent lapses into loud thinking show. She
has had to work from dawn to midnight in the same house for forty years, and
the bitter lesson that she has learnt is that an ayah cannot consider herself to
be a part of the family which she has served for so long. The Seth whom she
taught Konkani songs is a ‘big man’ now and has forgotten the past when he
was under the care of this maid. All he knows now is that she is his servant.
This changed attitude of the Seth throws ample light on the psychological
trauma that Jaaykaylee has to undergo because it is not easy for a person who
looked after a toddler to forget those days when, over the years, the same
toddler has turned into a grown-up man: “When he was little I sang Konkani
songs for him. Mogacha Mary and Hanv Saiba. Big man now, he’s forgotten
them and so have I. Forgetting my name, my language, my songs.” 39 This is
indeed a moving description of the psychological hurt which Jaakaylee has
suffered.

Whereas as a small child, he looks upon his ayah as a substitute for mother
and is indeed encouraged to adopt such attitude in the hope that such close
relations would help him grow into a sound person, the very same child after
having grown up has a changed perception of the ayah and treats her as a
hired servant. The change is certainly slow but all the same it cannot make the
ayah forget the past. The contrast that the present life of a menial help
overburdened with domestic chores brings, sets her thinking of the past and
such moments are quite frequent in the life of a servant as can be made out
from the following musing: “Jaakaylee, my bai calls out, Jaakaylee, is masala
ready? Thinks a sixty three year old ayah can make masala as quick as she
used to when she was fifteen.”40
 89

Such thoughts haunt a person more in his or her old age, when one is shorn of
physical prowess and desires care and attention from one’s relatives and
acquaintances. Already, she feels hurt because her name has been corrupted
from Jacqueline to Jaakaylee: “Forty nine years in Foirozesha Baag’s B Block
and they still don’t say my name right. Is it so difficult to say Jacqueline? But
they always say Jaakaylee. Or worse, Jaakaylee.” 41 For this she holds the old
bai responsible:

All the fault is of old bai who died ten years ago. She
was in charge till her son brought a wife, the new bai
of the house. Old bai took English words and made
them Parsi words. Easy chair was igeechur, French
beans was ferach beech, and Jacqueline became
Jaakaylee. Later I found out that all old Parsis did this,
it was like they made their own private language. So
then, new bai called me Jaakaylee also, and children
do the same. I don’t care about it now. If someone asks
my name I say Jaakaylee. 42

Jaakaylee also has another grudge against the old lady of the house.
Jacqueline had to stop her schooling after coming from Bombay as “her bai
said she must stop because who would serve dinner to Seth when he came
home from work and who would carry away dirty dishes?” 43 It is quite
inhuman to deprive a child of basic education for the sake of work. Child-
workers still persist in India despite the presence of numerous acts banning
child labour.

Jaakaylee has ultimately reconciled to her fate because the identity is no

problem for a servant who must efface every trace of egotism before taking
up the lowly job of a domestic help. The master would never trust the servant
with the keys of the house, much less being allowed to sleep on a cot inside
the flat. Theirs is the life attached to the floor while the master would not
stoop low to lie down or sit on the floor, as she reminisces: “It is something I
 90

have learned, like I leaned forty nine years ago that life as ayah means living
close to floor. All work, I do, I do on floors, lie grinding masala, cutting
vegetables, cleaning rice. Food also is eaten sitting on floor, after serving
them at dining table. And my bedding is rolled out at night in kitchen passage,
on floor. No cot for me.”44

The master-servant relationship is not free from the colour prejudice. A dark-
skinned servant would get less of sympathy than a fair-skinned servant in an
Indian house. Similarly, a maid servant is preferred to a male servant, because
the former is more submissive and manageable than the latter. Jaakaylee is
smart enough to mark this aspect, when she comments, “I was saying, it was
very lucky for me to become ayah, in Parsi house, and never will I forget that.
Especially because I’m Goan Catholic and very dark skin colour. Parsis prefer
Manglorean Catholics, they have light skin colour. For themselves also Parsis
like light skin, and when Parsi baby is born that is the first and most important
thing. If it is fair they say, O how nice light skin just like parents. But if it is
dark skin they say, arre what is this ayah no chhokro, ayah’s child.”45 By
adopting this satiric approach, Mistry means to condemn the discrimination
which is against the huamnist principle.

