Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long
Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance
A Dissertation Submitted to Christ University in Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for the Award of the Degree of
Master of Philosophy in English Studies
by Thakkar Shaival Dilipbhai 1234106
Under the Guidance of John Joseph Kennedy
Department of English CHRIST UNIVERSITY BANGALORE, INDIA MARCH 2014
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Approval of Dissertation
Dissertation entitled ‘Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance’ by Thakkar Shaival Dilipbhai, Reg. No. 1234106, is approved for the award of the degree Master of Philosophy in English Studies.
Name Signature Examiners: 1. ______
2. ______
3. ______
Supervisors: Dr. John Joseph Kennedy ______
Chairperson Dr. John Joseph Kennedy ______Date: ______Place: Bangalore
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DECLARATION
I, Thakkar Shaival Dilipbhai, hereby declare that the dissertation, entitled ‘Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance’ is a record of original research work undertaken by me for the award of the degree Master of Philosophy in English Studies. I have completed this study under the supervision of Dr. John Joseph Kennedy, Department of English.
I also declare that this dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or other title. It has not been sent for any publication or presentation purpose. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part of the dissertation.
Place: Bangalore Thakkar Shaival Dilipbhai Date: 29 March 2014 Reg. No. 1234106 Department of English Christ University Bangalore
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Certificate
This is to certify that the dissertation submitted by Thakkar Shaival Dilipbhai (Reg. No. 1234106) entitled ‘Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance’ is a record of research work done by him during the academic year 2012-2013 under our supervision in partial fulfilment for the award the degree Master of Philosophy in English Studies.
This dissertation has not been submitted for the award of any degree, diploma, associateship, fellowship or other title. It has not been sent for any publication or presentation purpose. I hereby confirm the originality of the work and that there is no plagiarism in any part of the dissertation.
Place: Bangalore Dr. John Joseph Kennedy Department of English Christ University Bangalore
Head
Department of English
Christ University
Bangalore
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Acknowledgment
For a long time, I wished to research the fascinating works of Rohinton Mistry. It
was only because of Christ University that this research-dream came true. It was a
happy co-incidence that my guide Dr. John Joseph Kennedy also shared this research
interest. I am very grateful for his time, encouragement and for giving the right
direction to this thesis. My co-guide Anupama Nayar looked at several drafts of this
thesis since last year and fully supported me before every presentation of the research
work. I am deeply grateful to her for her time, advice, and for her involvement in the
entire project.
Thanks are also due to our MPhil Course Coordinator Mr. Joshua G who was
always there to answer all our queries and to make sure that the research work went on
smoothly. I am thankful to my internal examiner Dr. Abhaya N B whose insights and
suggestions helped give the thesis a better shape. I enjoyed attending the classes of Dr.
Anil Pinto, Ms. Gaana J, Ms. Renu Elizabeth and Ms. Sreelatha. I learned a lot in their
classes about academic writing, research methods and Indian Writing in English. I also
enjoyed the lively discussions that took place in these classes. I also want to thank Mr.
Padmakumar and Ms. Shobhana. P. Mathews for their suggestions and support during
the course of the research work.
I want to thank my friend Ward Berenschot for introducing me to the world of
Rohinton Mistry by lending me A Fine Balance when I was an undergraduate. I want to
thank my friend Anna Sacha for readily agreeing to proof-read this thesis. My friend
Vatsal Makhija deserves kudos for taking the time out from his work to proof-read the
thesis in a record time of 3 days!
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My family has always been very supportive of me in all my academic endeavours. I
want to thank my father Dilip Thakkar, my mother Bharati Thakkar and my sister Hirva
Thakkar for their love, support and encouragement. I also want to thank my wife
Malashree for encouraging me to pursue the MPhil program. It was because of her
continual support that I managed to complete the MPhil thesis.
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Contents
Approval of Dissertation ii
Declaration iii
Acknowledgement v
Contents vii
Abstract viii
Chapter I 1
Introduction
Chapter II 17
Political Representation of Mumbai in Such a Long Journey
Chapter III 60
Political Representation of Mumbai in A Fine Balance
Chapter IV 111
Conclusion
Bibliography 122
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Abstract
The representation of cities in works of literature is significant as it is these images of
cities which are consumed throughout the world. The objective of this thesis is to examine
the Political Representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A
Fine Balance. I have used Stuart Hall’s essay The Work of Representation as the
theoretical framework for analysing the two selected works of fiction. I have analysed
representation in the two texts by applying the semiotic approach to representation; by
studying the contextual major political events, characters and spaces in the city as signs
which are encoded by the author in the texts to construct the city of Mumbai.
It was found that the author encodes Such a Long Journey with the political representation
of Mumbai as ‘a city in siege’, as ‘a city in throes of conspiracy’ and as ‘a city of struggle,
squalor, pleasure, nostalgia, loss, spirituality and political power struggles’ and thus
constructs the city of Mumbai in this novel . Moreover, the political representation of
Mumbai in A Fine Balance is done by employing signs like Mumbai as ‘a city grappling
with a draconic state and its life- denying laws’, Mumbai as ‘an all-embracing and
redemptive city’ and of Mumbai as ‘a city great in its magnanimity but also great in its
inadequacies’. Thus, Mistry constructs Mumbai which is the signifying field on which
Emergency politics are played out in the novel.
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Chapter 1
Introduction
The objective of this research thesis is to examine the Political Representation of
Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance which will be
abbreviated throughout this dissertation as SLJ and AFB.
The research thesis is divided into four chapters. Chapter 1- Introduction contains
the author profile, a brief history of the city of Mumbai, an introduction of the two
novels, and literature review. Chapter 2- Political Representation of Mumbai in Such a
Long Journey (SLJ) contains plot of the novel, representation of the Bangladesh
Liberation War (1971), facts and information about the Nagarwala scandal,
representation of the Nagarwala Scandal, representation of Mumbai constructed through
cityscapes and characters’ perspectives on the city and conclusion. Chapter 3- Political
Representation of Mumbai in A Fine Balance (AFB) contains the plot of the novel,
representation of the Emergency, Casteism and caste violence, representation of
Mumbai that is constructed through cityscapes, characters’ perspectives on the city and
comparisons of the cityscape to other spaces and conclusion. Chapter 4 contains the
conclusion of the thesis which includes the findings and analysis about the Political
Representation of Mumbai in Such a Long Journey, and the Political Representation of
Mumbai in A Fine Balance. This chapter will look at the author profile, a brief history
of the city of Mumbai, an introduction of the two novels, and literature review.
Author profile
Rohinton Mistry (born 3 July 1952) is an Indian-born Canadian writer in
English. Residing in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, Mistry is of Indian origin, originally Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 2
from Mumbai. He practises Zoroastrianism and belongs to the Parsi community. Mistry
is a Neustadt International Prize for Literature laureate (2012).
Penguin Books Canada published his collection of 11 short stories, Tales from
Firozsha Baag in 1987. It was later published in the United States as Swimming Lessons
and Other Stories from Firozsha Baag. The book consists of short stories, all set within
one apartment complex in modern-day Mumbai.
When his second book, the novel Such a Long Journey, was published in 1991,
it won the Governor General's Award, the Commonwealth Writers Prize for Best Book,
and the W.H. Smith/Books in Canada First Novel Award. It was shortlisted for the
prestigious Booker Prize and for the Trillium Award. It has been translated into
German, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Japanese, and has been made into the 1998
film Such a Long Journey.
His third book, and second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), won the second
annual Giller Prize in 1995, and in 1996, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Fiction.
It was selected for Oprah's Book Club in November 2001 and sold hundreds of
thousands of additional copies throughout North America as a result. It won the 1996
Commonwealth Writers Prize and was shortlisted for the 1996 Booker prize.
Family Matters is his third novel which was first published by McClelland and
Stewart in 2002. The novel is set in the city of Mumbai, where Mistry was born and
grew up, and tells the story of a middle-class Parsi family living through a domestic
crisis. Through the travails of one family Mistry explores various issues like the
dilemmas among India's Parsis, Persian-descended Zoroastrians, to the wider concerns
of corruption and communalism.
Family Matters is a consideration of the difficulties that come with aging, which
Mistry returned to in 2008 with the short fiction The Scream (published as a separate Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 3
volume, in support of World Literacy of Canada, with illustrations by Tony Urquhart).
His books portray diverse facets of Indian socioeconomic life as well as Parsi
Zoroastrian life, customs, and religion.
Mumbai in Mistry’s Fiction
The Mumbai of Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance is
not the flashy and glamorous Mumbai of Bollywood, nor is it the fast moving Mumbai
of cut-throat trade and commerce; for the most part, Mistry’s Mumbai is a Parsi
household or a Parsi colony where largely the drama is domestic. The city streets and
slums also feature in A Fine Balance but they usually act as a chaotic foil to the better
organization and the greater peacefulness of the Parsi household. Mistry also uses the
village, the town, and life in the hills as foils and in contrast to the city of Mumbai
which is shown to be a place of greater goodness, urbanity, opportunity, progress, and
hope where overwhelming rural issues like casteism, violence, poverty and
unemployment can be contained.
Mumbai consists of seven islands which were at first inhabited by fishing
communities. From the second century BCE to ninth century CE, the islands were ruled
by many indigenous dynasties. In the mid-16thcentury, Mumbai was a part of the
Mughal Empire but later came under the control of the Portuguese. During the 17th
century, the islands came under the possession of the British Empire which in turn
leased them to the British East India Company. In the 18th century, the Marathas
conquered parts of Mumbai from the Portuguese but were later on defeated by the
British who by then had complete control over the entire city.
Mumbai became the capital of the Bombay Presidency area and witnessed the
Quit India Movement in 1942 and The Royal Indian Navy Mutiny in 1946 as important
events of the IndianProperty Independence of Christ Movement. University. In 1947, when India achieved Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 4
independence, Bombay Presidency was restructured into Bombay State. In 1960,
Bombay State was separated into Gujarat and Maharashtra on linguistic basis whereby
Mumbai became the capital of Maharashtra. Politically, Mumbai had been a stronghold
of the Congress party which ruled the city from independence to early 1980s. Later on
parties like Shiv Sena and the Bharatiya Janta Party contested and won elections and
became very influential in the city’s political life.
O. P. Mathur in his book Indira Gandhi and the Emergency as viewed in the
Indian Novel quotes Rohinton Mistry on the reason for setting 1971 and 1975 as time-
periods for his novels: “In Such a Long Journey, the year is 1971. It seemed to me that
1975, the year of the Emergency, would be the next important year, if one were
preparing a list of important dates in Indian history. And so 1975 it was.” Such a Long
Journey is set against the backdrop of the Indira Gandhi administration, the second
India Pakistan War and the transformation of East Pakistan into Bangladesh. The
central plot of the novel is based on a real-life incident of an ex-army man and
intelligence officer Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala. Nagarwala called the Parliament Street
branch of the State Bank of India on May 24, 1971 for reasons still not known,
impersonated the voice of Indira Gandhi and asked the chief cashier Ved Prakash
Malhotra to withdraw Rs 60 lakh and hand it over to a “Bangladeshi”. Due to the
tensions of an impending war with Bangladesh, Malhotra handed over the money
without cross-checking.
When Malhotra went to PM’s residence to get a receipt of the amount
withdrawn, he was shocked to learn of PM’s impersonation. Later on, Nagarwala was
arrested for “mimicking the voice” of the PM and the money was recovered on the
same day. This event became a political scandal with the Opposition suspecting
Gandhi’s hand behind the fraud. The case became more mysterious with the death of its Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 5
investigating officer, D. K. Kashyap, in a car crash. Nagarwala died in prison the same
year, allegedly of a heart attack. O.P. Mathur’s opinion about the Nagarwala incident is
that: “Though it did not occur during the Emergency, it points to serious financial
conspiracies that occurred during that period.”
Indira Gandhi declared Emergency in India on 26 June 1975 which lasted for 21
months. According to Amnesty International, 140,000 people had been arrested without
trial during Gandhi's Emergency. Although Mumbai had witnessed some major political
movements during the Indian Independence Movement, Mumbai only felt the ripple
effects of the Emergency. Moreover, it was only the underdog who suffered the
consequences of the Emergency in Mumbai. For example, in A Fine Balance , Maneck
Kolah’s friend Avinash who is politically active in college suddenly disappears and is
later found dead. The two tailors Ishvar and Omprakash see their shantytown beside the
railway being demolished as a part of the city beautification program. Apart from the
demolition of the slums, beggars were also moved outside the city limits as a part of the
city beautification program. So, when Ishvar and Omprakash are sleeping on the
pavement near a chemist’s shop, they are mistaken for beggars and are driven outside
the city and made to do construction work in subhuman conditions in spite of having a
valid profession.
Apart from city beautification, birth control program was another violation of
democratic principles during the Emergency. In the year 1976-1977, 8.3 million
sterilizations had taken place. When Ishvar and Omprakash go back to the town where
they learned tailoring, they are forced into a truck and brought to a Family Planning
Centre which had not completed the day’s quota of sterilizations. Both the tailors are
forcefully vasectomised. Moreover, an upper caste landlord who is angry at Omprakash
coerces a doctor to castrate him. The medical consequences of the forced vasectomies Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 6
and the castration renders both Ishvar and Omprakash unfit for tailoring and they end
up as beggars on the streets of Mumbai.
The journal article “The Economy of Postcolonial Literature: Rohinton Mistry’s
Such a Long Journey” examines SLJ from a postcolonial perspective and contends that
the strength of Mistry's writing comes from mixing native Indian dialects with the
English of his primary reading audience (Bahri 2003 120 ). The essay “Fear and
Temptation: A Study of Rohinton Mistry’s Novels” through textual analysis contends
that the themes of temptation and fear run through all of Mistry’s works of fiction
including SLJ (Venugopalan 2004 92-98). Similarly, the essay “Memory of Loss and
Betrayal in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey” looks at the theme of betrayal
between the characters of SLJ and also examines the memory of loss in SLJ through
textual analysis (Muni 2004 45-63). On the other hand, the essay “Theme and
Technique in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey” looks at the structure of the
narrative and the story telling techniques that Mistry employs in SLJ (Hemalatha 2004
98-108).
The research paper “Such a Long Journey: Portrayal of the Parsi Community in
Films” analyses the portrayal of the Parsi community in Indian cinema from 1987 to
2008 including the movie Such a Long Journey using the historical approach (Jain 2011
384-390). Similarly, “Such a Long Journey (1991): Topophilic Sentiments in Rohinton
Mistry” is a research paper that proves that Mistry has a strong sense of nostalgia
towards his homeland, including the colonial past of India and its post-independence
present by doing an in-depth analysis of spatial formations in SLJ (Molnar 2011 33-43).
Moreover, the essay “Cultural Ethos in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, Shashi
Tharoor’s Show Business and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy” analyses the religious,
moral and cultural ethos by doing a textual analysis of three Indian English novels Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 7
including SLJ (Hurali 2013 “Cultural Ethos”). On the other hand, the research paper
“Political Satire in a Detective Mode: Genre Theory and Rohinton Mistry’s Such a
Long Journey” does a genre based investigation of SLJ using the structuralist approach
to analysis (Bakshi 2013 “Political Satire”).
The critical essay “Seeking and Maintaining Balance: Rohinton Mistry’s Fiction”
examines AFB in the light of other novels by Rohinton Mistry using the approach of
textual analysis and the author’s biography (Ross 1999 239-244). On the contrary, the
essay ““Visible and Visitable”: The Role of History in Gita Mehta’s Raj and Rohinton
Mistry’s A Fine Balance” examines the role of history in AFB along with Mehta’s Raj
using Hayden White’s ideas of post-modern discussion of historiography (Schneller
2001 233-254). Moreover, by doing a textual analysis the essay “Configuring the
Dynamics of Dispossession in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance & Arundhati Roy’s
The God Of Small Things” examines how two forms of social and cultural hierarchy,
one relating to caste, and the other to gender, operate in two Indian texts including AFB
(D’Cruz 2003 56-76). The research thesis “Representations of Migrant and Nation in
Selected Works of Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie” examines the representations
of, and the relationship between the migrant and the nation in selected works of the
Bombay-born novelists Rohinton Mistry and Salman Rushdie from the political and
historical points of view including AFB. (Herbert 2006 “Representations of Migrant and
Nation”). The research article “Excess and Design in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine
Balance” discusses the concepts of excess and design in AFB and examines literary
realism from a postcolonial perspective (Sørensen 2008 342-362).
A research paper that studies marginalization is “Narrating the Nation: Toward a
De-gendered Balance in A Fine Balance” which examines nationhood and castration as
the symbolic castration to the life of the nation during the Emergency (Pourkarim 2011 Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 8
245-249 ). Furthermore, the journal article “Untouchability and Rohinton Mistry’s A
Fine Balance” examines the representation of dalits in AFB and the position which
dalits are allocated, in both cultural and political discourses, in relation to the contested
conception of the Indian nation, in civil society, and in the Hindu community by doing
a textual analysis of AFB (Kumari 2012 87-91).
Another critical essay “Rohinton Mistry's Indian Neorealism: The Voice of the
People” discusses Mistry’s use of the technique of neorealism, Mistry’s own version of
Italian Neorealism, and the portrayal of the deification of Indira Gandhi in AFB. The
essay uses textual analysis to show how Mistry uses his version of neorealism to attack
and revise institutional history which has ignored the life of the poor common man
(Takhar “Indian Neo-Realism”).
One journal article that comes close to the trajectory of my research is “Sad, Bad
And The Mysterious Indian: Exploring The Image Of The Indian” which studies Vikas
Swarup’s Q & A, Aravind Adiga’s The White Tiger, Anita Desai’s Fasting Feasting,
Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters and Yann Martel’s Life of Pi to understand the
politics of representation of the Indian in these works and attempts to refute them. It
argues that the three images of the Indians that are recognizable, acceptable and
saleable by the West are of poverty, hopelessness and mystery and suggest that the
Western imagination is stereotypical in its view of the Orient. Furthermore, they claim
that all these novels portray the images of hopelessness, depression and inscrutability
and that the Western imagination sees Indians as two-dimensional characters
(Chaudhary, Jain 2010 “Exploring the Image of the Indian”). Another journal article
which crosses the path of my research work is “Mistry's Bombay: Harmony in
Disparity” which discusses Rohinton Mistry’s portrayal of the city of Bombay as a
unique locale in India and in his fiction with all the differences of its inhabitants in Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 9
terms of ethnic background and religion. The author takes examples from all four
Mistry books, compares the Mumbai of Mistry’s childhood to the London of Dickens’
childhood and thus forms conclusions about the image of Mumbai in Mistry’s fiction
(Elmadda 2012“Mistry's Bombay”).
