Family Matters, Rohinton Mistry

Salman Rushdie once wrote that British literature was dead, “until the Empire wrote back.” I’m not sure if I agree with his pessimistic assessment of the contributions of the native-born, but he is certainly right about the Empire. Some of the best writers, recently, have been from the former colonies, most especially India and South Africa. Rushdie himself is on this list, of course, as are the likes of Anita Desai, J.M. Coetzee, Nadine Gorimer, and V.S. Naipaul. And, having just finished “Family Matters,” I would, with complete confidence, add Rohinton Mistry to the list.

“Family Matters” is the story of, not surprisingly, a family; like so many family dramas, it features people rehashing the mysteries and dramas of the past, while struggling with difficulties in the present. In this case, the novel focuses on Nariman Vakeel, now an old man living with his stepchildren, and the results of an accident in which he breaks his ankle and becomes bedridden. Not-so-subtly kicked out by his stepchildren, he moves in the two-bedroom flat owned by his daughter, her husband, and her two sons.

Yet, though Nariman is a focal point at the beginning, as the effects of Parkinson’s become more pronounced, the narrative voice moves towards Yezad, Nariman’s son-in-law, Roxana, his daughter, and their sons. Mistry is an expert at balancing characters, and, therefore, balancing their problems; they are all equally likeable, and, alas, all equally unfortunate, fighting against poverty and past mistakes and, most of all, each other.

One of the brilliant things about this book is the way that Mistry creates a family that is, at time, dysfunctional, and, at other times, perfectly functional. This family loves each other, and they are trying their best, they really are, but sometimes circumstances are just too heavy to resist. If each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way, this family is unhappy in the way that millions of families across the world are: poverty, tradition, and history are just too much for them. Nariman, an educated former English professor, fought against strict Parsi tradition by falling in love with a Catholic woman in his youth; he regrets, it is clear, letting tradition win. Yezad and Roxana fight against poverty, trying to raise their two sons and support their invalid father (-in-law) on a meager salesman’s salary. And everyone, from the stepchildren to Nariman himself, fight against history, against the family stories, against the death of their mother, Nariman’s wife, against their own complicated relationships with each other.

And, of course, they all fight against death. In contemporary American novels, when a character dies, that’s the point of the book: it consumes everything else that might have happened. Basically, nobody dies in American novels anymore. In Indian novels, however, it’s omnipresent, and not an all-encompassing obsession, not superfluous, and not ever silly. It’s just utterly ordinary—never a fuss, never unbelievable, never a plot focus, although sometimes a twist. It’s just something happens, all too frequently. And yes, it happens in this novel, and yes, it changes the plot, but, as always, it is handled by Mistry, as it should be, as just another trial in this vale of tears. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, but the story must go on.

At one point in the novel, a character says that, “everyone underestimates their own life. Funny thing is, in the end, all our stories—your life, my life, old Husain’s life, they’re the same. In fact, no matter where you go in the world, there is only one important story: of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption. So we tell the same story, over and over. Just the details are different.” This is the best summary of the book anyone could possibly give: the stories are all the same, whether happy or unhappy. The novel gives a multitude of examples of youth, and loss, and yearning for redemption: Nariman, who has lost youth and his true love, and yearns for redemption from his choices; Yezad, who struggles, through photographs of his old neighborhood, to recall and regain his youth, and who begins to lose important relationships, and yearns for redemption for those choices; Jehanglir, who is youth, but who loses innocence and integrity, and who years for redemption from his choices. Redemption is, perhaps, the key here: redemption from poverty, tradition, history, life, and, perhaps most importantly, family. Redemption from the mistakes they make towards us and the mistakes we make towards them; the burden they represent and the joy that they bring.

In fact, the epilogue of the novel, which at first seemed jarring and out of place, best encapsulates this theme: the ending of the novel is happy, with all loose ends tied up, but the epilogue, five years down the road, is unhappy again, with a whole new set of problems. This is how Mistry keeps the book grounded, realistic: this is family. This is life. Overcome one set of obstacles and another one crops up. People change, house change, times change, and everything comes with a new type of loss, a new need for redemption.

This is a beautiful book; beautifully conceived, beautifully written. Through it, Mistry has convinced me, entirely, that family matters. Mistry has mastered the art of detail, the art of character, the art of plot, the art of setting, the art of dialogue. He has mastered the form, and I hope to see him “writing back” again and again and again.