It is a common observation that the master, or for that matter, the mistress of
the house does not consider a domestic servant gifted with enough common
sense. They are considered dim-wits only. The entire story of ‘The Ghost of
Firozsha Baag’ is based upon the testimony of this maid regarding having
seen a ghost, which is not believed at first, but then some of the inmates of the
Baag start believing it. Jaakaylee saw this ‘bhoot’ for the first time on the
Christmas Eve. She had gone out to attend the mass and came back around
two o’clock early morning, so that the bhoot was seen technically on the
Christmas day. As the lift in B Block was out or order, she started climbing
 91

the stairs. Then, when she reached first floor and stopped for rest, she noticed
a body-shape wrapped in whiteness standing on the second floor. When the
maid asked about his identity, it vanished in thin air. This sequence of events
was sufficient for Jaakaylee to deduce the presence of a ghost in the building.

When Jacqueline rings the bell, the bai does not open the door. After
repeatedly ringing the bell, the door is opened at last. But the Seth does not
take her seriously and mocks that he does not want any ghost to roll her
downstairs as who would prepare tea in the morning. Jacqueline feels
humiliated and lies back silently listening the crrr-crr sound of their cot in
darkness.46 We must approach this incident from a psychological angle.
Jacqueline has lost her individual identity. It is not only her name, but her
background, her past, her language and her culture that she has lost. Inventing
the story of the ghost seems aimed at drawing the attention of the people to
the plight of this forsaken subaltern.

She was separated from her lover Catejan at the age of fourteen. Ever since,
she has stayed here and done household chores without getting any sympathy
and love. It is her unrequited physical urge that, according to the critic Nilufer
Bharucha, finds expression in her grinding act also. It stands out quite clearly
even though Jaakaylee tries to raise the bogey of the ghost:

Not on the stairs this time but right in my bed. I’m

telling you, he was sitting on my chest and bouncing
up and down, and I couldn’t push him off, so weak I
was feeling (I’m a proper catholic, I was fasting),
couldn’t even scream or anything (not because I was
scared – he was choking me). Then someone woke up
to go to WC and put on a light in the passage where I
sleep. Only then did the rascal bhoot jump off and
vanish.47
 92

At another place, the reference to more direct: “Yes, the bhoot came but he
did not bounce any more upon my chest. Sometimes he just sat next to the
bedding, other times he lay down beside me with his head on my chest, and if
I tried to push him away he would hold me tighter. Or would try to put his
hand up my gown or down from the neck. But I sleep with buttons up to my
collar, so it was difficult fort the rascal. O what a ghost of mischief he was!”
The human-non human relation is considered the stuff of myths only.
Clearly, there is no bhoot or ghost; it is a concoction of Jaakaylee’s mind and
the lid is finally blown off reality when she confesses (the real confession is
not noted by the writer) before the priest. Later though, Jaakaylee begins to
miss her ghost and his comforting presence in her bed. Even though the writer
has withheld direct reference to the identity of the actor, by all accounts it
seems to be Pesi or Peshotan, a mischievous lad of the neighbourhood. He is
referred to as having put on white sheet in an attempt to give the impression
of a ghost to the girls Vera and Dolly: “Then Pesi, wearing a white bedsheet
and waiting under the staircase, jumped out shouting bowere. Vera and Dolly
screamed so loudly, I’m telling you, and they started running.” 48

Mistry’s depiction of this character is full of humanist sentiments. He does

not make small of the emotional and sexual life of a menial servant. Even
under Jacqueline’s references to curry lies a subdued craving for sexual
relation. Since bai and Seth do not leave curry for Jacqueline, she has to hide
it beforehand for her own consumption. Tis can be taken as a metaphorical
description of Jaakaylee’s dsire tofulfil her sexual longing secretly. But
oblivious of it, he employers did not feel that she had any sensual craving.
They were treating the old bai like a machine.

Jaakaylee’s old and aged hands are aching after continuous grinding of
masala but her bai won’t buy automatic grinding machine. The rich
 93

employers would never think of the plight of the weak and ageing servants. A
comment about the other rich Parsis vis-à-vis the seth and bai is revealing:

Very rich people, my bai-seth. He is a chartered

accountant. He has a nice motorcar, just like A Block
priest, and like the one Dr Mody used to drive, which
has not moved from the compound since the day he
died. Bai says they should buy it from Mrs Mody; she
wants it to go shopping. But a masala machine they
will not buy. Jaakaylee must keep on doing it till the
arms fall out from shoulders. 49
1

Another character Francis, who is a Christian male servant of the Baag,

is depicted in detail by Mistry in a thoroughly humanist vein. He does not
have any regular employer as he is not a full-time household servant like
Jacqueline, nor had he to leave his family behind to remember. He is an
orphan boy who spends day and night under the awning of a furniture store,
whose furniture store owner never minds it surprisingly. His sole means of
earning livelihood depends upon the Baag residents’ mercy. He does odd jobs
for not only C Block residents but for all Baag people, especially Najamai. He
comes at mere clapping. Since he is not better than a homeless beggar in their
life, so they do not like their children playing with him. When Kersi becomes
his friend and enjoys kite flying, spinning tops and shooting marbles with
him, his parents do not accept it.