In my literature review I can see that SLJ has been analysed for its spatial
formations, language, cultural ethos, themes and the genre that the novel employs and
also as a movie. Moreover, AFB has been examined from diverse perspectives like post
colonialism, history, untouchability, nationhood and gender, migration, and the
technique of neorealism. The novel has also been looked in comparison to other Mistry
novels. However, there have been very few studies of the novels SLJ and AFB together.
The essay “A Fine Balance between Hope and Despair through a Long Journey: a
Critical Study of Rohinton Mistry” studies both SLJ and AFB. However, it is a broad
study of the two novels which looks at the history, politics and Mistry’s craft as a writer
and the focus of the study is not exclusively the city of Mumbai (Dodiya 2004 1-45).
The academic essay “Re-Narration of History in Such a Long Journey and A Fine
Balance” also looks at both these novels. However, it analyses the political events
contained in these novels from a historical point of view (Shah 2004 63-92). My
research thesis will study SLJ and AFB together and do an in-depth analysis of the
representation of Mumbai in these two texts.
Moreover, Chaudhary and Jain’s article examines the representation of the Indian
in 5 postcolonial texts including Mistry’s Family Matters. Furthermore, Elmadda’s
article generally examines Mumbai in all of Mistry’s works without using any literary
theory and it reads more like a featured article rather than a rigorously researched
article. In this thesis I will look at the political representation of Mumbai in SLJ and
AFB by using the semiotic approach to representation; by studying the major political Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 10
events, characters, spaces and the city as signs which are encoded by the author in the
texts to construct Mumbai.
Rationale
The actress and member of Indian Parliament, the late Nargis Dutt in the 1980s
had mounted a scathing attack on Satyajit Ray's films for “exporting images of India's
poverty. In 2008 when the movie Slumdog Millionaire was released it caused a lot of
controversies and received a lot of criticism regarding its representation of India and
Mumbai. The 2013 novel Inferno by Dan Brown came under criticism for his
representation of Manila by Manila’s municipal authorities. The representation of
countries and cities in art is significant as it is these images of cities and countries
which are consumed throughout the world. Therefore, this thesis aims to contribute to
that debate and attempt to put in perspective the political representation of Mumbai in
two of Rohinton Mistry’s works of fiction.
Methodology
A semiotic analysis of a literary text deals with the way in which meaning is
produced by the structures of interdependent signs, by codes and conventions. It is well
known that from a semiotic point of view signs appear within a threefold process
(semiosis), which includes syntax (the study of the relationships among signs),
semantics (dealing with the relationships between signs and the objects signified), and
pragmatics (dealing with the relationships between signs and their interpreters).
In this thesis, I will look at the political representation of Mumbai in Such a
Long Journey and A Fine Balance by using the semiotic approach to representation; by
studying the major political events, characters, spaces and the city as signs which are
encoded by the author in the text. Property of Christ University.
Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 11
Critical Framework
Stuart Hall in his essay “The Work of Representation” from the book
Representation: Cultural Representation and Signifying Practices talks about
representation and different approaches to representation. According to Hall,
representation is the process by which members of a culture use language to produce
meaning. He explains the reflective or mimetic approach, the intentional approach and
the constructionist approach to representation. Hall considers the conceptual world,
signs, and codes to be essential for the practice of representation from the
constructionist perspective. He also explains the two variants or models of the
constructionist approach: the semiotic approach and the discursive approach. Saussure
and Barthes were practitioners of the semiotic approach which concentrated on how
language and signification works to produce meanings. Foucault was a practitioner of
the discursive approach which concentrated on how discourse and discursive practices
produce knowledge. (Hall 2012 61-63)
I will analyse the political representation of Mumbai in Such a Long Journey
and A Fine Balance by using the semiotic approach to representation; by studying the
major political events, characters, spaces and the city as signs which are encoded by the
author in the text to construct the Mumbai in his novels.
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Works Cited
Books
Dodiya, Jaydipsinh K. “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”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies.
New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 1-45. Print.
Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation”, Stuart Hall eds. Representation: Cultural
Representations And Signifying Practices. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997, n.d.
Web. 10 Oct. 2012.
< www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/.../HallRepresentation.PDF >
Hemalatha, M. “Theme and Technique in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey”,
Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New
Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 98-108. Print.
Herbert, C V. Representations of Migrant and Nation in Selected Works of Rohinton
Mistry and Salman Rushdie. Leeds: University of Leeds, 2006.N.pag. Web. 27
Feb. 2014.
< etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1580/1/uk_bl_ethos_434203.pdf >
Ratna Sheila Muni, K. “Memory of Loss and Betrayal in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long
Journey”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies.
New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 45-63. Print.
Mathur, O.P. “The Emergency in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance: Weights and
Counterweights”. Indira Gandhi and the Emergency as viewed in the Indian Novel.
New Delhi: Sarup& Sons, 2004. 97-108. Print.
Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 13
Mathur, O.P. “Darkness at Noon: The Trauma of the Emergency”. Post-1947 Indian
English
Novel: Major Concerns. New Delhi: Sarup& Sons, 2010. 83-94. Print.
Shah, Nilna. “Re-Narration of History in Such a Long Journey and A Fine Balance”,
Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi:
Sarup & Sons, 2004. 63-92. Print.
Venugopalan, P. “Fear and Temptation: A Study of Rohinton Mistry’s Novels”, Jaydipsinh
Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons,
2004. 92-98. Print.
Journal Articles
Bahri, Deepika. "The Economy of Postcolonial Literature: Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long
Journey." Native Intelligence: Aesthetics, Politics, and Postcolonial Literature,
Minneapolis : University of Minnesota Press, 2003. 120-51. Web. 7 Mar. 2014.
< eng4u7.weebly.com/uploads/1/.../eng_4u7_-_salj_lit_crit_-_language.rtf >
Bakshi, Kaustav. “Political Satire in a Detective Mode: Genre Theory and Rohinton
Mistry’s Such a Long Journey”. Muses India: Essays on English-Language Writers
from Mahomet to Rushdie. London: MacFarland & Company, 2013. N.pag. Web. 27
Feb. 2014.
ry_and_Rohinton_Mistrys_Such_a_Long_Journey> Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 14 Choudhary, Madhurita and Charul Jain. “Sad, Bad and The Mysterious Indian: Exploring The Image of The Indian”. Journal of Literature, Culture and Media Studies.Jul 2010.Information and Library Network.Web.16 Jul. 2012 < http://www.inflibnet.ac.in/ojs/index.php/JLCMS/article/view/377> D’cruz, Doreen. “Configuring The Dynamics Of Dispossession In Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance & Arundhati Roy’s The God Of Small Things”. New Zealand Journal of Asian Studies 5, 2. Palmerston North: Massey University, 2003.56-76. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. Elmadda, Ezzeldin. “Mistry’s Bombay: Harmony in Disparity”. Contemporary Literary Review India. Jul. 2012. Contemporary Literary Review India.Web.19 Jul. 2012. harmony-in-disparity-by.html> Hurali, MM. “Cultural Ethos in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey, Shashi Tharoor’s Show Business and Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy”. 2013. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < shodhganga.inflibnet.ac.in:8080/jspui/bitstream/.../10_chapter%205.pdf> Jain, Pankaj. “Such a Long Journey: Portrayal of the Parsi Community in Films”. Visual Anthropology. London: Routledge, 2011. 384-390. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. _Community_in_Films> Kumari, Reman. “Untouchability And Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance”. Asian Journal of Multidimensional Research Vol.1 Issue 7. . N.p: Trans Asian Research Journals, 2012. 87-91. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < www.tarj.in/images/.../12.8,%20%20Dr.%20Reman%20Kumari.pdf > Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 15 Molnar, Judith. “Such a Long Journey (1991): Topophilic Sentiments in Rohinton Mistry”. Central European Journal of Canadian Studies. N.p: Central European Association for Canadian Studies, n.d. 33-43.Web. 27 Feb. 2014. anJournalCanadian_7-2011-1_6.pdf> Pourkarim, Mohammad. “Narrating the Nation: Toward a De-gendered Balance in A Fine Balance”. 2011 2nd International Conference on Humanities, Historical and Social Sciences IPEDR vol.17. Singapore: IACSIT Press, 2011.245-249. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < http://www.ipedr.com/vol17/46-CHHSS%202011-H10067.pdf> Ross, Robert L. “Seeking and Maintaining Balance: Rohinton Mistry’s Fiction”. World Literature Today Vol.73, No.2. Oklahoma: University of Oklahoma, 1999. 239-244. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/40154686> Schneller, Beverly. ““Visible and Visitable”: The Role of History in Gita Mehta’s Raj and Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance”. Journal of Narrative Theory Vol.31, No.2. Michigan: East Michigan University, 2001. 233-254. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < http://www.jstor.org/stable/30225764> Sørensen, Elip. “Excess and Design in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance”.Novel. North Carolina: Duke University Press, 2008.342-362. Web. 27 Feb. 2014. < novel.dukejournals.org/content/41/2-3/342.refs > Takhar, Jennifer. “Rohinton Mistry’s Indian Neorealism: The Voice of the People”. Canadian Literature & Culture in the Postcolonial Literature and Culture Web. N.d. Postcolonialweb.Org.Web.19Jul.2012. Website Articles “Critics on Ray”The Satyajit Ray Film and Study Center, University of California, Santa Cruz.N.d.Web. 04 Oct. 2013. < http://satyajitray.ucsc.edu/critics.html> “Family Matters (novel)” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 September2013.Web.04 Oct. 2013. Rajagopal, Krishnadas. “Nagarwala Case: Mystery Returns After Three Decades” The Indian Express. Dec. 2008. Indian Express Group. 8 Dec. 2012. decades/400972/0> Surdulescu, Radu.“The Semiotic Analysis of the Literary Text”.Form, Structure, and Structurality in Critical Theory. July 2002. Web. 04 Oct. 2013. theliterarytext.htm> “Mumbai”.Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 4 December 2012.Web. 20 Dec. 2012. “Rohinton Mistry”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 September 2013.Web.04 Oct. 2013. “The Emergency (India)”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 December 2012. Web. 20 Dec. 2012. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 17 Chapter 2 Political Representation of Mumbai in Such a Long Journey This chapter will look at the plot of the novel, representation of the Bangladesh Liberation War (1971), facts and information about the Nagarwala scandal, representation of the Nagarwala Scandal, representation of Mumbai constructed through cityscapes and characters’ perspectives on the city and conclusion. Such a Long Journey, published in 1991, is the first novel and the second work of fiction published by Rohinton Mistry. It is a novel set in the 1971 Mumbai, the time of second India- Pakistan War when East Pakistan was struggling for independence. The protagonist of the novel is Gustad Noble, a hard-working Parsi bank clerk who makes great efforts to take care of his family. The main plot of the story contains two threads; the first is a familial father-son story of Gustad and his eldest son Sohrab. Gustad is proud that his eldest son has gained admission at the prestigious IIT and pins his hopes on Sohrab to improve the family’s fortune. However, Sohrab’s dream is to study the arts and this causes an enormous rift between the father and the son. The second thread in the main plot is a political one; Major Jimmy Billimoria, an army man, Gustad’s best friend and also a resident of the Khodadad building, disappears suddenly. Later on in a letter Major Billimoria requests his friend’s help which implicates Gustad Noble in a financial conspiracy that shocks the nation and also involves the Prime Minister herself. The sub-plot of the novel involves Gustad’s wife Dilnavaz, her peculiar neighbour Miss Kutpitia and their supernatural experiments to cure Dilnavaz’s youngest child Roshan of her chronicProperty diarrhoea of Christ and alsoUniversity. to bring her eldest son Sohrab back Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 18 home. Some of the other minor but interesting characters in the novel are Dinshawji, Gustad’s colleague at the bank, Tehmul Lungara, a lame and retarded resident of Khodadad building of whom Gustad is fond of, Malcolm Saldhana, Gustad’s childhood friend, the Noble family doctor Dr Paymaster and the Sidewalk Artist who paints a wall where people used to urinate and turns it into a multi-religion temple of sorts. Representation of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the Nagarwala scandal and Mumbai in Such a Long Journey According to Stuart Hall, ‘representation is the production of meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events’. Furthermore Stuart Hall says, ‘The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation.’’ (Hall 2012 17) While talking about the constructionist approach he says, ‘The third approach recognizes this public, social character of language. It acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems – concepts and signs. Hence it is called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language.’(Hall 2012 25) Hall adds, ‘When in his collection of essays, Mythologies (1972), the French critic, Roland Barthes, studied ‘The world of wrestling’, ‘Soap powders and detergents’, ‘The face of Greta Garbo’ or ‘The Blue Guides to Europe’, he brought a semiotic approach to Property bear on ‘reading’ of Christ popular University. culture, treating these activities and Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 19 objects as signs, as a language through which meaning is communicated.’(Hall 2012 36) Similarly, Mistry constructs a Mumbai in SLJ by creating it within language that has reference to real political events of 1971like the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the Nagarwala scandal and public artefacts like the cityscapes and social constructs in the perspectives of characters on the city as well as events. In this chapter I will look at these political events, public artefacts and social constructs and read them as signs which construct Mumbai in the novel. 1. Bangladesh Liberation War (1971) Gustad wakes up early one morning to check The Times of India whether his son has passed IIT entrance exams. He ignores the image of a half-naked mother weeping with a dead child in her arms. The caption of the picture which he didn’t bother to read talked about soldiers using Bengali babies for bayonet practice (SLJ 6-7). Through the epistemological means of the newspaper photograph, the reader is introduced to one of the many atrocities which took place during the Bangladesh Liberation war. As many as 3 million East Pakistanis were killed, about 400,000 women were raped and approximately 8 to 10 million people fled to seek refuge in India. Later, he reads the headline from the paper to his wife which says: ‘Reign of Terror in East Pakistan’. He discusses with his wife that the Republic of Bangladesh has been proclaimed by the Awami League while she is filling water in their earthen pot. He tells her how he was arguing with his colleagues at office that he did not believe General Yahya would allow Sheikh Mujibur Rahman to form the government. He reads on in the paper the stories about Bengali refugees coming over to India and the violence that they face (SLJ 12). Thus the political aspects seep into the domestic space of the Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 20 Nobles through the newspaper and it seeps into the office space through discussions with colleagues. Unlike the more subdued anxieties of Gustad’s wife Dilnavaz, his colleague Dinshawji’s opinions on the political situation are volatile and interspersed with expletives. He is furious about the world’s indifference to the suffering of the six million Bengalis. He is critical of America’s policy regarding the war as it is very pro Pakistan and he is also critical of the then American President Richard Nixon. While Gustad and Dinshawji are having tea and samosas, Gustad uses these two food items as props to explain to Dinshawji the geo-political reality that America is on the side of Pakistan inspite of the suffering of Bengalis because of their fear of Russia’s friendliness with Afghanistan. He explains that America fears that if Pakistan too became friendly with Russia then Russia might become very powerful in the Indian Ocean regions (SLJ 76). Gustad’s youngest daughter Roshan asks him for one rupee to take to her school in order to join the raffle. Half of the money collected during the raffle would go towards making a new school building and half towards helping the refugees. Gustad asks Roshan if she is aware what “refugee” means and she replies that they have been taught at school that refugees are people who ran away from East Pakistan and came to India because the people from West Pakistan are killing them and burning all their homes (SLJ 80). Furthermore she asks, ‘Daddy, why is West Pakistan killing the people in East Pakistan?’ Gustad simplifies the political situation in order to make his young daughter understand: ‘Because it is wicked and selfish. East Pakistan is poor, they said to West, we are always hungry, please give us a fair share. But West said no. Then East said, in that case we don’t want to work with you. So, as punishment, West Pakistan is killing and burning East Pakistan.’ ‘That is so mean’, says Roshan, ‘and so sad for East’ Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 21 (SLJ 81). Moreover, Dilnavaz says to Mrs Kutpitia: ‘... thank you also for giving the newspapers to Roshan. Her class now has highest collection for refugees’ (SLJ 110). Once again Mistry shows that some political realities are so impactful to personal lives that even children were acutely aware of them and are sensitive to them. Indira Gandhi administration was a period rife with financial conspiracies and Mistry shows that Gustad and his friend Billimoria are entrapped in one such scheme. Gustad tries to explain to his wife that Billimoria is trying to save the poor Bengalis being murdered by Pakistan through all the money that he has sent. But his wife explains that what he and Jimmy are doing are dangerous and illegal things which might result in Gustad losing his job (SLJ 120). Dr Paymaster uses medical metaphors to describe the East Pakistan situation. He calls East Pakistan a patient and says that ‘East Pakistan is suffering from diarrhoea of death’; ‘East Pakistan has been attacked by a strong virus from West Pakistan’. About America’s foreign policy he says ‘... the world’s biggest physician is doing nothing. Worse, Dr America is helping the virus’. He believes that the Mukhti Bahini guerrillas are ‘Not strong enough medicine. Only the complete, intravenous injection of the Indian army will defeat this virus’ (SLJ 164-165). When Bangladesh is close to freedom, people are in an optimistic mood. Dr Paymaster again uses medical metaphors and says that the patient is recovering. He says, ‘Correct diagnosis is half the battle. Proper prescription, the other half. Injection of the Indian army, I said. And so the critical moment is past. Road to recovery’ (SLJ 305). Through Dr Paymaster’s use of medical metaphors like patient, diarrhoea of death, virus, medicine, intravenous injection, diagnosis, prescription and recovery Mistry puts forth the vision of the issues of East Pakistan as an illness which needs to be cured. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 22 When Gustad runs into his old friend Malcolm, they discuss that no European country is helping India to make Pakistan behave and they also talk about the refugee relief tax (SLJ 230). When Gustad goes to meet his friend Jimmy Billimoria in prison, Billimoria explains to him the unimaginable level of corruption in the government. Indira Gandhi in a radio broadcast says that Pakistani Air Force planes had just bombed Indian airfields in Amritsar, Pathankot, Srinagar, Jodhpur, Chandigarh, Ambala and Agra. She said it was naked aggression and therefore India was at war with Pakistan. This news was so sensational that the copies of the newspapers that Gustad tried to buy were going for five times the normal price and therefore he chose not to buy the newspapers (SLJ 280-281). Operation Chengiz Khan was the code name assigned to the pre-emptive strikes carried out by the Pakistani Air Force (PAF) on the forward airbases and radar installations of the Indian Air Force (IAF) on the evening of 3 December 1971, and marked the formal initiation of hostilities of the Indo-Pakistani War of 1971.TheIndian Air Force responded with initial air strikes the same night, which were expanded to massive retaliatory air strikes the next morning, as anticipated by the Pakistan Air Force. Statements released by both nations the next day confirmed the "existence of a state of war between the two countries", although neither government had formally issued a declaration of war. Many sections of SLJ begin with the sound of the air raid sirens which perfectly describe the atmosphere prevalent in the city of Mumbai during 1971. The tenth chapter’s second section begins with an air raid siren at 10 am when Gustad is late in reaching his bank. Mistry describes that the siren had been sounded for several weeks every day exactly at 10 am for the duration of three minutes. Some people believed that the government was checking if the sirens were working well, some thought that it was training the civilians for a time when there is a real threat while some incredibly Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 23 believed that the siren went off exactly at 10 am for civilians to synchronise their watches as a part of the pre-war effort to improve punctuality and productivity in government offices (SLJ 143). Part thirteen also begins with air raid siren and this siren marks Gustad having reached halfway mark by depositing the fifty-first bundle of money which Billimoria had sent and also marks the improvement in health of his daughter Roshan (SLJ 185). Section twenty begins with the bank manager Mr Maddon’s guidelines and directives concerning air raids. Cash was to be locked up securely before the air raid siren sounded and all the employees were to retreat beneath their desks (SLJ 297). Section two of chapter twenty begins with an air raid siren at night and Gustad checks his own flat and the entire building for a complete blackout (SLJ 300-301). Like the sounding of the air raid sirens, the declaration of complete blackouts and the use of blackout paper is something which describes the social and political atmosphere prevalent in Mumbai during 1971. Gustad discusses with his wife and makes the necessary preparations for blackout (SLJ 292). Gustad and his son Darius also visit Miss Kutpitia’s house as her windows were swollen and would not shut which was a concern during the time of blackouts. Gustad also has a small chat with inspector Bamji in the evening and gets to know his opinion on blackout (SLJ 294-296). Gustad finds the light of Tehmul’s flat on and goes to make sure that it is turned off. On this visit he also finds that it was Tehmul who stole his daughter’s doll (SLJ 304). Gustad’s wife taunts him about removing the blackout paper when the war is over (SLJ 310). When India is celebrating Bangladesh’s freedom Gustad still hasn’t removed the blackout paper (SLJ 309-310). Towards the very end of the novel when he does finally remove the black out paper, it signifies a brighter future for the Nobles both literally Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 24 and metaphorically as the war has ended and Gustad has also resolved the conflict with his son. Peerbhoy Paanwala whose paan shop is outside The House of Cages narrates an erotic satire about the drunkard and the butcher. To anyone familiar with the 1971 Bangladesh war it is obvious that the drunkard refers to General Yahya Khan and the butcher refers to General Tikka Khan. Peerbhoy’s story about the Drunkard with an erectile dysfunction is a reference to Yahya Khan’s incompetence in the 1971 war with India. The mention of orgies and ‘carnivals of copulation’ is an allegory about the abuse and rape of Bengali Hindu women by the Pakistani army (SLJ 306-309). General Tikka Khan earned the nickname 'Butcher of Bengal' due to the widespread atrocities he committed. General Niazi commenting on his actions noted 'On the night between 25/26 March 1971 General Tikka struck. Peaceful night was turned into a time of wailing, crying and burning. General Tikka let loose everything at his disposal as if raiding an enemy, not dealing with his own misguided and misled people. The military action was a display of stark cruelty more merciless than the massacres at Bukhara and Baghdad by Chengiz Khan and Halaku Khan... General Tikka... resorted to the killing of civilians and a scorched earth policy. His orders to his troops were: 'I want the land not the people...' Major General Farman had written in his table diary, "Green land of East Pakistan will be painted red". It was painted red by Bengali blood.' Thus, Rohinton Misty constructs a political representation of Mumbai in SLJ as a city in siege due to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War by using signs like newspaper photograph, newspaper headline, domestic conversations, office discussions, debates and conversations, school collection drives for the refugees, conversations with a child. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 25 2. The Nagarwala scandal Rohinton Mistry fictionalizes the Nagarwala scandal in SLJ which is the central plot of the novel and which according to the critic O.P. Mathur was indicative of the many financial scandals which took place during the Indira Gandhi administration. Mistry gives his opinion on why he chose to fictionalize the Nagarwala incident in an interview with The Guardian: In 1987 his short-story collection called Tales From Firozsha Baag was published to much critical praise and went on to win a number of literary prizes. "I was then curious to see how I'd fare with a novel. The central plot incident in Such a Long Journey was taken from something I'd heard my parents and their friends talking about in 1971, at home. A Parsee major had embezzled money from a bank to finance the resistance movement in East Pakistan. Within our community the main question was 'How could a Parsee have done this?'." The Parsi community has a reputation for honesty. The Nagarwala incident and the Nanavati murder case are some of the few incidents which have raised doubts about Indian Parsis and shocked the community itself. Jaydipsinh Dodiya in the essay “A Fine Balance Between Hope and Despair Through a Long Journey” quotes Maju Daruwala (qtd. in Book Review 29) to explain the Parsi reaction to the Nagarwala incident: The Nagarwala incident, because it involved a Parsi, jolted the self-image of the community no less. Having long ago lost their literature to the vandalism of Alexander, the Accursed, and their dance, music, art, poetry and even their language to the process of adapting to a new home in India the Parsis have developed a particularized culture culled from a mixture of ancient mythProperty and legend of Christ overlaid University. by a life sustaining sense of recent Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 26 achievement. Gratified to have earned an honourable place in the country of their adoption through their contribution to every field of endeavour and proud of having retained a strong ethical tradition the Parsis were deeply anguished by the ambivalent role Nagarwala had played in the sordid story. As the researcher has found the official judgement of the Nagarwala case online, he has firsthand access to the details of the Nagarwala incident. However, Nilufer E Bharucha in the journal article ““When Old Tracks are Lost": Rohinton Mistry's Fiction as Diasporic Discourse” published in 1995 writes about the character Jimmy Billimoria thus, “This is a composite character fashioned out of the real-life State Bank cashier Sohrab Nagarwala and the Parsi agent from RAW...” K. Ratna Shiela Mani in the essay “Memory of Loss and Betrayal in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey” published in 2004 writes, “...Sohrab Nagarwala, the Chief Cashier of the Parliament Street Branch of the State Bank of India,...found himself behind the bars and died later in imprisonment.” Nandini Bhautoo-Dewnarain in her book Rohinton Mistry: An Introduction published in 2007 writes, “Sohrab Nagarwala, a State Bank of India cashier, was the prime accused.” Moreover, H. Hemalatha in the essay “Theme and Technique in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey” published in 2004 refers to the “‘Nagarwala case’ of 1960s”. The researcher believes that these critics and academics knew about the Nagarwala incident through hearsay as the facts are that Rustom Sohrab Nagarwala is the name of ex-army officer and the RAW agent involved in the conspiracy and the name of the State Bank of India cashier is Ved Prakash Malhotra. Moreover, the incident took place in the year of 1971 and not in the 1960s. According to the official judgement of V.D. Misra on the R.S. Nagarwala vs State on 24 November, 1971 this is how whole event took place: Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 27 On May 24, 1971, at about 12 noon, Ved Prakash Malhotra, Chief Cashier of the State Bank of India, Parliament Street, New Delhi, was sitting in his room as usual. He received a telephone call purposing to be from Shri Haksar, Principal Secretary to the Prime Minister, informing him that the Prime Minister needed Rs. 60 lakhs for Bangladesh and he should make arrangements for that amount. He was also told to keep the matter as 'Top Secret', and should bring out the amount himself. Since Malhotra was a bit hesitant, the caller asked him to talk to the Prime Minister herself. Thereafter, a female voice purporting to be that of the Prime Minister told him to bring the money out of the bank himself and hand it over to the courier who should be recognised by the exchange of the Code words divulged to Malhotra. Malhotra was further assured that he would get the necessary voucher and receipt. Accordingly, Malhotra asked the Deputy Chief Cashier to bring the money from the strong room. Shri R.P. Batra, the Deputy Cashier, went to the strong room at about 12.30 p.m. and told Ruhel Singh, Deputy Head Cashier, that the Chief Cashier was to make a payment of Rs. 60 lakhs lying in a box and that he should sign the cash book. Ruhel Singh signed the cash book and demanded a voucher for the same. He was told that he would get the voucher from Malhotra. After some time, Malhotra came there along with two cash coolies who took the box with him. Malhotra placed the box in the car of the bank bearing registration number DLK. 760 and left the bank premises. On Parliament Street near the Bible House, Malhotra was met by R.S. Nagarwala who represented himself to be the courier sent by the Prime Minister. He also gave the code words and so Malhotra, being assured that he was the courier. Malhotra went to the Prime Minister's residence and failing to get an access to the Prime Minister went to the Parliament House. After making various unsuccessful attempts to meet the Prime Minister, he came across Shri Haksar, and when Malhotra Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 28 asked for the receipt for the amount in question he was told that no such demand was made by the Prime Minister or anyone else on her behalf. Malhotra there upon immediately contacted the senior officers of the police who were available near about and apprised them of the facts and the circumstances in which he had been cheated. Meanwhile Nagarwala with the box reached defense Colony and left it at the house of his friend, N.B. Captain at No. 277-A, defense Colony. He ultimately proceeded to Parsi Dharamshala where he was staying. In the meantime, Ruhel Singh, Deputy Head Cashier, asked Shri R.B. Batra for the voucher two or three times. He was assured that he would get the voucher soon. Since neither the voucher was given to him nor Malhotra had returned to the bank for a considerable time, he brought the fact to the notice of his superiors. Thereafter, he made a report to the police giving the details of the box containing the currency notes worth Rs. 60 lakhs. The police officer, to whom Malhotra had narrated the facts, took immediate necessary steps to alert the police and started trekking down Nagarwala. He ultimately succeeded in locating Nagarwala at Parsi Dharamshala and thereafter succeeded in recovering Rs.59, 95,000.00 from defense Colony. Nagarwala was arrested under Section 419/420 Indian Penal Code. Due to the death of Nagarwala in custody and the death of the chief investigating officer D. K. Kashyap in an accident a fresh trial could not take place. The case was only examined again after five years. In 1976, after a change in government, P. Jagan Mohan Reddy was appointed to inquire into the event. In 1978 the Commission issued an 820-page report on the matter. Most notably, the report found that the confession should have been rejected and that it was unsubstantiated by any evidence. They also found that Nagarwala's death was caused by a myocardialProperty infarction of and Christ thus thereUniversity. was no reason to suspect foul play. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 29 S.K. Aggarwal said that a 1986 article in The Statesman described a series of letters by Nagarwala that imply a relationship between himself and Indira Gandhi, though Gandhi herself could not specifically recall meeting Nagarwala. In letters written while he was jailed, Nagarwala claimed that he wanted to reveal the truth behind the crime and that it would be a "great eye opener for the nation". Justice Jagan Mohan Reddy listed four “incontrovertible facts” – one of them being the fact that Indira Gandhi did not have any account in that branch – but concluded that they were not sufficient to hold that the money belonged to her. “There were several lacunae,” he said on page no. 76 of the report, and listed them. “To supply an answer to these (lacunae) would force me to leave the safe haven of facts which required to be established by evidence and enter the realm of conjectures and speculation.” The Nagarwala incident was refreshed in public memory when in 2008, one of the witnesses Padam Rosha, retired senior police official, who testified on July 19, 1978, had sought the disclosure of the transcript of his testimony through an RTI application. In the novel, the then PM Indira Gandhi is afraid that the opposition party would use the financial conspiracy against her and that’s why she tries to squash it. The book Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers, Volume 1 1947-1980 by Janak Raj Jai, provides the influential political leader Morarji Desai’s opinion on the Nagarwala incident. “Nagarwala was arrested and produced before three magistrates, one after the other. He was induced to make a confession. A magistrate sentenced him to five years' rigorous imprisonment within only ten minutes of taking up the case on the strength of the confession without recording any other evidence, not even of the complainant. This Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 30 was fantastic procedure unprecedented in the history of magisterial cases anywhere in the democratic world. Nagarwala evidently did not appreciate this and appealed to the High Court. The High Court set aside the brief findings of the magisterial court and ordered a fresh trial. While the magisterial trial finished within ten minutes, the fresh trial could not begin for about two months during which period Nagarwala died in a Government hospital as an under trial prisoner. By a curious coincidence, the police officer, who had promptly traced the accused along with the money in question died about the same time in a road accident. The truck said to be involved in the fatal accident was never traced. Thus the two persons who could give the relevant facts, and show how the Prime Minister's voice (faked) enabled the fraud to take place, passed away from the world before giving evidence. The case against Malhotra was withdrawn, and he was quietly dismissed from service" Morarji Desai further tells: "I issued a public statement at the time asking for an enquiry, but failed to get response from the Government. Whoever has an account in any bank knows that he cannot withdraw any money without presenting a cheque in person or through an authorised person. How could the Head Cashier, who normally does not handle cheques himself, agree to the withdrawal of such a heavy sum of Rs.60 lakhs for a person unknown to him, and that too in a place away from the bank premises? This is simply never done. It is obvious, therefore, that the money belonged not to the Bank but to the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister must have been keeping for safe custody in the State Bank huge amounts of money collected by her for her election and political purpose through an informal arrangement with the head cashier. It is a reasonable Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 31 inference, supported by my experience with banks both in my private capacity and as a Finance Minister for a few years" (Jai 1996 219-220). 3. Representation of the Nagarwala Scandal Era Sezhiyan who is an eminent writer, a former parliamentarian and the compiler and the editor of Shah Commission Report: Lost, and Regained wrote an article for The Hindu titled “An overdraft for a ‘special case’”. The article talks about how intervention by a Union Minister during The Emergency led a public sector bank to hand over Rs.10 lakh to Associated Journals with no questions asked. It was at the command of the then Union Minister in collaboration with T. R. Tuli, the then Chairman and Managing Director of Punjab National Bank (PNB), that this intervention took place. Sezhiyan also reveals that it was due to Indira Gandhi’s recommendation that T. R. Tuli became the chairman of PNB. This was one of the many financial scandals that took place during Indira Gandhi’s administration. Another one was the Nagarwala scandal. There was a lot of hullabaloo about the Nagarwala scandal when it transpired as it was mystifying and till today remains shrouded in mystery. Very little is known about Sohrab Rustom Nagarwala, on the other hand Major Jimmy Billimoria is depicted as a full-fledged character that was very close to the Noble family. Mistry humanizes the figure of Sohrab Rustom Nagarwala, the ex-army captain and intelligence officer as a political underdog, when he writes about him as Jimmy Billimoria in the novel. Mistry portrays Jimmy Billimoria and Gustad Noble as such good friends that every morning they used to perform their kusti prayers together. Gustad’s children loved him and called himProperty Major Uncle. of Christ He used University. to enthral them with his numerous war Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 32 stories and they were taught to look up to him as a role model. Billimoria used to often play with the children and also joined the Nobles for the Sunday dhansak lunch. Billimoria is shown to be a character that has inside information about the goings-on in the country due to his army background. He also advises Gustad to use potassium permanganate to filter drinking water as they used it in the army as an alternative to boiling water. Gustad also reminisces that Hercules XXX was his favourite brand of rum. According to Hall, “...we also form concepts about things we never have seen, and possibly can't or won't ever see, and about people and places we have plainly made up. We may have a clear concept of, say, angels, mermaids, God, the Devil or of Heaven and Hell, or of Middlemarch (the fictional provincial town in George Eliot's novel), or Elizabeth (the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice) (The Work of Representation 17). The character of Jimmy Billimoria is clearly an example of ‘forming a concept about things we never have seen, and possibly can’t or won’t ever see, and about people...we have plainly made up’ like the character Elizabeth, the heroine of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice: Apart from being a good friend, being affectionate to children, being a good story teller, having inside information about the political events in the country and having a taste for alcohol, Jimmy Billimoria is also shown as a very compassionate and resourceful character. The episode which Gustad remembers the most about Billimoria is the time when he suffered from a terrible hip fracture; Billimoria had carried him into the hall of the doctor’s clinic in his arms. He also chose to take Gustad to Madhiwalla Bonesetter who is an exceptionally good doctor. Because of Billimoria’s prompt action and apt choice of doctor Gustad walks with a minor limp and was saved from becoming completely lame. Gustad’s entire family is so fond of Billimoria that Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 33 there are always mentions of and conversations about him at the Nobles’ residence. This is how Mistry vastly humanizes Sohrab Rustom Nagarwala through the character of Jimmy Billimoria. The reader gets to hear the Billimoria character’s voice mostly through the four letters that he writes and through four newspaper articles about him. It is only towards the denouement of the story that the reader meets this character in person. When Billimoria disappears from the Khodadad building the Nobles are seriously concerned for their much-loved neighbour and family friend. The reader hears Billimoria’s voice for the first time in the letter he has written to Gustad from New Delhi. He apologises in the letter about his disappearance and explains that he had no choice in the matter. He discloses that it was a matter of national security. He asks about the well being of the members of the Noble family and asks Gustad for a favour. The favour involves a parcel that Gustad needs to receive on Billimoria’s behalf. He says that his address and post box office number remains confidential due to regulations and offers to explain the entire story to him at a later date in the future (SLJ 54-55). The reader hears from Billimoria once again in the second letter he sends with instructions about carrying out the favour (SLJ 91-92). When Gustad goes to Chor Bazaar and carries out the favour he comes home with a parcel. On opening it he is surprised to find bundles of money in it (SLJ 116-117). Gustad and Dilnavaz look for the letter which Jimmy was to send with the parcel (SLJ 119). In his third letter, Jimmy explains that this is government money. He asks Gustad to create a bank account with the name Mira Obili (which is an anagram for Billimoria) and deposit the money in the account. He instructs Gustad to maintain secrecy about it as the money is for a guerrilla operation and many people in the government would like to see that guerrilla operation fail (SLJ 120). