This is the second novel I have read by Mistry, the first one, A FINE BALANCE, was one of my favorite books this past year. Unfortunately, this one does not, at first, quite live up to its predecessor. Perhaps because it seems like more of the same but mostly because I did not like many of the characters, the son and two daughters of the aging Nariman Vakeel. He is in his late seventies, suffering from Parkinson's disease and clearly, he will not get better. Two families, the one of his step son and step daughter, finagle a way to move him from his own seven room house, where they live, settling him briefly, supposedly, in the two room home of his daughter, her husband and two children. Thus, the novel begins, as Roxana and her husband Yezad, struggle to take care of Nariman, their two sons, as their income diminishes, their marriage falters, and the brother and sister figure ways to keep Nariman out of his own house, their house now for all intents and purposes. The daughter in law gets her comeuppance, however, when a ceiling beam falls on her, a result of her demolishing part of the house to keep her step father out. She dies along with the handy man. Poetic justice?
Nariman, the grandfather, narrates much of his earlier life to his two grandsons', as they sit with him in his room. As a young man, he loved a Christian women, Lucy, loved her for years but was forbidden to marry her by his strict Parsi father. He eventually acquiesces to his father's demands, marries a widow with two children but Lucy refuses to give him up, follows him to his new home, stalks him so to speak until Nariman's new wife berates her as she stands on a wall singing a love song. When Nariman goes to stop their quarrel, both women fall to their death. Melodramatic and silly perhaps but it emphasizes the animosity and religious intolerance that still exists in some parts of Indian society, witness the burning of mosques, temples, and such over the past few years.
The novel thus is not a happy one. Nariman's love is unrequited; his step daughter ends up dying as consequence of her selfish turning of Nariman away from his own home, Meanwhile, Yezad loses his job when the owner of the sporting goods shop where he works is killed by religious fanatics, somewhat abetted by Yezad, because he would not follow their dictates to change the name of the shop to a Hindu one.
All seems to end if not well, as the family returns to their father's home, with Nariman's step son, but things are never quite the same. Ironically, the adversarial Yezad, after losing his job, his father in law, and his home, turns to religion, becomes a fanatical Parsi, forbidding his older son to even see a woman of another religious faith (like his grandfather forbid his father). The son, Murad, a college student, mocks his father's change, his intolerant beliefs, much the way Yezad mocked his forebears before his conversion. The novel ends loosely, with son and father briefly reconciling on son, Murad's eighteenth birthday. But we know from the past that troubles lie ahead, for the two sons, their father, and their compassionate and loving mother. I ended up liking the book more than I thought when I began it. We come to love the compassionate and tolerant ones, the mother, the step son, the youngest son, Jehangir who out weigh the silliness and irrationality of the others. In the end, there's some good and some bad. So what's new? What do I take away from his novels? That religion is as much a divider as it is a uniter, especially when taken to extremes.
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