Francis knew that Karsi had soft corner for all servants so he hoped that he
would help him as he had not eaten for the last two days. But he becomes
disappointed when nobody seems concerned about his condition. The only
way left for him now was to enter Najamai’s flat stealthily and find something
to eat. Najamai’s sudden entry terrified him and he ran towards Tar Gully
area. As Najamai raised a hue and cry, residents of the nearby flats gathered
in no time. Kersi and Percy gave ‘the thief’ a hard chase into the Tar Gully
 94

and managed to catch him. The Tar Gully crowd severely beat Francis as they
had heard the ‘chor-chor’ shouting. This intervention of the Tar Gully crowd
examines the relationship between two types of subalterns. The Tar Gully is
the abode of the economically depressed people. So is Francis but at that
particular moment, when the emotions run high as the call for catching the
thief is given, fellow-feelings of belonging to the same socio-economic group
disappear. In Tar Gully, “where the really destitute of Bombay lived, the bat-
wielding Parsi boys were unwelcome. They were resented as representing the
race that considered itself superior to them.” 50 This is a comment on the
general apathy of the people, even of the ones belonging to the same socio-
economic group.

And yet the common bond between Francis and Tar Gully residents was not
forged. Percy, however, saved him and took him back to Najamai where
neighbours again subjected Francis to a fresh round of thrashing. The only
Muslim servant of the Baag also kicked him powerfully in his ribs. He was,
however, not handed over to police. Later, when Najamai checked her flat,
she noticed pale liquid behind the door, which was ostensibly urine released
involuntarily by Francis due to fear. Kersi felt repentant and broke the handle
of his cricket bat that he had taken along to teach fleeing Francis a lesson
with. This little incident at the end of the story underlines the author’s
humanism, also because Kersi is considered the alter ego of the author.

Mistry, by focussing the spotlight on the housemaids clearly underlines his

humanist bent of mind. Before Francis and Jacqueline appear in the stories
‘One Sunday’ and ‘The Ghost of Firozsha Baag’, Mistry introduces Gajra and
Tanoo, two maid servants of Rustomji’s house in the story ‘Auspicious
Occasion’. The stories here throw light on the way employers exploit
servants. Such exploitation has sexual overtones if the servant is a desirable
 95

female. In such a situation, even an old and infirm employer would not mind
trying his luck. All moral codes are thrown to the wind when the opportunity
presents itself before the employer. If, by chance, the servant is slow in
performing household chores, the employer would get a handle to extract
sexual favour from the poor servant. Gajra was young and voluptuous woman
who was a little tardy in household work. Despite her plumpness, she was
quite pretty. The only similarity between her and the earlier maid Tanoo was
the coconut greased hair. Tanoo was old and weak, “a woman in her early
seventies, tall and skinny, she was bow-legged and half blind with an
astonishing quality of wrinkles on her face and limbs.”51

Though she was periodically threatened with pay cuts and other grimmer
forms of retribution and despite her good intentions and avowals and
resolutions, she used to break frequently a dish or a cup or a saucer. As these
days Gangas (as Hindu maids are normally addressed by the Parsis) were few
as compared to their demand, so Mahroo (his bai) had to accept the loss
unwillingly. Both Mehroo and Rustomji felt relieved when she went to her
sister’s family to spend rest of her life with them.

After her, Gajra comes and Rustomji cannot stop himself seeing longingly at
her sexy body. He missed not a single chance to touch her when she was
washing dishes and he “did not tire of going into the kitchen while Gajra was
washing dishes, crouched on her hauches within the parapet of the mori.”52
For him gungas are only sexual objects. In this way, Mistry hints at the
problem faced by those working women at their master’s household. They
have to face sexual glances of even aged masters. Thus we observe physical
and mental torture of low-class servants in the Baag locality. This again
underlines Mistry’s humanist credentials, because in doing so, he does not
 96

side with the Parsi employers, nor does he show in poor light the Hindu
maids.