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 34 Soon after that, Gustad had found a dead bandicoot and later a dead cat in his vinca bush which scared him and his family. However, the next time he finds a piece of paper in the branches of a plant. The note said ‘Billimoria chaaval chorya, Daandolai nay marvadorya’. In English that means: “Stole the rice of Billimoria, we’ll take a stick and then we’ll beat ya.” Before this note, Gustad suspected that someone in Khodadad building was up to mischief. But after getting this note it is clear that whoever had done this was obviously threatening him (SLJ 140). Gustad and Dilnavaz get anxious over this note and Gustad decides that he will deposit ten thousand rupees everyday and that way he will be done with the task in hundred days (SLJ 142). Gustad enlists Dinshawji to help him achieve this task and tells him that money is for Mukhti Bahini’s liberation struggle. (SLJ 144). The reader learns more about Billimoria through a newspaper article which Dinshawji shows to Gustad. The article says that Billimoria was arrested for impersonating Indira Gandhi’s voice and got sixty lakh rupees from the State Bank of India. The police stated that Billimoria committed this fraud for helping the Mukti Bahini. The journalist also added a footnote which asked bigger questions about corruption in the government and the Prime Minister’s culpability in such financial scandals (SLJ 194-196). Gustad is enraged by the fact that Billimoria lied to him all this time. Gustad, Dilnavaz and Dinshawji are anxious about what to do with the remaining money. Gustad decides to meet Ghulam Mohammed who is Billimoria’s friend also works for RAW (SLJ 196-197). Next day Gustad meets Ghulam Mohammed and expresses his anger about the whole affair and also asks Mohammed about the rat and the cat. However, Mohammed says that he has no time to play with rats and cats. He explains that Jimmy being in the jail is the truth but the rest is a story cooked up by the corrupt people on the top (SLJ Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 35 202). Ghulam Mohammed tells Gustad that Billimoria’s life is in danger. They are torturing him to find out where the money is. He is not speaking up because he does not want trouble for his friends. However, he has made a deal that if the money is returned in thirty days then there will be no more questions asked. So Mohammed asks Gustad to withdraw the money that has been deposited within thirty days. Gustad protests that that way he will be breaking the law but finally gives in and they fix the date of delivery (SLJ 204-205). Gustad and Dinshawji decide that the only way to meet the thirty-day deadline would be by withdrawing two bundles a day. Every evening Dinshawji passed Gustad two bundles which he took back home. The bank was full of discussions about the Billimoria case and Gustad and Dinshawji took part in the discussions in order to look normal. Around this time Gustad’s vinca bush was completely hacked off. Gustad mentioned all these threats to Dinshawji who was not aware of them before and he steps up the speed by withdrawing three bundles per day. At this pace they finished withdrawing the money five days ahead of the deadline. But as a result of the stress, the already ailing Dinshawji collapsed and was rushed to the hospital (SLJ 207-208). Gustad goes and meets Ghulam Mohammed with all the money and hopes that that will be the last that he would be seeing of him. However, Ghulam informs Gustad of Jimmy’s deteriorating condition, 3 different magistrates handling his case, and beseeches him to meet him and hands him a letter by Jimmy. This is the fourth letter by Jimmy in which he apologises for all the trouble that he has caused. He requests Gustad to visit him in Delhi so that he can explain everything in person and also be forgiven for all the trouble he caused. When Ghulam is insistent again Gustad says that he will think about it (SLJ 215-216). After about six weeks Ghulam Mohammed turns up at Gustad’s doorstep and reminds him about going to Delhi. To convince Gustad he shows him a Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 36 second newspaper article talking about sentencing in the Billimoria case. The article also mentions that the head of the Special Investigation team had died in a car accident. After a lot of persuasion Gustad finally agrees to go to Delhi and accepts the train tickets that Ghulam Mohammed has booked for him. (SLJ 233-235). Gustad reaches Delhi and follows Ghulam Mohammed’s instructions to meet Mr Kashyap. Mr Kashyap is shown as an authority figure that makes arrangements for Gustad to meet Jimmy in the prison’s hospital section where Jimmy is recovering. Another official meets Gustad and takes him to meet Jimmy. Usually visitors are allowed only thirty minutes but Gustad is given four hours as he has come all the way from Mumbai (SLJ 268). Billimoria's story till he is tortured and locked-up in Delhi prison follows the Nagarwala case. Then the representation takes an imaginative turn or as Hall says, ‘we also form concepts about things we never have seen, and possibly can't or won't ever see, and about people and places we have plainly made up.’(Hall 2012 17) This happens in Billimoria’s revelation to Gustad as his confession seems ‘plainly made up’. Mistry uses his imagination to talk about Billimoria’s version of the truth which implicated Indira Gandhi in the scandal too. When Gustad finally meets Billimoria he finds that Billimoria is sick because of a disease he caught in the Sundarbans. While talking to Gustad he is administered injections twice which make him drowsy and difficult to decipher. He also screams twice while talking as narrating everything brings back the dark memories of his suffering in prison. Jimmy wants to explain everything to Gustad so that his friend can forgive him. Billimoria tells Gustad that he was hired by the Prime Minister to work for RAW. She put him in charge of training and supplying Mukhti Bahini because of his excellent record. Billimoria informed the PM that the Mukhti Bahini needed money in Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 37 order to operate and she agreed to make arrangements. She asked him to get sixty lakhs from a bank with the code name Bangladeshi Babu without revealing his real identity. He does so and easily obtains the money (SLJ 271-272). She gets scared that she might get caught for doing this as she had talked to the chief cashier of the bank and he might reveal the truth. So she gets Billimoria to sign a written confession saying that he had imitated her voice to get the money which she can later use as evidence if needed. Billimoria trusted her and was made to believe that all this was done for the cause of Bangladesh’s liberation and he signed the confession out of respect for her (SLJ 276- 277). Billimoria and Ghulam Mohammed find out that the money for supplies to Mukti Bahini was intercepted by Prime Minister’s office and re-routed to a private account. Billimoria speculates that perhaps the money was used to finance her son’s car factory or for election fund. He thought of exposing the whole thing but he knew that she was in control of the press, the opposition parties, the RAW, the courts and broadcasting. And so everything will be covered up (SLJ 278). Billimoria thought that the level of corruption was so high that they wouldn’t notice if ten lakhs went missing from the total amount. And so he kept ten lakh aside with the plan to divide it later among Gustad, Ghulam Mohammed and himself. But they found out about it and treated him very badly until they got their money back (SLJ 279-280). According to Sooni Taraporevala, the script-writer for the movie Such a Long Journey, in the article “The Mistry of Humanity” says, "Mistry himself departed from the Nagarwala episode, with Billimoria extracting Rs 10 lakh for himself. Nagarwala never did that. Mistry has only fictionalised events, exploiting his liberty as an author.” Gustad’s reaction to Jimmy’s story was that he had suffered too much and that he should tell lawyers and newspapers about it. But Jimmy said that the courts and Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 38 everything was in their hands so it was no use trying. The only thing to do was to serve a four year sentence and return to Mumbai. Jimmy asked Gustad if he had been forgiven and is at peace when he knows that he has been (SLJ 280). While reading the paper in his bank’s canteen, Gustad reads about Pakistan’s surrender to the Indian Army. He was feeling national pride like everyone in those days. But there was a small column space which caught his eye. It said that Mr. J. Billimoria, a former officer with RAW, had died of a heart attack while serving his four-year prison sentence in New Delhi. He removed that page of the paper, folded it and put it in his pocket (SLJ 311). Dilnavaz too reads about Billimoria’s death in the Parsi newspaper Jam-E-Jamshed. These are the final two newspaper articles through which the reader hears of Billimoria. Dilnavaz shows the paper to Gustad and they wonder who would’ve brought his body from Delhi as Jimmy had no relatives that they knew about. Gustad decides to go to the Tower of Silence to find out if it was their Jimmy whose funeral notice was published in the newspaper. He believes that it would be unforgivable to miss his funeral if that was the truth (SLJ 315). Gustad asks the clerk at The Tower of Silence about who made the arrangements for Jimmy’s funeral and who put the funeral notice in Jam-E-Jamshed but he gets no proper answers from him (SLJ 318-319). When Gustad steps out of the Tower of Silence, he sees Ghulam Mohammed and he knows that he made all the arrangements for Jimmy’s funeral and thanks him for that. Ghulam Mohammed weeps at his friend’s death and thanks Gustad for coming to the funeral. He tells Gustad that he is staying on in RAW so that he can take revenge for Jimmy’s death and gives him a lift back home in the taxi that he was driving (SLJ 322-323). Thus, Rohinton Misty constructs a political representation of Mumbai in SLJ as a city Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 39 grappling with war by using the sign of the disappearance of Billimoria due to a financial conspiracy intended to help the refugees. 4. Mumbai constructed through cityscapes and characters’ perspectives on the city According to the article “Representation and Media”, for the cultural theorist Stuart Hall, representation itself is a biased activity. However, it is important to study representations as they contain new knowledges, new identities and new meanings. Stuart Hall in his essay “The Work of Representation” uses Roland Barthes’ analysis of a pasta advertisement. It is a picture of some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open string bag. Barthes suggests that we can read the pasta ad as a 'myth' by linking its completed message with the cultural theme or concept of 'Italianicity' or 'Italianness'. Then, Hall adds, at the level of the myth or meta-language, the Panzani ad becomes a message about the essential meaning of Italian-ness as a national culture. Hall also shows the picture of a Jaguar car advertisement which claims to be an image of ‘Englishness’ (Hall 2012 41). My argument is that Mistry constructs the city of Mumbai in the novel which can be looked at at the level of myth or meta-language as Stuart Hall puts it. Then we find that the cityscapes and character perspectives construct the city of Mumbai in Such a Long Journey. The Parsis of Mumbai usually live as a community in colonies or baughs and Mistry represents communal living in Mumbai through Khodadad building. This is how Mistry describes the Khodadad building in the novel: The compound of apartments in which the Nobles live lies at north of Bombay. Khodadad Building is three stories high. Each floor holds ten apartments. It has five entrances. Stairways surround a courtyard and are Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 40 separated from the street and an adjoining office building by a black wall. At the very beginning of the novel, one hears the eccentric neighbour Mrs Kutpitia shouting at the milkman for mixing water into the milk. Although she herself doesn’t buy the milk she does it to keep the milkman in line for the sake of others. Here the author interjects and comments: Somebody had to let these crooks know that there were no fools living here in Khodadad building (SLJ 2). That’s when the reader is first introduced to the Khodadad building. The Parsi writer Armin Wandrewalla in the article “The fun of being a Parsee” gives an insight into Parsi community living: “Being a Parsee also gives you an entrée into another coveted world: the world of the Parsee Baugs (also known as parsi colonies)...... Most of our baugs / colonies are indeed green, clean, relatively quiet and well ordered. More importantly, they’re miniature worlds in themselves! Take the Dadar Parsee Colony, Cusrow Baug, Rustom Baug, Malcolm Baug, Tata Blocks, Bandra, and so many others, across the length and breadth of Bombay. You step into a different world, a fairly self-contained world, still quite gracious and genteel. Like Armin Wandrewalla, Mistry also represents the environment of Khodadad building and its compound which is the community’s common space and also its inhabitants: The neem tree had not been kind to Tehmul, the way it had to others. For the children in Khodadad building, cuttings from its soothing branches had stroked the itchy rashes and pauples of measles and chicken-pox. For Gustad, neem leaves (pulped into a dark green drink by Dilnavaz with her mortar and pestle) had kept his bowel from knotting up during his twelve helpless weeks. For Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 41 servants, hawkers, beggars passing through, neem twigs served as toothbrush and toothpaste rolled into one. Year after year, the tree gave unstintingly of itself to whoever wanted. But there had been no such benevolence for Tehmul. The fall from the neem had broken his hip (SLJ 30). Tehmul did not actually catch the rats, he merely got rid of the ones caught by the tenants of Khodadad building. The Pest Control Department of the municipal ward office offered twenty-five paise for every rat presented to it, dead or alive, as part of its campaign to encourage all-out war against the rodent menace (SLJ 32). He also describes a play put up for the entertainment of the residents of Khodadad building: Gustad and Dilnavaz’s proudest moment in Khodadad Building came when Sohrab put on a home-made production of King Lear, pressing Darius into service, plus a host of school and Building friends. The performance was held at the far end of the compound, and the audience brought their own chairs. Sohrab, of course, was Lear, producer, director, costume designer and set designer. He also wrote an abridged version of the play, wisely accepting that even an audience of doting parents could become catatonic if confronted by more than an hour’s worth of ultra-amateurish Shakespeare (SLJ 66). Many postcolonial cities are marked by haphazard new constructions and unplanned urban sprawl. Mumbai as a postcolonial city saw a lot of such unplanned and chaotic construction which Mistry represents very well in SLJ. He talks about the origin of the black stone wall or the compound wall and how it accidentally gave Gustad the privacy he needed for his early morning prayers: Years ago, when Major Billimoria had first moved to Khodadad Building, when the water supply was generous and the milk from Parsi Dairy Farm was both Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 42 creamy and affordable, there had been a surge of construction activity everywhere in the city. The neighbourhood of Khodadad building was not spared either, and tall structures began going up around it. The first to be blotted out was the setting sun – an office building was erected on the west side. Although it was only six stories, that was enough, for Khodadad building was but three, being short and wide: ten flats in a row, stacked three high, with five entrances and stairways for each adjacent set of flats. Shortly afterwards, construction started to the east as well. It was clear to all thirty tenants that an era had ended. Fortunately, the work dragged on for over ten years because of cement shortages, labour problems, lack of equipment and, once, the collapse of an entire wing due to adulterated cement, resulting in the deaths of seven workers. Youngsters from Khodadad Building went to the construction site to gaze in awe at some dark blotch on the ground, and wondered if that was the spot where the seven had perished, where their lifeblood had oozed out. The delays provided respite for Khodadad Building, and in time there grew a gradual acceptance of the altered landscape. With the increase in traffic and population, the black stone wall became more important than ever. It was the sole provider of privacy, especially for Jimmy and Gustad when they did their kustis at dawn. Over six feet high, the wall ran the length of the compound, sheltering them from non-Parsi eyes while they prayed with the glow spreading in the east. (JSL 81-82) However, Gustad’s privacy is threatened when the government plans to take down the illegal wall: A notice pasted on the pillar said that the municipality had decided to widen the road. The compound would shrink from half to its present width. And as a result the black stone wall would loom large in front of the ground floor tenants. That will bring Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 43 in more traffic noise, stink of the black wall where people used to piss. Late at night it became like a wholesale public latrine. But Gustad thought it was just a proposal and nothing would come of it. And he believed that the landlord would go to court (SLJ 16). People use the black stone wall as public lavatory because of which the Nobles suffer a lot of mosquitoes that the stink and the stench creates. He comes across a pavement artist, who makes pictures of various gods, everyday at Flora Fountain while going to work and asks him to come to Khodadad building. The pavement artist leaves Flora Fountain due to police harassment and comes looking for Gustad at Khodadad building: From the next day he starts making portraits of gods from various religions. This way mosquitoes and flies decreased as their breeding ground was drying up. Odomous becomes a thing of the past in Khodadad building and Gustad puts away all the vessels that they used to fill with water and put under the bulbs as there was no further use for mosquito traps (SLJ 181-184). Mistry also represents the diversity, the secular and the cosmopolitan aspects of Mumbai through the compound wall: The next evening the pavement artist told Gustad that someone had left a bunch of flowers before the drawing of Saraswati. He assumes that it must have been someone sitting for an exam (SLJ 186). When Gustad approaches the wall again there is fragrance coming from an agarbatti which someone had put in the crack near the picture of goddess Laxmi...Inspector Bamji also congratulates Gustad for transforming the stinking wall into something beautiful. On seeing the different kinds of deities on the wall Inspector Bamji comments ‘A good mixture like this is a perfect example of our secular country.’ (SLJ 211-214). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 44 A morcha was taken out against the municipality to protest against the failure of the municipality to provide basic civic amenities like clean water, good roads and street lights. When the people who are protesting learn that the wall painted with gods and goddesses is going to be demolished, they become furious, and start fighting with the municipal workers which turns into a riot. After the violence subsides, the injured workers are replaced by other workers and they bring down the wall. One of the most important commercial and cultural places in the city is its markets and bazaars. Mistry represents Mumbai in SLJ by giving vibrant descriptions of the city’s markets which are crowded, noisy and often evoke the protagonist’s nostalgia for his childhood and youth and also some amount of discomfort. Crawford Market is one of South Mumbai's most famous markets. It is named after Arthur Crawford, the first Municipal Commissioner of the city. The market houses a wholesale fruit, vegetable and poultry market. One end of the market is a pet store. Different varieties of dogs, cats, and birds can be found in this area. Also, endangered species are illegally sold there. Most of the sellers inside the market sell imported items such as foods, cosmetics, household and gift items. Mistry depicts the Crawford Market twice in his novel. The first time Gustad goes to Crawford Market to buy a live chicken as he remembered his grandmother telling him that live chicken tastes best when freshly cooked. This causes quite a lot of comedy, slapstick humour and pathos in the narrative and also evokes Gustad’s nostalgia for his childhood when his family was prosperous and his college days: Gustad had gone from work straight to Crawford Market to get the chicken for his daughter Roshan’s birthday and also to celebrate Sohrab’s admission to IIT and it had been a long and tiring day. Unlike his father Gustad never liked going to the Crawford Market. His father was always accompanied by a servant and arrived and left by a taxi. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 45 He enjoyed bargaining and getting a good deal. On the other hand, Gustad was not as well off as his father and he was always afraid of offending the vegetarians travelling along with him in the bus and was also afraid of triggering Hindu-Muslim riots. Gustad did not like Crawford Market and thought of it as dirty, smelly and overcrowded. His grandmother had warned him as a child to beware of the goaswalla’s knife which had coloured his perception of the Crawford Market. Buying chicken was not an expertise he had as he could not afford chicken very often. But he knew a lot about beef as his college friend Malcolm Saldhana had taught him all about it. On Sunday mornings, Gustad would go with Malcolm to Crawford Market after attending church. Malcolm gave Gustad an overview on beef: its nutritional value, the best ways to cook it, the choicest parts, and, most importantly, the butchers in Crawford Market who sold the choices parts. He also taught Gustad to differentiate between a cow’s meat and a buffalo’s meat and their nuances. He also revealed that the choices part of beef was the neck which was the tenderest, with least fat and easy to cook which saved fuel bills. He also assured Gustad that once he appreciates the neck part he will like it better than mutton. Gustad was so much influenced by Malcolm that years later he would try to train his friends and neighbours about the art of beef-eating so that they could give up the expensive mutton habit. But later Gustad stopped visiting the Crawford Market and bought whatever meat the goaswalla of Khodadad Building brought (SLJ 20-26). The second time Gustad goes to the Crawford Market when his daughter is ill: The doctor has prescribed for Roshan amongst other things chicken soup. So Gustad has to resume his hated Sunday morning Crawford Market routine. When Gustad goes to Crawford Market to buy chicken he meets his old friend Malcolm Saldhana. Gustad had steered clear of the Crawford Market because of the country Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 46 wide agitation by Sadhus and Holy Men against cow-slaughterers and beef-eaters. They talk about their lives for a while and then Malcolm helps Gustad pick a good chicken (SLJ 219-222). When Gustad meets Malcolm again in the evening they talk in details the things they talked about at the Crawford Market (SLJ 229). It is not easy to shop at Crawford Market and Gustad doesn’t enjoy going there: During an argument Dilnavaz admonishes Sohrab that it is a shame that with two grown boys in the house, it is a disgrace that their father has to go to the market. After hard work all day he went to Crawford Market and got the chicken to celebrate (SLJ 28). Gustad’s grandmother’s comment about the sharp knifes of butchers has coloured his perception of the market since his childhood and is a part of his subconscious: Gustad compares the prostitutes in the House of Cages to the Crawford Market goasawalla. He says that the way these women moved and displayed themselves, there was as much chance of going insane with pleasure as recovering from heart surgery performed by a beef-carving Crawford Market goaswalla (SLJ 201). Chor Bazaar, located near Bhendi Bazaar in South Mumbai, is one of the largest flea markets in India. The word Chor means thief in Hindustani. It was originally called Shor Bazaar, meaning noisy market, but became chor because of the British pronunciation the word. Eventually stolen goods started finding their way into the market, resulting in it living up to its new name. It is now famous for antique and vintage items: Jimmy Billimoria in his second letter to Gustad asks him to go to Chor Bazaar and get a parcel. Dilnavaz is suspicious of going to Chor Bazaar but Gustad reassures Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 47 her ‘Don’t be silly. Because the old name is still used doesn’t mean it’s full of thieves. Even foreign tourists go there nowadays.’ (SLJ 91-92) Chor Bazaar is a maze of narrow lanes and byways. Gustad makes his way through it on a Friday which is why it is crowded. He feels nostalgic about coming here as a little boy with his father and buying a Meccano set. He also remembers how his father lost his bookshop due to his brother which ruined his family fortune. At a bookshop Gustad buys three classics for six rupees. Gustad goes to the next shop and as instructed looks through Othello in The Complete Works of Shakespeare. Then he meets Ghulam Mohammed who is Jimmy’s friend and has chai with him. Ghulam gives him a parcel to take home and he also gives Gustad The Complete Works of Shakespeare as a gift (SLJ 99-107). According to Stuart Hall, “...we also form concepts about things we never have seen, and possibly can't or won't ever see, and about people and places we have plainly made up. We may have a clear concept of, say, angles, mermaids, God, the Devil or of Heaven and Hell, or of Middlemarch (the fictional provincial town in George Eliot's novel), or Elizabeth (the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice) (Hall 2012 17). By representing the Parsi way of living and their funeral rites Mistry is introducing the reader to the world he knows best and which perhaps his reader “possibly can't or won't ever see”, Parsis being a very close-knit and exclusivist community with very strict rules. Nilufer Barucha in her journal article “"When Old Tracks are Lost": Rohinton Mistry's Fiction as Diasporic Discourse” quotes from an interview (with Ali Lakhani at Vancouver International Writers’ Festival) that Rohinton Mistry has said that when the Parsis have disappeared from the face of the earth, his writing will "Preserve a record of how they lived, to some extent". However, he claims that this is not the central focus of his writing. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 48 The Towers of Silence, which Gustad visits on two occasions, both for funerals, is an aspect of Mumbai which makes Gustad reflective, nostalgic about his parents and grandparents and philosophical about life’s journeys (SLJ 254). Rohinton Mistry shows the last rites and rituals as a profoundly spiritual experience. On the other hand, his younger brother Cyrus Mistry in his novel Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer reveals the dark secret about untouchability in the Parsi community which is known to be one of the most progressive communities in India. Cyrus Mistry reveals that khandias are Parsis who take corpses to the towers of silence and collect corpses, and ritually cleanse and anoint them with bull's urine before laying them out for the vultures. The corpse bearers are the tiny community, also known as 'Lord of the Unclean', who personally absorb the evil putrefaction of corpses – a noble service for which their souls will forever escape the cycle of rebirth, although in this final incarnation, they are condemned to be shunned by fellow-Parsis as "untouchable to the core." While discussing the painting Las Meninas by Diego Velasquez, Hall shares different interpretations of the painting. He says, ‘The meaning of the picture is produced, Foucault argues, through this complex inter-play between presence (what you see, the visible) and absence (what you can’t see, what has displaced it within the frame).’ He comes to the conclusion that, ‘Representation works as much through what is not shown, as through what is.’(Hall 2012 59) Thus by comparing the representation of the Towers of Silence in Such a Long and Journey and Chronicle of a Corpse Bearer, one learns that Rohinton Mistry’s description of the Towers of Silence as a spiritual place which makes the protagonist philosophical is selective in nature. Another spiritual enclave which spells Mumbai is the very popular Mount Mary Church which is visited by both Christians and non-Christians. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 49 The Basilica of Our Lady of the Mount, more commonly known as Mount Mary Church, is a Roman Catholic Basilica located in Bandra, Mumbai. The Basilica is one of the most visited 'religious places of worship' in the city... Wax figures of the Virgin Mary, along with an assortment of candles shaped like hands, feet and various other parts of the body are sold at kiosks. The sick and the suffering choose a candle or wax figure that corresponds to their ailment and light it in Church, with the pious hope that Mother Mary will consider their appeals for help: Gustad’s college friend Malcolm Saldanha takes him to the Mount Mary Church where they buy appropriate wax statues: A girl’s torso for curing Roshan’s illness, a full body of wax to cure Dinshawji’s cancer, a boy’ head to make Sohrab change his mind and a wax leg to help Gustad improve his hip which limps sometimes. Malcolm explains that the offerings only work if the person pays himself. They also buy four candles to go along with the wax statues (SLJ 227). The statue of Our Lady of the Mount has an interesting legend. It goes that a Koli fisherman dreamt that he would find a statue in the sea. The statue was found floating in the sea between 1700 and 1760. A Jesuit Annual Letter dated to 1669 and published in the book St. Andrew's Church, Bandra (1616–1966) supports this claim. The Koli Fishermen call the statue as Mot Mauli, literally meaning The Pearl Mother (Mot= Moti= pearl and Mauli= Mother). However, the pervious statue is now restored and now enjoys the place of honour in the basilica. Both Hindu and Christian Kolis visit this shrine often giving it a kind of syncretic nature: Malcolm Saldhana tells his friend Gustad about the statue that was found by the fishermen. He also tells him about the miracle of the Baby Jesus on Mother Mary’s arm moving from the left arm to right arm and so on every year (SLJ 228). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 50 Mistry represents Mumbai by talking about everyday life in Mumbai; be it crowded local trains, the squalor of railway platforms or good times at the sea or the beach: Gustad takes the local train with his friend Malcolm Saldhana and reminisces about the time he went to Dadar with his son Sohrab in order to get the school textbooks. At the Bandra station he sees a woman on the platform selling candles which reminds him of the bird-woman in Mary Poppins (SLJ 224-225). The two friends go to the sea side of Bandra and tell each other about their lives and talk fondly about the old days. Gustad also mentions that when they go to Chaupatty or Marine Drive his daughter loves to sit and watch the waves (SLJ 228-229). Gustad fondly reminisces about the family vacation to Matheran which is a contrast to everyday life Mumbai and also a happy time before his father’s bookshop went bankrupt (SLJ 242). When Gustad goes to Victoria Terminus to catch the train to Delhi, that is another Mumbai he witnesses: The tea stall owner and his employee, a family of four sleeping on the platform, a poor woman making chapaatis on a kerosene stove, coolies in red shirts offering ‘risvard seats for ten rupees’ (SLJ 256-263). An important Mumbai in SLJ is the Mumbai of nostalgia for the past; of childhood, youth and prosperity for the protagonist who lives the life of a middle class Parsi as an adult: The smell of old books and bindings, learning and wisdom floated out. On the top shelf, at the rear, were E. Cobham Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable and the two volumes of Barrere and Leland’s Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, the 1897 edition. Like the furniture, Gustad had rescued these from his father’s bankrupt bookstore. Reaching in, he pulled out Brewer’s Dictionary and opened it at random. He held it up to his nose and closed his eyes. The rich, timeless fragrance rose from the precious pages, soothing his uneasy, confused spirit. He shut the book, Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 51 tenderly stroking its spine with the back of his fingers, and replaced it on the shelf (SLJ 53). The historian Ramchandra Guha in the article Layers of history in street names says, ‘The histories of Indian cities are contained in the names of their streets and squares. These come in layers that have to be peeled off, one by one, to reveal the names that once lay below. A street might have been named after a colonial proconsul; later after a Congress nationalist; still later, after a local or regional hero. Or even a local international hero... The names of streets and squares reveal a city's preferences, cultural and ideological, as they change over the decades and through successive political regimes.’ Furthermore Guha explains, ‘Mumbai (is a) place that perhaps has had more reason to change street names than any other. For no other Indian city has had such a tumultuous modern history, no other such a multitude of castes, communities and special interests to be satisfied. Fortunately, the city's ecology here comes to the aid of politics and culture for no other Indian city has so many streets and intersections to play around with...The names that Mumbai's margs and chowks carry are a curious mixture of chauvinism, courage and corruption’: Dinshawji launches a tirade against the dubbawallahs because of an incident which took place on a train with him once. He also abuses the fascist Shiv Sena and their agenda for Maratha Raj. When Gustad points out that there is no water in a fountain Dinshawji becomes more volatile and uses an expletive. He is especially angry with the name of the streets which were changed by the Shiv Sena. He says: ‘Names are so important. I grew up on Lamington Road. But it has disappeared; in its place is Dadasaheb Bhadkhamkar Marg. My school was on Carnac Road. Now suddenly it’s on Lokmanya Tilak Marg. I live at Sleater Road. Soon that will also Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 52 disappear. My whole life I have come to work at Flora Fountain. And one fine day the name changes. So what happens to the life I have lived? Was I living the wrong life, with all the wrong names? Will I get a second chance to live it all again, with these new names? Tell me what happens to my life. Rubbed out, just like that? Tell me!’ (SLJ 72-74) The word Mistry uses for the city is Bombay and not Mumbai. SLJ was published in 1991 and Bombay officially became Mumbai in 1995 at the insistence of Shiv Sena. The Parsis had a strong connection with the British and after decolonisation, they feel vulnerable as a minority community in India and find it hard to grapple with the powers that be. While worrying about his son’s future, Gustad thinks: What kind of life was Sohrab going to look forward to? No future for minorities, with all these fascist Shiv Sena politics and Marathi language nonsense. It was going to be like the black people in America – twice as good as the white man to get half as much. How could he make Sohrab understand this? (SLJ 55) Tehmul who was retarded was also given pamphlets aimed against the minorities in Bombay by the Shiv Sena. They had promised him a Kwality Choc-O-Bar if he did a good job. A group of South Indian people working in a building down the road got enraged by the pamphlets and surrounded Tehmul. Gustad tried to help Tehmul but he too was perceived as an enemy. When the group spotted Inspector Bamji coming to help the two, the crowd dispersed (SLJ 86). Conclusion Thus, Rohinton Misty constructs a political representation of Mumbai in SLJ as a city in siege due to the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War. He uses signs like newspaper photograph, newspaperProperty headline, of domestic Christ conversations, University. office discussions, debates Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 53 and conversations, school collection drives for the refugees, conversations with a child, and the disappearance of Billimoria due to a financial conspiracy intended to help the refugees to construct a Mumbai which is grappling with war. Moreover, Mumbai is also depicted as a war-struck city by Dr Paymaster’s use of medical metaphors to describe the war, Gustad’s conversations with friends like Malcom and Billimoria, the PM’s radio broadcast announcing war with Pakistan, the five-fold increase in newspaper rates due to the announcement of war, four invocations of the air raid siren and eight invocations of the blackouts and Peerbhoy Paanwala’s erotic satire on General Yahya Khan and General Tikka Khan in the text. By fictionalizing Nagarwala, Mistry adds to the polyphony of the debate around the Nagarwala incident as his voice was silenced. Rohinton Mistry writes an alternative history of the Nagarwala incident to include the voice of Nagarwala which was deliberately left out in the previous legal and political narrations of this incident. Mistry mentions that Billimoria’s case was handled by three different magistrates and also mentions the surname Kashyap for a fleeting character in the novel to corroborate that it is definitely the Nagarwala incident that he is talking about and not anything else. Thus the author stays close to the facts of the Nagarwala incident and where facts are not available he uses speculation and imagination. According to Hall, Roland Barthes attempts to see several acts as signs, ‘He treats it as a text to be read....He ‘reads’ the exaggerated gestures of wrestlers as a grandiloquent language of what he calls the pure spectacle of excess...In much the same way, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss studied the customs, rituals, totemic objects, designs, myths and folk-tales of so-called ‘primitive’ peoples in Brazil, not by analysing how these things were produced and used in the contest of daily life amongst the Amazonian peoples, but in terms of what they were trying to ‘say’, what Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 54 messages about the culture they communicated. Hall elaborates that the semiotic approach to representation also looks at clothes as signs, ‘The clothes themselves are signifiers and the concepts like ‘elegance’, ‘formality’, ‘casualness’, ‘romance’ are the signifieds.’ (Hall 2012 36-37) If one reads the depiction of the Nagarwala incident and the character Jimmy Billimoria as signs then concepts like ‘corruption’, ‘humanizing of the culprit’, ‘fear of the State’, ‘entrapment’, and ‘redemption’ are the signifieds. According to Hall, Barthes explains myth thus, ‘Myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second- order semiological system.’ He adds that, ‘Whether it deals with alphabetical or pictorial writing, myth wants to see in them only a sum of signs, a global sign, the final term of a first semiological chain’ (Hall 2012 68). One can read cityscapes like the Khodadad building, the compound wall, the markets and the spiritual cityscapes and the characters’ perspectives on the city like Gustad’s struggle, good times and nostalgia, Dinshawji’s loss of the past and lament on street name changes and the Shiv Sena’s stranglehold over the city as signs which the author uses to construct Mumbai in the novel. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 55 Works Cited Books Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Nandini. Rohinton Mistry: An Introduction. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India, 2007. 69. Print. Dodiya, Jaydipsinh. “A Fine Balance Between Hope and Despair Through a Long Journey: A Critical Study of Rohinton Mistry”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 7-8. Print. Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation”, Stuart Hall eds. Representation: Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. < www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/.../HallRepresentation.PDF > Hemalatha, M. “Theme and Technique in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 103. Print. Mathur, O.P. “Darkness at Noon: The Trauma of the Emergency”. Post-1947 Indian English Novel: Major Concerns. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2010. 83-94. Print. Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey. London: Faber and Faber, 1991. Print. Ratna Sheila Muni, K. “Memory of Loss and Betrayal in Rohinton Mistry’s Such a Long Journey”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 45-46. Print. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 56 Journal Articles Barucha, Nilufer E. “"When Old Tracks are Lost": Rohinton Mistry's Fiction as Diasporic Discourse”. The Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Jan 1995. Sage Publications. 59, 61. Web. 1 Feb. 2013. Daruwala, Maju. “Frayed Cambric – The Parsi Predicament”. Book Review. Mar-Apr. 1992. The Book Review Founder Trustees. 29. Print. Website Articles Alikhan, Anvar. “Lord of the Untouchable”. India Today. Jul.2012. Web. India Today Group. 27 Feb. 2013. < http://indiatoday.intoday.in/story/anvar-alikhan-chronicle-ofa-corpse-bearer-by-cyrus- mistry/1/210602.html > Beam, Christopher. “Mumbai? What About Bombay? : How the city got renamed”. Slate Magazine. Jul.2006. Web. The Slate Group. 12 Mar. 2013. < http://www.unz.org/Pub/Slate-2006jul-00110> “Chor Bazaar”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 14 Feb 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. “Crawford Market”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 Jan 2013. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Datta, Pronoti. “Novel Community: A Pair Of New Books About Parsis”. Mumbai Boss. Jan.2011. Web. Kaisar Media Private Ltd. 12 Mar. 2013. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 57 parsis/> Dehejia, Vivek H. “Bombay to Mumbai: The death pangs of a great city” The Express Tribune. Jul 2011. The Lakson Group of companies. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Guha, Ramachandra. “Layers of history in street names”. The Telegraph. Jul.2005. Oorvani Media Pvt. Ltd .12 Mar. 2013. < http://www.indiatogether.org/2005/jul/rgh-streets.htm > “Henry Kissinger”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 7 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. “Indira Gandhi”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. “Indo-Pakistan War of 1971”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 18 Nov 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. “Inglorious Basterds”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 2 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. Islam, Sirajul. Mukti Bahini. Banglapedia, National Encyclopaedia of Bangladesh. Banglapedia Trust. Jan. 2003. Asiatic Society of Bangladesh. Web. 1 Feb. 2013. “Lal Bahadur Shastri”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 6 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. Lambert, Angela. The Guardian Profile: Rohinton Mistry: Touched with fire. Guardian.co.uk. Apr.2002. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/apr/27/fiction.books> Misra, V.D. “R.S. Nagarwala vs State on 24 November, 1971”. www.indiankanoon.org. N.d. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 58 < http://www.indiankanoon.org/doc/1463941/> “1971 Bangladesh genocide”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 1 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. “1971 Nagarwala scandal”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 June 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. “Operation Chengiz Khan”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 5 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. “Parsi”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 27 Nov 2012. Web. 30 Nov. 2012. Rahmaani, Parwaaz. “Election and Corruption”. MuslimMirror. Jan 2013. Muslimmirror.com Web. 9 Feb. 2013. < http://muslimmirror.com/eng/election-and-corruption/> Raj Jai, Janak. Commissions and Omissions by Indian Prime Ministers, Volume 1 1947- 1980. New Delhi: Regency Publications, 1996. Google books. Web. 23 Feb. 2013. Rajagopal, Krishnadas. “Nagarwala Case: Mystery Returns After Three Decades” The Indian Express. Dec. 2008. Indian Express Group. 23 Feb. 2013 decades/400972/0> “Representation and Media”. California State University Website. Apache/2.2.15 (Red Hat) Server at public.csusm.edu Port 80. 01 Sep1998. Web. 4 Oct 2012. Sajith. “Sapientia Semita: The Maruti Story”. Sapienta Semita blog. Sapientiasemita.blogspot.in. 29 Oct. 2011.Web. 9 Feb. 2013. Sehziyan, Era. “An overdraft for a ‘special case’”. The Hindu. Jan.2013. The Hindu Group. Print. 8 Jan. Property2013. of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 59 “Sino-Indian War”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 4 Feb 2013. Web. 9 Feb. 2013. “Such a Long Journey (novel)”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 22 Dec 2012. Web. 16 Jan. 2013. “Such a Long Journey Setting & Symbolism”. Bookrags.com. Book Rags, Inc., n.d. Web. 22 Mar. 2013. < http://www.bookrags.com/studyguide-such-a-long-journey/objectsplaces.html> Wadia, Arzan Sam. “The fun of being a Parsee”. Parsi Khabar. Jun. 2011. Web. Parikhabar.net. 12 Mar. 2013. < http://parsikhabar.net/heritage/the-fun-of-being-a-parsee-2/3200/ > Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 60 Chapter 3 Political Representation of Mumbai in A Fine Balance Mistry creates the myth of the city of Mumbai in SLJ which was published in 1991 through the representation of the Bangladesh Liberation War of 1971, the Nagarwala scandal, the cityscapes and characters’ perspectives on the city. Having become adept as a chronicler of life in Mumbai during the 1970s after the success of SLJ, Mistry takes a leap as a fiction writer and includes more of rural and semi-urban India in A Fine Balance while still keeping the city life of Mumbai as the locus of all action. By the time A Fine Balance was published in 1995 Mistry’s representation of India and Mumbai had become more complex and the success of the novel shows that he had also acquired the requisite skills as a raconteur to represent the complexities of India well. This chapter will look at the plot of the novel, representation of the Emergency, casteism and caste violence, representation of Mumbai that is constructed through cityscapes, characters’ perspectives on the city and comparisons of the cityscape to other spaces and conclusion. A Fine Balance is the second novel and the third work of fiction published by Rohinton Mistry in 1995. It is the story of four characters, Dina, Maneck, Ishvar and Omprakash who live through the Emergency (1975-1977) and the effects that the Emergency has on their lives. The setting of the novel is the city of Mumbai referred to as 'the city by the sea' throughout the novel and the timeline of the narrative is from 1947 to 1984.Some of the other locales of the novels are the outskirts of the city, villages, a town and the hills Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 61 Dina Dalal who was born as Dina Shroff in a well-off doctor's family is one of the main characters in the novel. Shortly, after the death of her father, her mother too passes away. Dina's arch nemesis is her elder brother Nusswan who takes up the responsibility of bringing up Dina after their parents' deaths. He is very stingy, mean, makes her do all the housework and also deprives her of an education. Dina meets Rustom Dalal as an adult and chooses to marry him after getting to know him. It is a happy marriage but unfortunately her husband dies in a road accident after three years of marriage. In order to maintain her independence, Dina takes up tailoring. However, after twenty years of sewing, her eyesight deteriorates and she decides to hire two tailors to sew for her. Moreover, she also decided to take in a paying guest in order to supplement her income. Ishvar and his nephew Omprakash have migrated to the big city in order to practice their vocation of tailoring. Originally, they belonged to the Chamaar caste which was considered untouchables as they cured leather. It was Ishvar's father who took the progressive step of turning Ishvar and Omprakash's father Narayan into tailors in order to be free from the caste system. The tailoring business in the town where they used to work is in crisis because of the dominance of readymade clothes businesses. That is the reason that Ishvar and Omprakash turn towards the city of Mumbai in their search of employment. The back story of the tailors is that during election time, a powerful upper-caste village thug, Thakur Dharamsi, has his henchmen murder Narayan and his family for having the audacity to ask for a ballot. Ishvar and Omprakash survive this carnage as they were living in the town when this incident took place. On their way to Dina Dalal’s house, they meet Maneck Kohlah on the train and become good friends with him. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 62 Maneck Kohlah was brought up in a mountain town where his father ran a small store. Maneck was a happy child and enjoyed the life in the hills. However, he felt his parents betrayed him when they sent him away to boarding school. After school, his parents sent him to a college where he indifferently studied refrigeration and air- conditioning. At college he becomes good friends with Avinash who actively participates in campus politics. Avinash goes into hiding during the Emergency as many political activists were being put in jail at that time. After a particularly harrowing hostel ragging session, Maneck writes to his parents asking them to arrange alternative accommodation for him and thus he becomes a paying guest at Dina Dalal’s house. Some of the major events during the Emergency affect the four characters: The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government "beautification" program. Later Ishvar and Om are rounded up by a police beggar raid and are sold to a labour camp. Later on in the story, Ishvar and Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash, who is now eighteen. Back in town, Omprakash spits in the direction of the upper caste village thug Thakur Dharamsi and the latter decides to take revenge for this disrespect someday. While at the market, Ishvar and Omprakash are forced into a truck which takes them to the Family Planning Centre. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but the vasectomy takes place. As they lie in an outside tent recovering, Thakur Dharamsi comes by and coerces the doctor to give Om a castration. Ishvar's legs become infected due to the vasectomy and are amputated. After sometime, Ishvar and Om have nowhere to go and they are forced to leave town. Eight years pass by. An unhappy Maneck returns home from Dubai for his father's funeral. He has changed as a person and the country that he left behind has also changed for the worse and the friendships he made are also gone. He reads old newspapers and learns that Avinash's three sisters have hanged themselves, unable to Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 63 bear their parents' humiliation at not being able to provide dowries for their marriages. He visits Dina in Mumbai and learns from Dina about the tragic lives that Ishvar and Om haved lived after the forced vasectomies and castration as beggars on the streets of Mumbai. Disenchanted and feeling disturbed with life, Maneck commits suicide by stepping on the way of an approaching express train. Later on it is revealed that Om and Ishvar visit Dina often. She gives them food and money furtively and rebelliously gives them food in the very plates that her conservative family eats from. Representation of the Emergency, Casteism, Caste Violence and Mumbai in A Fine Balance Stuart Hall in the essay “The Work of Representation” explains, ‘Representation is the production of meaning of the concepts in our minds through language. It is the link between concepts and language which enables us to refer to either the ‘real’ world of objects, people or events, or indeed to imaginary worlds of fictional objects, people and events’ (Hall 2012 17). Moreover, ‘The relation between ‘things’, concepts and signs lies at the heart of the production of meaning in language. The process which links these three elements together is what we call ‘representation’’ (Hall 2012 19). He explicates different approaches to representation and says the following about the constructionist approach: ‘The third approach recognizes this public, social character of language. It acknowledges that neither things in themselves nor the individual users of language can fix meaning in language. Things don’t mean: we construct meaning, using representational systems – concepts and signs. Hence it is called the constructivist or constructionist approach to meaning in language.’ (Hall 2012 25). I have analysed AFB using the constructionist approach, especially the semiotic approach as I want to prove Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 64 that Mistry’s Mumbai is a literary construct and using this approach will throw light on what Mumbai as a sign means in the novel. My argument is that Mistry constructs a Mumbai in AFB by creating it within language that has reference to real political events of 1975-77 like the Emergency, casteism and caste violence and public artefacts like the cityscapes and social constructs in the perspectives of characters on the city as well as events. In this chapter I will look at these political events, public artefacts and social constructs and read them as signs as it is these signs which construct Mumbai in the novel. 1. The Emergency One of the ways in which Mistry represents the Emergency is through humour. He shows two minor characters to be pro-Emergency and shows that they are very peculiar and perhaps lacking common sense. One of them is Dina Dalal’s boss, at the Au Revoir Exports, Mrs. Gupta: As a businesswoman Mrs. Gupta feels happy about the fact that the Emergency is good for businesses as there will be no more strikes. She thinks nothing of the fact that the court found the then Prime Minister guilty of malpractice in the election. She also talks about the posters put up with the message “The Need of the Hour is Discipline”. Dina is worried that if the Emergency causes riots then her tailors will not come for work which will delay the consignment and consequently make a terrible impression on Mrs. Gupta of Au Revoir Exports (AFB 73-75). Later on when the tailors have not returned to the city on time, Dina tells Mrs. Gupta that her tailors have fallen ill in their village and thus seeks an extension of two weeks. Mrs. Gupta shares her opinion about the Emergency, ‘The Emergency is good medicine for the nation. It will soon cure Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 65 everyone of their bad habits.’ She also lectures Dina about the importance of discipline and the problems caused by indiscipline which makes Dina think that perhaps Mrs. Gupta writes slogans for the Emergency as a sideline or a hobby. Or perhaps she had lost her capacity for normal speech due to an overdose or government’s pamphlets and posters (AFB 352). The other peculiar character that Mistry represents as being pro-Emergency is Dina Dalal’s brother Nusswan: Nusswan believes that the Emergency is a wonderful thing. He praises the demolition of jhopadpattis and is also doesn’t disagree to forceful sterilization in order to control the Indian population. There is quite a lot of humour when Nusswan gives his unasked for pompous opinions on the Emergency to Dina and Maneck when they go to meet him at his office. He believes that there are forced sterilizations is a rumour started by the CIA and also that homeless people should be eliminated. He also doesn’t mind the censorship of the press. Dina and Maneck are highly amused by their conversation with Nusswan and they have a good laugh about it (AFB 371-375). However, towards the end of the novel when Nusswan talks about the Emergency it is no longer an interesting subject for discussion. He says, ‘Problem is, the excitement has gone out of it. The initial fear which disciplined people, made them punctual and hardworking – that fear is gone. Government should do something to give a boost to the programme.’(AFB 574) Mistry depicts the Emergency more seriously by showing that the student character Maneck’s college campus has become highly politicised during that time: On Maneck’s campus there was a new group called Students of Democracy after the declaration of the Emergency. The group also had a sister organization called Students Against Fascism which silenced anyone who Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 66 spoke against them or criticized the Emergency. Threats and assaults became very common and police was deployed to maintain the new and sinister brand of law and order (AFB 246). Maneck enquires about the goings-on of the Student Union to a fellow student and learns that they have all gone underground as it was too risky for them to stay on campus. Maneck speculates that the Emergency and goondaism can’t go on forever. And he believes that his friend Avinash will not get caught easily as he is a good strategist owing to his good chess playing skills (AFB 248). Mistry creates the Emergency atmosphere in the novel well by making use of conversations, posters, slogan-shouting, and a motto on a stamp: Dina’s tailors ask her what the Emergency is but Dina naively tells them and they agree that it is not something which will affect ordinary people like them. (AFB 73-75). When Omprakash is following Dina Dalal to find out which company they work for he comes across the statue of a leader. Below that he sees posters extolling the virtues of Democracy. There was a picture of the then Prime Minister and small print explained why fundamental rights had been temporarily suspended (AFB 191). When the tailors write to Ashraf Chacha they get a reply in an envelope bearing black cancellations across the postage stamp. It featured the date, postal district, and a slogan: AN ERA OF DISCIPLINE, followed by a menacing exclamation mark shaped like a cudgel (AFB 468). When Maneck and Omprakash go to watch a movie, at the end Shiv Sena volunteers enter the cinema and force people to stay for the national anthem. They were carrying signs that said: RESPECT THE NATIONAL ANTHEM! YOUR MOTHERLAND NEEDS YOU DURING THE EMERGENCY! PATRIOTISM IS A SACRED DUTY! At the railway station the boys use the machine which said Weight Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 67 & Fortune 25P. Maneck discovers that the weight cards look exactly like the train tickets and thinks that they could have saved the ticket fare. But Omprakash says, ‘No, it’s too risky. They have become very strict because of Emergency.’ He also narrates to Maneck the ordeal he and his uncle went through when they got trapped in a raid on ticketless travellers (AFB 281-282). Mistry also captures well the madness of Emergency well through Ibrahim’s opinion on the subject and the collapse of Dina’s business when the tailors go missing due to the ‘city beautification’ program: The rent collector Ibrahim suspects that Dina Dalal is sheltering two tailors and a paying guest in her house. Dina lets him check her apartment when the others are not around. He sees two sewing machines. Dina explains that they both belong to her and hopes that there is no law against having two sewing machines. Ibrahim says, ‘...these days with the crazy Emergency, you can never tell what law there is. The government surprises us daily.’ (AFB 354). Dina Dalal’s fear about the Emergency bothering the tailors and affecting their work comes true. Maneck goes looking for them near the chemist’s shop where they were sleeping since sometime. He comes back with the bad news that they have been mistaken for beggars and have been dragged into a police truck as a part of the city beautification plan. Dina suspects foul play on the part of the tailors and isn’t willing to believe Maneck as he has become friends with them. However, the news he conveyed was the truth and they also have an argument on this topic (AFB 334-335). Dina Dalal goes out in the search of new tailors on the streets but she realises that ‘pavement life had been sucked away by the Emergency’ (AFB 351). A total of 1,50,105 structures were demolished in Delhi during the Emergency (Sehziyan 2010 278). Prior to the census taken on 4 January1976, 4,649 residential and Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 68 484 commercial hutments were demolished in Bombay Metropolitan Region. Moreover, 3,292 hutments on Greater Bombay Municipal Corporation land and 102 hutments on the Maharashtra Housing Board lands were demolished. After the census in January 1976, 12,000 huts were demolished (Sehziyan 2010 214). A total number of 4,309 complaints regarding Indiscriminate, high-handed or unauthorised demolition were received by the Shah Commission out of which 89 complaints were from the state of Maharashtra (Sehziyan 2010 220). Mistry represents the episode of demolition and ‘city beautification’ in metropolitan cities by showing tailors’ hutment colony being demolished, the tailors struggling for a shelter, and the tailors being hauled to the outskirts of the city along with beggars and by being forced to do labour work at an irrigation project in subhuman conditions: One day after coming back from work, Ishvar and Omprakash find that their shack along with other hutments was destroyed by bulldozers as a part of the slum prevention and city beautification program. The men in charge claimed to be safety inspectors and had asked the people to come out of their huts. Once they came out, they destroyed everything with their bulldozers. The landlord of the area Thokray and his rent collector Navalkar were of no help as they themselves were in charge of the demolitions. In between the demolitions, the hutment dwellers were given thirty minutes to collect their belongings. Ishvar and Omprakash also collect some of their belongings and put them in their trunk. They try to go to their acquaintance Nawaz for shelter but find out that he is in prison because of a payment dispute with an influential man. Next, they go to the railway platform to spend the night there. Soon they find out that they have to pay the policeman there in order to sleep on the railway platform. They refuse to do so. Later, they are splashed with a bucketful of water by the Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 69 policeman as he was not paid. Moreover, wherever they go Om had to carry their heavy trunk with them. The next night after work, they searched for cheap hotels where they could spend the night. But they find nothing that suits their needs and budget. Then, they talk to the night watchman of a 24 hour chemist shop and he agrees to let them sleep near the entrance of the shop for 3 rupees each night and some free tailoring work on his clothes. The first night they sleep soundly but the next night their sleep is constantly disturbed by customers come to buy medicine as bacillary dysentery had broken out in the neighbourhood due to consumption of bad quality milk. Om’s hand starts hurting very badly due to the weight of the trunk that he frequently carried. Dina Dalal applies a balm to his hand and finally agrees to keep the tailors’ trunk inside her own flat (AFB 294-316). For a week Ishvar and Omprakash slept at the entrance of the chemist’s shop. Losing their house as a part of the city beautification program was just one mishap they had suffered. One night, all the beggars from the street being rounded up and were being taken outside the city limits as a part of the city beautification program. The people in charge had to fill the quota of ninety-six people. They had gathered ninety- four people in their truck. Two more people were required to fill the quota. It was just Ishvar and Omprakash’s luck that Sergeant Kesar picked them up at random. They and the night watchman tried to explain that they were tailors and not beggars. Regardless of their protest, Ishvar and Omprakash were hauled into the truck. They travelled throughout the night in a truck mostly full of beggars. Sometime late next day, all the people from the truck were brought to an irrigation project and let out of the truck. Most of the people were given new clothes to wear. They were told that they will work at the irrigation project from the next day and would be given food, shelter and Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 70 clothing as remuneration. Ishvar and Om were hoping to tell the authorities that they were tailors at an appropriate moment and to get out of that place. (AFB 321-332). The next morning, Ishvar was assigned the job of carrying gravel and Om joined a team of six whose task was to dig ditches. The tailors were not used to such laborious work and it wore them out. After eating some watery vegetables for lunch, both of them vomited. The foreman asked them to sleep for some time. They spent the rest of the day sleeping in their tin hut and later on ate when they got hungry. They also became friends with the limbless beggar Shankar who used to roll on castors in order to move about (AFB 344-348). One night the chappals of some workers are stolen. So Ishvar and Om have to walk barefoot. Ishvar is used to being barefoot since his childhood in the village but for Om it was much more difficult to adjust. At the start of the second week Ishvar feels increasingly dizzy and falls into a ditch along with the gravel he was lifting. He is treated by a doctor and asked to rest. His friend Shankar takes good care of him. The foreman tells the Facilitator that many of the beggars he had brought him were useless as workers. The Facilitator promises to find a solution to this problem. Later on, he invites Beggarmaster to buy the crippled workers from the foreman. Beggarmaster spots his beggar Shankar and decides to take him back. Shankar who has become good friends with Ishvar and Om decides to help them. The Beggarmaster agrees to take the tailors back to the city if they pay him fifty rupees each per week for one year. After some consideration, the tailors get into the truck along with the cripples and beggars which will take them back to the city (BAF 357-367). Ashis Nandy in his essay “City of the Mind”, gives the panoramic picture of why slum dwellers, beggars and poor people are treated the way in which Mistry represents them, ‘Everything said and done, the dark, shadowy, contraband cities of Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 71 slums and ghettos constitute, for the ‘properly’ socialized citizen, a threshold, a liminality, or a set of anti-cities that haunt the city from within... Slums and ghettos see themselves as permanent features of the urban landscape...The rest of the city sees them as temporary fixtures fit for renovation, demolition, or gentrification in an otherwise eternal city.’ The targets and achievements regarding sterilisations for the year 1975-76 were 24, 85,000 and 26, 24, 755 respectively whereas the same items increased during the year 1976-77 with 42, 55, 500 and 81, 32, 209 respectively (Sehziyan 2010 77). Maharashtra state was allotted a target of 3.183 lakh sterilisations by the Government of India for the year 1975-76. The State Government achieved 6.11 lakhs sterilisations, thus exceeding the target by nearly 100% during the year 1975-76. The target allotted to this State for the year 1976-77 by the Government of India was 5.62 lakhs. The State Government raised this target to 10 lakhs in April 1976 and to 12 lakhs in January 1977. The achievement of the State in the year 1976-77 was 8.33 lakhs sterilisations which were far in excess of the target fixed by the Central Government but fell below the revised target of 12 lakhs set before itself by the State Government (Sehziyan 2010 184). Mistry represents the episode of forced sterilisations in metropolitan cities by describing how it had been incentivised by connecting it to the promotions, the payment and non-payment of salaries of government employees. Moreover, he also depicts and the way in which sterilizations were incentivised with the offer of money and transistor radios for the public and family planning volunteers, through the use of humour, by showing corruption involved in the practice of forced sterilizations, the State using its power to sterilize people against their will, and the disastrous consequences of deficiently done sterilization operations: Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 72 When Ishvar and Omprakash went to issue ration cards for themselves, they didn’t have a proper address proof as they were living in a jhopadpatti. The rations officer didn’t consider that to be a valid address. However, he tells them that if they go for a vasectomy then he could get them ration cards. Every government officer had to fill in a certain quota of sterilizations as their promotions depended on that. The rations officer was persuasive but Ishvar was outraged at that suggestion, specially the vasectomy of young Omprakash who was yet to marry and have children. Transistor radios were one of the incentives offered to people who underwent vasectomies (AFB 176-178). Later on in the story, a mobile Family Planning Clinic was parked outside the hutment colony. Most slum dwellers ignored it. The staff were handing out free condoms, distributing leaflets on birth-control procedures, explaining incentives being offered in cash and kind. Omprakash jokes about getting the operation done just to get a Bush transistor. Ishvar reprimands him not to joke about such serious matter and tells him to work hard for Dina Dalal and then buy a transistor. Their friend Rajaram displays the condoms he has collected. They were handing out four condoms per person and he asks them if they would get their quota for him if they didn’t need them. Then, Omprakash makes another joke about the contraceptives (AFB 193). The mocking tone about the Family Planning Centre continues when the tailors on their visit to the town are told by Ashraf Chacha that except for the former there is nothing new in town; and that the Family Planning Centre is of no interest to the tailors. Because of their ordeal with the City Beautification program Ishvar says that he feels more at ease in the town (AFB 518). The tailors also learn that Thakur Dharamsi, who was responsible for the death of their family, has been put in charge of Family Planning by the district. Moreover, his powerful reach has extended to the town as well. He earns money by putting in his pocket the government money to be given to Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 73 villagers after the sterilizations. He also auctions off villagers to government officers who need to fill the quotas of sterilizations so that their salary is not held back for that month or to gain promotions (AFB 519-521). While walking past the Family Planning Centre, Om is approached by a worker but Ashraf Chacha appeases him and they continue on their way (AFB 521). Ashraf Chacha, Ishvar and Om have eaten paans. When Om spots Thakur Dharamsi he walks towards him and spits in his direction in spite of Ishvar’s attempts to restrain him. Thakur Dharamsi recognized who Om was and just drove off in his car. Ishvar reprimanded Om severely for his action (AFB 523). The next day was a Market Day where the Family Planning Centre was heavily promoting its sterilization camp and exhorting people to participate in the Nussbandhi Mela. The tailors learn that the sterilizations usually take place in tents erected outside town (AFB 524). After their market expedition and before they could reach home, the police forced the tailors into a truck and Ashraf Chacha was hit on the head and was bleeding. The tailors were taken to a sterilization camp on the outskirts of town. In spite of Ishvar’s attempted explanations and pleadings both Ishvar and Om were sterilized against their will. Ishvar despaired that his plans for his nephew’s wedding will never come true. While they were resting after their operations, Thakur Dharamsi passed by Om’s bed. He gave orders to a doctor for castrating Om which was carried out. Ishvar and Om felt devastated. They also learned that Ashraf Chacha was dead. Complain to the police and Family Planning Centre officials proved unfruitful. A week later Ishvar’s legs were swollen. The medicines that were given to him did not work. So his legs had to be amputated. Later, the tailors had to vacate Ashraf Chacha’s shop as it had been sold. They got a trolley with wheels and a rope made for Ishvar for him to commute. Almost after four months, the tailors returned to the city. (AFB 534-543). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 74 1,012 persons were detained under MISA in Delhi during the period of Emergency. This included 146 members of banned organisations, 180 persons belonging to different political parties, mainly of the non-CPI Opposition Group and 538 criminals including economic offenders. 51 Public servants were also detained under MISA during this period (Sehziyan 2010 32). Moreover, 5,473 persons were detained under MISA in the State of Maharashtra according to the information given by the State Government (Sehziyan 2010 88). Mistry represents the power of MISA by describing that two professors at Maneck’s college, who chose to denounce the campus goon squads, were taken away by plainclothesmen for anti-government activities, under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act. No one dared to help the professors as everyone knew that MISA allowed imprisonment without trail and were afraid of it (AFB 247). Mistry also represents well the arbitrary nature of arrests under MISA with two instances: After their hutment colony is demolished the tailors try to get help from their acquaintance Nawaz for shelter but find out that he is in prison because of a payment dispute with an influential man. The stall owner who informs them about Nawaz says that anything is possible under the Emergency and also shares his half baked knowledge of MISA under which anyone can be arrested without any reason (AFB 299). After Dina Dalal vacates everything from the flat, the tailors’ boxes are left behind. The goondas find them interesting and keep them. They find Rajaram’s hair collection inside. Sergeant Kesar arrests the goondas for the murder of the long-haired beggars. The goondas are wanted for other crimes but under MISA they can be arrested with any flimsy excuse and finding the hair in their possession as evidence of murder is a good enough excuse for Sergeant Kesar (AFB 558-571). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 75 One can understand the insecurity which Indian people faced during the Emergency as the modern state’s failure to provide security to its citizens. Ashis Nandy explains the phenomenon in his essay “City of the Mind”, ‘As the illusion of security that the modern nation-state promises frays at the edges, public consciousness increasingly gets used to the twentieth century’s most public secret – that the modern state has an inbuilt tendency to refuse security to its ordinary citizens when the need for that security clashes with the need to ensure the state’s own security.’ 2. Casteism and Caste Violence Mistry represents the practice of caste discrimination by showing many kinds of brutal punishments meted out by the upper castes to the lowers castes. Dukhi Mochi’s wife Roopa tries to steal some oranges from the orchard of an upper class man and there she is caught and raped by the guard there. Dukhi Mochi is made to work extremely hard in return for a glass of milk. But when the mortar breaks, Dukhi gets his leg injured. Moreover, he is blamed for breaking the mortar, is beaten and is not given any remuneration. According to the scholar Dr. Giuseppe Scuto in his study entitled Caste Violence in Contemporary India says, ‘In India every day two dalits are murdered and three dalit women are raped. Yearly, around 27,000 crimes against former untouchables are recorded and discrimination against them is still very much alive.’ This violence towards the dalits is very well represented by Misty in AFB. Mistry represents violence as intrinsic to the caste system. However, attempts to break out of the caste system and development also lead to caste violence in Misty’s novel. Dukhi’s move to make his sons tailors is not liked by the upper castes in his village. Later on, when Narayan is getting married, the upper castes don’t allow the village musicians to play at the wedding and the musicians from town have to be hired. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 76 Moreover, when Narayan insists on practicing his franchise to vote, he is tortured by the men of Thakur Dharamsi and killed. Later on, his house is set on fire and almost his entire family is killed off. This kind of caste violence is probably triggered off due to jealously resulting from the development of the Chamaar community. Mistry reveals the complexities of the caste system by showing that discrimination is not limited just to upper castes and Chamaars but there is discrimination amongst sub-castes as well. Misty represents this by showing that Roopa does not allow a Bhangi to enter the tailoring workshop of her son Narayan. She is against sewing for Bhangis. After Narayan’s arguments she finally allows him to sew for Bhangis but none of them are allowed inside; all their dealings have to take place outside Narayan’s workshop (AFB 95-148). Ishvar and Omprakash face the violence of forced sterilization due to the Emergency. However, Omprakash also has to face caste violence. Thakur Dharamsi remembers Omprakash as Narayan’s son and also as the boy who spit in front of him. So he orders a doctor to castrate Omprakash. By this act of caste violence, he gets his revenge and shatters any hope of Omprakash ever starting his own family or even living a decent life. Later, Ishvar’s legs have to be amputated as his sterilization operation was had been conducted defectively. So the tailors suffered violence both at the hands of the state and at the hands of the caste system. Eventually they become incapable of tailoring and become beggars on the streets of Mumbai (AFB 523-524, 536-537). According to Stuart Hall, ‘...we also form concepts about things we never have seen, and possibly can't or won't ever see, and about people and places we have plainly made up. We may have a clear concept of, say, angles, mermaids, God, the Devil or of Heaven and Hell, or of Middlemarch (the fictional provincial town in George Eliot's novel), or Elizabeth (the heroine of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice) (Hall 2012 17). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 77 Chamaars are tanners and leather workers. Mistry represents this profession very well and with enormous details in the rural story he narrates. By doing so he gives the readers a glimpse of ‘things we never have seen, and possibly can’t or won’t ever see’: For every generation it is a rite of passage to learn the trade of their forefathers. Dukhi Mochi was taught this profession when he was a five year old child. His son Ishvar goes to help his father to deal with a dead buffalo when he is seven years old and also gets a lifelong scar on his face in the process. When Omprakash turns five, he too learns his forefathers’ trade by dirtying his hands in the tannery. His father has become a tailor but he takes his son to the tannery as he wants him to be aware of his roots and identity. Mistry also represents an India trying to break away from the caste system through the progressive ideas of Dukhi Mochi: Dukhi Mochi had no problems with his work but the caste oppression he has to face makes his work impossible and full of obstacles. That’s why he decides to turn his sons into tailors and tells them that they should call themselves Ishvar Darji and Narayan Darji instead of Mochi. To change their profession and to move out of the village is a progressive step but development also becomes the reason for caste violence against them in the future (AFB 95-148). 3. Mumbai that is constructed through cityscapes, characters’ perspectives on the city and comparisons of the cityscape to other spaces According to the article “Representation and Media”, the cultural theorist Stuart Hall says, ‘Representation itself is a biased activity. However, it is important to study representations as they contain new knowledges, new identities and new meanings’. Stuart Hall in his essay “The Work of Representation” uses Roland Barthes’ analysis of a pasta advertisement. It is a picture of some packets of pasta, a tin, a sachet, some Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 78 tomatoes, onions, peppers, a mushroom, all emerging from a half-open string bag. Barthes suggests that we can read the pasta ad as a 'myth' by linking its completed message with the cultural theme or concept of 'Italianicity' or 'Italianness'. Then, Hall adds, at the level of the myth or meta-language, the Panzani ad becomes a message about the essential meaning of Italian-ness as a national culture. Hall also shows the picture of a Jaguar car advertisement which claims to be an image of ‘Englishness’. (Hall 2012 41) My argument is that Mistry constructs a Mumbai in the novel which can be looked at the level of myth or meta-language as Stuart Hall puts it. Then we find that the cityscapes, character perspectives and comparisons to other spaces construct the city of Mumbai. The novel begins with an overcrowded train which is symbolic of Mumbai. The Bombay Suburban Railway carries more than 7.24 million commuters daily. The Mumbai Suburban Railway suffers from some of the most severe overcrowding in the world. Over 4,500 passengers are packed into a 9-car rake during peak hours, as against the rated carrying capacity of 1,700. This has resulted in what is known as Super-Dense Crush Load of 14 to 16 standing passengers per square metre of floor space. People are struggling for space in a train compartment and that’s how Maneck gets introduced to the tailors Ishvar and Omprakash. The train is slow and finally stops as somebody has committed suicide on the tracks. (AFB 3-11). The Vishram Vegetarian Hotel is an important place in the novel. This is where Ishvar and Omprakash go for their tea breaks and sometimes for meals. This place is important as a meeting point. The outside of this restaurant is also the place where the beggar Shankar works. Maneck accompanies the tailors often for their tea breaks at the Vishram Vegetarain Hotel. They pass by the beggar on castor whom Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 79 Maneck gives some small change (AFB 275-276). Peter Morey in “Thread and circuses: performing in the spaces of city and nation” in AFB quotes Michel de Certeau who has suggested: Stories – such as those the tailors share at their favourite café, the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel – ‘traverse and organise places; they select and link them together; they make sentences and itineraries out of them. They are spatial trajectories.’ By narrativising their experiences in the spaces of the text – village, town, city, slum, shop doorway, Dina’s flat – they not only contribute patches to the symbolic quilt, they also show how narrative structures ‘regulate changes in space (or moves from one place to another) made by stories in the form of places put in linear or interlaced series,’ thereby also offering an object lesson in how narrative stitches together different locales to create an image of the nation at this crucial time in its history. After returning to the city from the irrigation project, the tailors spend time at the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel when Dina and Maneck are out. They tell the waiters about their misfortune and the waiters are amazed by the stories they tell them. Om replies: ‘It’s not us, it’s this city. A story factory, that’s what it is, a spinning mill.’ They also meet Shankar, the beggar whom they befriended at the irrigation project and whose new beat was outside the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel (AFB 379-393) The tailors meet their friend Rajaram too at the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel and he tells them his tale of misfortunes working as a Family Planning volunteer. He is considering going back to hair-collecting and barbering and asks the tailors for a loan of eighty-five rupees. Rajaram also requests the tailors to keep some locks of hair for him from time to time and they make arrangements with the beggar Shankar for the same (AFB 379-393). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 80 After many years Maneck goes back to the Vishram Vegetarain Hotel with the chess set which Dina gave him. He has coffee there and finds that the restaurant and its clientele have changed completely and there is very little of the old Vishram left in it (AFB 608-611). Mistry provides an interesting representation of the crowded, noisy and chaotic Indian courthouse which Dina visits in order to hire a lawyer. She is swarmed by lawyers looking for a client and they take advantage of the crowd and also misbehave with her. She finds one eccentric lawyer Vasant Rao Valmik who is sitting on a broken bench. Instead of helping her straightaway, he tells her about his life story, the state of law in India, the Prime Minister’s electoral malpractice and then listens to her case. He asks her to meet him again. But before her lawyer could do anything, she is made to vacate her house (AFB 558-571). Real estate has always been valuable in the island-city of Mumbai whose population is approximately 18 million now. A substantial part of the narrative takes place inside Dina Dalal’s flat which is protected by the Bombay Rent Act, 1947. Dina becomes the tenant of the flat after her husband passes away and pays a paltry sum as rent as she is protected by the Rent Act. Dina Dalal also conducts sewing business and has sublet a room to a paying guest which are illegal activities. This also gives the landlord excuses to throw her out of the apartment in which he succeeds towards the end of the novel. Shirish B Patel in an article called Life between Buildings: “The use and abuse of FSI” in the Economic and Political Weekly explains the detrimental effects of The Rent Act to the city: The main culprit for proliferation of slums is the Rent Control Act in Mumbai which allows nearly two million people to stay in homes almost free of rent. They pay monthlyProperty rents asof low Christ as Rs University. 100-500, while the market rates are 1000 Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 81 times higher. The Act not only had a negative effect on investment in housing for rental purpose but also withdrew existing housing stock from the rental market. The Rent Control Act completely protected the already housed people in Mumbai and also denied access to rental housing to the migrants. What migrants paid to get a room in slums was many times greater than the old rental house in chawls and even greater than houses in many middle and upper class localities. Mistry represents inter-dining and co-habitation in the flat as a levelling factor in the class and caste distinctions between the tailors vis-à-vis Dina and Maneck and also shows egalitarianism as something joyful. This modern family unit of four cooks, eats, works, sews, lives and travels together in the city. They also take interest in the quilt that Dina Dalal sews from leftover cloth material as it marks the time they started working and living together. Dina even gives the tailors the permission for Om’s future wife too to sleep on the verandah of her flat. In the article “Casteless society and India of our dreams”, Swami Agnivesh and Rev.Valson Thampu talk about the positive effects of inter-dining on society: How powerful a social reality this is, can be measured by the immense gratitude and encouragement that the Dalits even today experience when someone from the upper caste background eats with them. It is felt as socially liberating and affirmative, even when it is done as a private act with no social reverberations. Inter-dining is, thus, a measure of potent psychological significance. It is a concrete metaphor of mutual acceptance and a levelling instrument, socially and psychologically. According to Hall, ‘The meaning is not in the object or person or thing, nor is it in the word. It is we, whoProperty fix the meaning of Christ so firmlyUniversity. that, after a while, it comes to seem Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 82 natural and inevitable. The meaning is constructed by the system of representation. It is constructed and fixed by the code, which sets up the correlation between our conceptual system and our language system in such a way that, every time we think of a tree, the code tells us to use the English word TREE, or the French word ARBRE.’