Mistry’s concern for the aged forms a powerful plank of his humanist
approach. His novel Family Matters focusses on the old Nariman Vakeel in a
big way. But even in Tales from Firozsha Baag, we read about the old
residents of this apartment building. In the first story, we come across
Rustomji, who, like Nariman Vakeel, is shown emerging labouriously from
the toilet. The description graphically portrays the predicament of an old
person: “With a bellow Rustomji emerged from the WC. He clutched his
undone pyjama drawstring, an extreme rage distorting his yet unshaven
features. He could barely keep the yellow-stained pyjamas from falling.”53 If
this seems ridiculous, his wife Mehroo’s picture is also not flattering:
“Mehroo came, her slipper flopping in time – ploof ploof – one two.”54 This,
when the wife is considerably younger than her husband having been married
off to a thirty-six year old man when she was a mere girl of sixteen!

Little wonder that such old people easily become the target of young boys’
sarcasm. So, they, tease him as “Rustomji-the-curmudgeon.”55 Mistry notes
down these social aberrations with an ironic undertone which reveals his
humanist thinking. This very Rustomji, while going to the fire-temple,
becomes the victim of racial taunt. It was the Behram roje or the Parsi New
Year day – something special. So, he dressed up in his best crispy white
clothes. He took a double-decker bus to his destination. When the bus reached
the stop, he alighted,

But unbeknownst to Rustomji, on the upper deck sat fate in the form of a
mouth chewing tobacco and betel nut, a mouth with a surfeit of juice and
aching jaws crying for relief. And when the bus halted at Marine Lines, fate
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leaned out the window to release a generous quantity of sticky, viscous, dark
red stuff.

Dugli gleaming in the midday sun, Rustomji emerged and stepped to the
pavement. The squirt of tobacco juice caught him between the shoulder
blades: “Blood red on sparkling white.”56

Naturally, it aroused Rustomji’s ire and he gave a mouthful to the offender,

but soon he was at the receiving end from the majority community. To escape
in good form from the menacing crowd was necessary and he could get away
only by playing a clown at that moment by holding forth his dentures in his
hand so that the people laughed the incident away. While laughing with the
crowd, the reader responds sympathetically to Rustomji. This is what
effectively serves Mistry’s humanist intentions.

Old people are excused if they behave in an eccentric manner. In the short
story ‘One Sunday’, we come across another aged character. She is Najamai
grown bulky with age, who leads a lonely life in her apartment in Firozsha
Baag because her daughters Doly and Vera went abroad for higher studies
and her husband Soli died the next year. Now, when she has to go to her
sister’s place, “She bustled her bulk around, turning the keys in the padlocks
of her seventeen cupboards, and then tugged at each to ensure the levers had
tumbled properly. Soon, she was breathless with excitement and exertion.” 57
One might find an undertone of satire here but it is not devoid of humanist
sympathy for the aged and the infirm.

Similarly, the other loner Tehmina, next-door neighbour to Najamai,

“Shuffled out in slippers and duster-coat, clutching one empty glass and the
keys to Najamai’s flat. She reeked of cloves, lodged in her mouth for two
reasons: it kept away her attacks of nausea and alleviated her chronic
 98

toothaches.”58 In this residential block, both depend on each other and on

other neighbours. Najamai has allowed Tehmina and the Boyce family to use
her fridge. In return, she feels safe whenever she has to go out because
“Anyone who has evil intentions about my empty flat will think twice when
he sees the coming-going of neighbours.”59 The fraternity of the old, decrepit
human beings is realized in this way.

Rohinton Mistry notes the cooperative attitude of the neighbours which is a

humanist trait as the Principle X of the first Humanist Manifesto of 1933
states: “In place of old attitudes involved in worship and prayer, the humanist
finds his religious emotions expressed in a heightened sense of personal life
and in a cooperative effort to promote social well-being.” Similarly, the latest
version of the manifesto, called Humanist Manifesto III published in 2003
states as point No. 5: “Humans are social by nature and find meaning in
relationships”. Thus, human relations and efforts to cooperate are valued in
society.

Of course, this fraternity is formed on certain conditions laid down by society

and the sense of fraternity is fractured when Francis plays foul and steals
money from Najamai’s flat. That Francis had been without work and had not
eaten anything for three days goes to support the view that sometimes
conditions succeed in moulding the essential human nature. Such a stand finds
support in poststructuralism also as is recapitulated by Rice and Waugh:

The combination of unique individuality and common

human essence cohere around the idea of a sovereign
self, whose essential core of being transcends the
outward signs of environmental and social
conditioning. Post-structuralism has sought to disrupt
this man-centred view of the world, arguing that the
subject, and that sense of unique subjectivity itself, is
constructed in language and discourse; and rather than
being fixed and unified, the subject is split, unstable or
fragmented.60
 99

It is not only the external conditions like lack of employment which could
corrupt a mind; even a perverted mind is possible in the scheme of the world.
It is another matter that by far the majority is of law-abiding and what we call
‘sane’ individuals conforming to the essentialist view of human beings. This
is what makes the world move. In the story ‘The Paying Guests’, Mistry
depicts one such pervert Khorshedbai who alongwith her husband Ardesar
stays as the tenant of Boman who had offered a portion of his house to them
on rent because he needed money. He thought he would get a raise in his
salary after two years and would not need any rental income thereafter. For a
year and a half, all went well and the relations between the landlord and
tenant were cordial.

But the year and a half of cordial co-existence sped by and ended abruptly
with the eviction notice sent by Boman to Ardersar and Khorshedbai.
Actually, Boman had been warned by his neighber Mr. Karani, achartered
accountant that it was very difficult to get back property once given to tenants
and so, he set in motion the eviction proceedings. What Boman did not know
was that “It would bring new experiences into all their lives: courts and
courtrooms, sleepless nights filled with paeans to the rising sun, a sadistic
nose-digging lawyer for Boman, veranda-sweeping for Kashmira, signs and
portents in dream for Khorshedbai, pigeons (real and imagined) for Ardesar,
thick and suffocating incense clouds for Boman and Kashmira and finally, a
taxi for Ardesar and an ambulence for Khorshedbai.” 61

Initially, the two rooms were never locked. Khorshedbai would peep inside,
wave to little Adel and inquire how he was getting along. Sometimes Kahmira
looked in on the elderly couple to ask if they needed anything. Minor irritants
between them were easily taken care of but when Kashmira got pregnant,
Boman thought it was time to use the whole flat again and he sent eviction
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notice but Khorshedbai was not willing to leave the place. She decided to
fight back. In fact, Khorshed, being an eccentric woman, had carried an image
at the back of her mind as if a flock of crows is pecking and tearing to shreds
some dead creature lying in a gutter. Whether she ever witnessed something
of this sort or it just grew out of her previous life experiences is not clear. At
such times of adversity she would clench her teeth and repeat to herself that
no one was going to peck her to pieces and that she would fight back.

She believed she had been advised by Pestonji, her ‘dream parrot’, another of
her hallucinations, to litter daily all sort of filth -- eggshells, banana skin,
cauliflower leaves and orange rind, coconut husk, onion skin -- in the
common veranda, followed by her mad dance. Her husband Ardesar was
against her nasty plan. The day when Khorshedbai first time littered in the
common veranda, Andesar tried to persuade her in the humblest way:

Khotty, my life, that, that thing you threw! And you

know it is their flat and they have a right to …” but
Khorshed cut him short saying “A right to what? Put
us on the street? Don’t we have rights? At last to have
a roof, eat a little daar-rotle, and finish our days in
peace?62

Thus, he pleaded with her to desist from executing the devilish plan, but he
knew once Khorshed had resolved to do something, nothing could change her.
So he decided to spend more time cooing pigeons, feeding them.

Kashmira’s life also became hell as she had to stay inside with locked doors
while Khorshedbai, daily at eleven O’clock, littered filth in the common
veranda. Boman instructed Kashmira not to come out till his return from work
to avoid any serious turn of event. It was only when he returned that she came
out and swept the whole veranda, and then stood there for sometime to have
some fresh air. Kashmira needed at least one hour every evening on the
 101

veranda before going to bed. “She said it felt like someone was choking her
after being cooped all day inside the one room where they had to cook and eat
and sleep.”63

Khorshedbai denied them the balm of sleep playing her lone record singing of
sukhi suraj. Boman’s whole day was spent with that nose-digging lawyer. He
needed witnesses in order to take the case to its logical conclusion but as is
normally seen nobody wished to be involved in legal hassles.

Soon Kashmira’s day of delivery reached, she gave birth to a child. But
Khorshedbai continued her eleven O’clock routine. Khorshedbai was
extremely happy to see Boman every night cleaning the veranda. She could
not hold still at the crack of her door and kept dragging Ardesar up to make
him look, against his will, at how low Boman had to bend despite tie and
jacket. When Kashmira returned from hospital, she refused to stay inside and
came out at eleven O’clock.

Khorshedbai’s cynicism continued to grow till she became a sadistic pervert.

In one such fit of perversion, she put Kashmira’s infant in the parrot
Pestonji’s cage. When Kashmira found her child absent from the cot, she
started searching frantically for it. When she peeped inside her tenants’ room,
she found, to her horror, the baby naked and locked in the parrot cage with
Khorshedbai leaning over it holding green peppers in her hand. She was
treating him like a parrot, oblivious to the commotion raised by terrified
Kashmira.

This was the height of nonsense and everyone became ready now to be
witness so that Boman could pick and choose. Human feelings had surely
surged but there was no need as Ardesar could sense the mood of the people
living in the neighbourhood. The paying guests quietly left the place without
 102

adding further to the woes of their landlords. Khorshedbai was led to a mental
hospital in an ambulance and Ardesar left the place in a taxi “no one knew
where.” But of course, Boman and Kashmira could heave a sigh of relief after
much stress and strain now.

What needs to be noted in this story is that Mistry has presented even the
character of this pervert Khorshedbai with a sympathetic undertone. After
reading the stories, one does not feel as if Francis or Khorshedbai were
detestable devils; rather they appear as imperfect human beings in the midst
of relatively better individuals.
 103

References

1
James Berardinelli, “Such a Long Journey: A Film Review” 30 May
2007. 15 Sept. 2009.
2
Rohinton Mistry, Tales from Firozsha Baag (London: Faber and Faber,
1987), p. 337.
3
Ibid., p. 63.
4
Ibid., p. 188.
5
Ibid., p. 303.
6
V.L.V.N. Kumar Parsee Novel (New Delhi: Prestige, 2002), p. 81.
7
Nandini Bhautto Dewnarain, Rohinton Mistry: An Introduction (New
Delhi: Foundation, 2007), p. 47.
8
Mistry, Tales, p. 201.
9
Ibid., p. 24.
10
Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance (New York: Vintage, 1997), p. 104.
11
Ibid., pp. 118-19.
12
Ibid., pp. 97-8.
13
Ibid., p. 142.
14
Ibid., p. 145.
15
Ibid., p. 146.
16
Ibid., p. 77.
17
Ibid., p. 461.
18
Ibid., p. 461.
19
Ibid., p. 509.
20
Ibid., p. 525.
21
Nilufer Bharucha, Rohinton Mistry: Ethnic Enclosures and
Transcultural Spaces (New Delhi: Rawat Publications, 2003), p. 143.
 104

22
Mistry, Balance, p. 86.
23
Ibid., p. 86.
24
Ibid., p. 86.
25
Ibid., p. 414.
26
Ibid., p. 430.
27
Ibid., p. 432.
28
Bharucha, p. 209.
29
Rohinton Mistry, Family Matters (London: Faber and Faber, 2002), p.
65.
30
Ibid., p. 66.
31
Bhim S. Dahiya, A New History of English Literature (Delhi: Doaba
Publications, 2005), p. 32.
32
Mistry, Family, p. 493.
33
Ibid., p. 466.
34
Ibid., p. 486.
35
Jagdish Batra, Rohinton Mistry: Identity, Values and Other Sociological
Concerns (New Delhi: Prestige, 2008), p. 112.
36
Ibid., p. 108.
37
Bharucha, p. 78.
38
Mistry, Tales, p. 49.
39
Ibid., p. 45.
40
Ibid., p. 44.
41
Ibid., p. 44.
42
Ibid., p. 44.
43
Ibid., p. 43.
44
Ibid., p. 45.
 105

45
Ibid., p. 46.
46
Ibid., p. 45.
47
Ibid., p. 46.
48
Ibid., p. 47.
49
Ibid., p. 49.
50
Bharucha, p. 80.
51
Mistry, Tales, p. 8.
52
Ibid., p. 9.
53
Ibid., p. 3.
54
Ibid., p. 3.
55
Ibid., p. 6.
56
Ibid., pp. 16-17.
57
Ibid., p. 25.
58
Ibid., p. 27.
59
Ibid., p. 26.
60
Philip Rice and Patricia Waugh. “Section One: The Subject”, Modern
Literary Theory: A Reader, 2nd Edition (London: Edward Arnold, 1992), p.
119.
61
Mistry, Tales, p. 128.
62
Ibid., p. 126.
63
Ibid., p. 127.