(Hall 2012 21). Similarly, Mistry encodes Mumbai in the novel from different characters’ perspectives. After the reader is into the story, this Mumbai will seem ‘natural and inevitable’ to him/her. However, this is a Mumbai that Mistry has carefully constructed and encoded keeping mind characters’ various aspects like class, gender and race. Dina Dalal in her youth used to save money from buying provisions. With that money she would travel in buses, go to parks, museums, markets, look at posters outside cinemas, and public libraries. She found the libraries to be quiet and comforting places where she could spend hours. Some modern libraries also contained music rooms. There she would spend time looking for and listening to familiar music and was mesmerised by it. She also used to visit free concerts organised in the city which is where she also meets her future husband Rustom (AFB 29-30). After a family dinner at his flat, Rustom goes out to buy strawberry ice cream for his guests on his bicycle. He becomes the victim of a hit-and-run case and loses his life due to that. Dina starts living with her brother Nusswan. However, after some time she gets a notice to vacate the flat. Her brother advises her to keep the flat because finding accommodation in the city has become increasingly difficult and he adds that in the future, ‘an old flat like yours will be a goldmine (AFB 45-49).’ While describing the noise and sounds from the neighbouring flats in Dina Dalal’s apartments Mistry describes, ‘There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience (AFB 56)’. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 83 Dina sees the reality of Mumbai when she goes searching for two tailors. Mistry describes that she was, ‘...scouring the warren of laneways in the sordid belly of the city. Day after day, she entered dilapidated buildings and shops, each one standing precariously like a house of battered cards.’ She also witnesses Emergency related events in her search, ‘Sometimes, from the upper deck of the bus, she had a good view of the tumultuous crowds. The banners and slogans accused the Prime Minister of misrule and corruption, calling her to resign in keeping with the court judgement finding her guilty of election malpractice.’ She also witness men working at a sewer; a boy who went inside the sewer emerges completely black due to the sewer sludge. She finds these squalid sights depressing but continues her search for two tailors. Once she also loses her shoe in a rotten spot but the children playing the area wade in the dark surface and retrieved it for her. The boy who got her dripping shoes back was rewarded with a twenty-five paisa coin. When she reaches home she cleans her feet and her shoes and thinks about the dirty lane where the children played and finds it sickening (AFB 66-69). According to Stuart Hall, ‘...we also form concepts about things we never have seen, and possibly can't or won't ever see, and about people and places we have plainly made up.’ (Hall 2012 17). The readers get a glimpse of the Mumbai they have ‘never seen and possibly can’t see’ through the eyes of Zenobia and Dina Dalal; a Mumbai encapsulated in nostalgia: When Zenobia tells Dina Dalal about the paying guest being the son of their school friend Aban Sodawallah, Dina is not able to recall who she was. Dina did not possess any class photographs as her bother Nusswan did not allow her to buy any. That evening Zenobia and Dina Dalal reminisced about their schooldays, the principal Miss Lamb who was called Lambretta for scooting up and down the halls Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 84 and their terrifying French teacher who taught them thrice a week and whom they used to call Mademoiselle Bouledogue. The next evening Zenobia stopped by at Dina’s house and shared a class photograph with her. With the help of the photograph Dina recollects Aban Sodawallah as the girl with a beauty spot for which the girls used to tease her and later tried to imitate the beauty spot. Zenobia and Dina again get nostalgic about their school days. However, most girls lost touch after school and went their own ways in life. Some went to college, some joined work and some were not allowed to go to college as it was seen as a bad influence for soon-to-be wives and mothers. Then Zenobia narrates to Dina Aban’s love story and marriage and how she left Mumbai and went to live in a hill town (AFB 202-204). According to the blogger TJS George in “Nostalgia over the glory days of Bombay”, ‘No city arouses nostalgic sadness as much as Mumbai does. Other cities might have changed names, like Kolkata, or grown beyond recognition, like Bangalore, to the chagrin of old timers. Bombay not only changed its name; it lost its character, its élan, the creativity and cosmopolitanism that made it the urbs prima in Indies in the first two decades of Independence. Mumbai was built over the dead soul of Bombay.’ Dina again reminisces about her youth in this lost city to Maneck and the tailors. She tells them about: ...those enchanted evenings of musical recitals, and emerging with Rustom from the concert hall into the fragrant night when the streets were quiet – yes, she said, in those days the city was still beautiful, the footpaths were clean, not yet taken over by pavement-dwellers, and yes, the stars were visible in the sky in those days, when Rustom and she walked along the sea, listening to the endless exchange of the waves, or in the Hanging Gardens, among the whispering trees, planning their Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 85 wedding and their lives, planning and plotting in full ignorance of destiny’s plan for them (AFB 336). Peter Morey in “Thread and circuses: performing in the spaces of city and nation in A Fine Balance” says, ‘The city is initially depicted as corrupt and corrupting in the eyes of the newcomers. It contains the same ‘thieving-shops, the stews and the rookeries, the fetid cellars and the dangerous tenements’, which Raymond Williams finds in eighteenth-century literary evocations of London.’ When Ishvar and Omprakash first reach Mumbai they are greeted by and get confused by the sea of humanity at the railway station. While traversing the city, they witness the squalor in the streets of Mumbai. They sleep for six months in the awning behind the kitchen of their miserly host Nawaz’s house. They are not even offered a cup of tea by their host in the morning. The tailors try very hard but they are able to find only odd jobs here and there. Then Nawaz tells them about Dina Dalal’s job offer and makes sure that they take it. That same day Nawaz takes them to a slum where he makes sure they rent a room and thus gets rid of them from his own house (AFB 153-163). Over 9 million people, over 60% of the population of Mumbai, live in informal housing or slums, yet they cover only 6–8% of the city's land area. Slum growth rate in Mumbai is greater than the general urban growth rate. Like scores of other people in the city, Ishvar and Omprakash start getting used to the life in the slums. They find out that tap water is available only early in the morning. Their neighbour Rajaram shows them their way around. They also learn to defecate in the open near the railway tracks (AFB 167-170). According to a study done by Princeton University, during the first few decades of twentieth century, due to distressed situations and natural calamities many migrated to the city from far off states. Economic diversification and development of city Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 86 resulted into steady growth of employment opportunities in the city which in turn have attracted heavy influx of migrants and consequently a very rapid population growth in the city and nearby urban areas. The opening of oil mills and start of machine building and engineering units further opened up job opportunities for natives of less developed states and increased the volume of migration to the city. Mistry represents the migration phenomenon in Mumbai through Rajaram when he says: ‘Yes, thousands and thousands are coming to the city because of bad times in their native place. I came for the same reason’. When tailors say that they don’t plan to stay in the city for too long, he replies: ‘Nobody does. Who wants to live like this?’ and continues, ‘But sometimes people have no choice. Sometimes the city grabs you, sinks its claws into you, and refuses to let go’ (AFB 171-172). Ashis Nandy in his essay “The City of the Mind” gives us a larger picture on migration and slum life when he says, ‘The oppressive village that people have escaped to embrace the contractual, individualistic anonymity of the city does not stop the slum dweller from trying to recapture the village in the slum.’ Moreover, he adds, ‘One strand in contemporary awareness seems to read such slums as shadows of the city. But it is possible to read many cities – Calcutta, Bombay, Mexico City, Rio de Janeiro – as shadows of their own slums and ghettos. Their slums define them, while everyone believes that these cities define their slums.’ Nandy in his book An Ambiguous Journey to the City has argued that ‘...the village represents the retrogressive past and the oppressively collective;’ while ‘the city represents the present that contains the seeds of the unencumbered future – the rational, the progressive, and the individualistic’. Rajaram gives the tailors a tour of the neighbourhood. He shows them a shortcut to the train station, warns them about the dangerous lanes of the nearby slum where Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 87 robberies and murders are possible and also introduces them to a tea stall owner where they could have tea and snacks on credit and pay at the end of the month (AFB 175). While talking about the famous traffic light example Hall says, ‘It is the code that fixes the meaning, not the colour itself. This also has wider implications for the theory of representation and meaning in language. It means that signs themselves cannot fix meaning. Instead, meaning depends on the relation between a sign and a concept which is fixed by a code. Meaning, the constructionists would say, is ‘relational’’ (Hall 2012 27). The struggle of the tailors in the city can be seen as a sign for the larger concept of the struggle of the immigrant from the hinterlands of India in Mumbai: Once while trying to take the shortcut from the railway station to the hutment colony, the tailors are mistaken for ticketless travellers and are hauled inside a police truck. They are taken to some distance, made to do sit-ups and then released. The tailors and Rajaram discuss that the police has become strict due to the Emergency and they released them as probably there was no more space in the jails filled with people arrested under the Emergency. Fifty more ramshackle rooms are built near where the tailors live. There is a leak on the roof of the tailors’ house which Rajaram covers the next day (AFB 179-183). Maneck goes with his mother to Mumbai as a child in order to visit her family. He is thrilled by the city but after a few days he misses his father. When he comes back he tells his father, ‘I am never going to leave the mountains again (AFB 220).’ After he has finished school, Maneck’s parents choose refrigeration and air- conditioning as his major and believe that the best college granting diplomas for that field was the city of Mumbai which Mrs Kohlah had left to settle in the mountains. They persuade him that ‘At your age we would have been thrilled to spend a year in the Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 88 most modern, most cosmopolitan city in the whole country’ (AFB 221-222). Mrs Kohlah thinks that distance changes people. She could never go back to live with her family in the city. She wonders what things would the city do to her son? Was she losing him now forever? (AFB 223). When Maneck arrives in the city he takes a taxi to the hostel and on the way sees an accident, dogs copulating and a policeman arresting a man for throwing acid on the face of his wife. He finds his hostel to be infested with cockroaches. His next door neighbour Avinash helps him by fumigating the room (AFB 234-236). Avinash while playing draughts tells Maneck that his father works for a mill and that his parents, three sisters and he live in a one-room and kitchen rented to them by the mill. His father suffers from tuberculosis but continues to work in order to support the family. He also tells him about the bad food and living conditions of the hostel. He also tells him that he is the President of the Student Union and Chairman of the Hostel Committee. Maneck later himself discovers that the toilets are dirty and the toilet flush tank doesn’t function. Avinash also warns Maneck about ragging. In his letter back home Maneck tries not to complain about the hostel (AFB 238-240). There is uproar in the hostel mess when a vegetarian student finds a sliver of meat in a vegetarian gravy of lentils. Avinash successfully deals with this situation. Many committees and subcommittees were formed after this incident and the canteen food improved. Maneck was not interested in politics and the talk of many types of isms and the Emergency annoyed him. Avinash explains to Maneck what Emergency is all about but Maneck is only interested in playing chess with his friend. Maneck would imagine his hometown in the hills after waking up in order to deal with the foulness of the hostel and increasingly politicised campus in the wake of the Emergency (AFB 241-246). After a harrowing ragging session Maneck writes to his parents asking them to arrange alternative accommodation Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 89 for him. His mother thinks that finding accommodation is almost impossible and secretly hopes that his son will come back home (AFB 252). On reaching Dina Dalal’s house Maneck realises that the flat is in a very bad shape and feels that the furnishings are very shabby and the walls need to be painted (AFB 3-11). Later on in the novel, Maneck visits his old hostel and find Avinash’s parents in his room. They tell him that Avinash was cremated that day. He learns that Avinash’s body was found on the railway tracks many months ago and was put in a morgue. When his parents identified him, they found that nails from his fingers were missing. They registered a complaint about this with the police. Maneck helps Avinash’s parents out of the hostel. He wants to return Avinash’s chess set to his parents but by the time he thinks about it, the parents are gone and decides to keep it as a gift from Avinash (AFB 499-508). Many years later when Maneck visits Mumbai again he finds Dina Dalal living in her brother’s house and that she has become very thin and old. She tells him about the traumatic condition of the tailors who are beggars now and how it all call came to pass. Maneck is shattered to hear this tale as he expected Om to be married with children now. He does not stay back to meet his friends who are beggars now. He passes them by on the street but pretends not to recognize them as he is too shocked to say anything to them. He goes to the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel with the chess set which Dina gave him. He has coffee there and finds that the restaurant and its clientele have changed completely and there is very little of the old Vishram left in it. He goes to the train station and commits suicide by leaping on the railway track when a fast track train is approaching while still clutching Avinash’s chess set (AFB 600-614). Sharell Cook in the article “India Beggars and Begging Scams” says, ‘Despite India's rapid economic growth in recent years, poverty and begging in India are still big Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 90 problems... Sadly, in relation to begging in India, there is often more than meets the eye. While the poverty is real, begging is quite often carried out in organized gangs. For the privilege of begging in a certain territory, each beggar must hand over their takings to the gang's ring leader, who keeps a significant share of it... The most common problem is that beggars are so used to begging that they actually prefer not to work. Many of them also make more money from begging that what they would if they did work... Begging is most prevalent anywhere that there are tourists. This includes important monuments, railway stations, religious and spiritual sites, and shopping districts. In big cities, beggars will often be found at major traffic intersections as well, where they approach vehicles while the lights are red.’ The character of Beggarmaster in the novel represents the commercialisation of begging. Many beggars work for him and he makes sketches and strategizes how and where to place the beggars in order to make maximum profits. According to the columnist Ninad Siddhaye in the article “Beggars with creative minds roam city streets” says, ‘Mumbai is a city where one can find all kinds of characters, and when it comes to beggars, the city could get the distinction of having some of the most creative brains on the street. Any Mumbaikar, who claims that he can never be fooled by a beggar, is living in a state of oblivion.’ Mistry shows many of these creative beggar characters in his novel and makes a sordid thing like begging tolerable for the reader by adding humour and by making use of grotesque images. Mistry humanizes the Beggarmaster by telling his story. Beggarmaster tells Dina and Maneck that Shankar is his half-brother. He finds out about this from his step- mother Nosey who was also a beggar and was dying. She tells him the story of how his father loved her and slept with her several times which is why she gave birth to Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 91 Shankar. The Beggarmaster is confused whether to tell the truth to Shankar or not but he makes sure to take good care of him (AFB 455-462). However, before Beggarmaster can tell the truth to Shankar, his life gets entangled with that of the hair-collector Rajaram and Shankar ends up losing his life: Rajaram tells Ishvar and Omprakash how he had started cutting off women’s and hippies’ hair without permission in public places in order to increase his hair collection. During that time he saw a sleeping beggar couple who had wonderful hair. Rajaram cut the woman’s hair and when he was cutting the man’s hair, the woman woke up and started screaming. The couple’s screaming scared Rajaram badly and he ended up stabbing them with his sharp scissors several times. He was afraid that the police and the CBI were looking for him. Rajaram had decided to renounce the world and go to the Himalayas. So he borrows the ticket-fare from the tailors (AFB 477-486). Shankar is excited about Beggarmaster’s personal barber coming to groom him. However, his personal barber refuses as he does not do street work and sends Rajaram instead who needs money for buying a sanyasi’s robe, beads and bhiksha bowl before going to the Himalayas. Rajaram shaves Shankar and gives him a face massage. However, Shankar does not want a haircut and instead makes the bizarre request of joining the long tresses that he has in a package. Rajaram tells him that he can’t do it and Shankar starts screaming. This draws people’s attention to what’s happening and looking at the long hair in Shankar’s possession people suspect him to have murdered the beggars with long hair. Police also comes to check what the commotion is all about. In this melee Shankar tries to escape, loses control of his platform on castors and is run over by a truck (AFB 493-497). The Maharashtra government told the state legislative council that beggars in the city earn a whoppingProperty Rs 180 ofcrore Christ a year University. and that the number of mendicants had Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 92 risen from 20,000 in 1963 to three lakhs in 2006. According to Hall, ‘Representation is a practice, a kind of ‘work’, which uses material objects and effects. But the meaning depends, not on the material quality of the sign, but on its symbolic function. It is because a particular sound or words stands for, symbolizes or represents a concept that it can function, in language as a sign and convey meaning-or, as the constructionists say, signify (sign-i-fy).’ (Hall 2012 25-26) Mistry representation of the beggars and the commercialization of begging ‘stands for, symbolizes’ and ‘signifies’ this reality in Mumbai. Rohinton Mistry being a Mumbaikar during his youth would be very well aware of this overwhelming and commercialized presence of beggars in the city. He ends this sub-plot of the story with a dramatic scene where to he adds a touch of the grotesque. It is Mistry’s use of the grotesque in his novel which has made critics debate about how faithful he is to realism as a literary technique: Maneck and Dina decide to go to Shankar’s funeral. The funeral is a grotesque affair. Beggarmaster gets all the beggars in the city to attend the cremation ceremony. He has hired four porters from the railway station to carry the bier. The procession of beggars moves slowly, the railway porters run fast with bier due to habit and then halt to let the others catch up. Riot police interrupts the procession thinking that it is protest rally against the Emergency with activists in fancy dress. But when they talk to Beggarmaster their suspicions are put to rest and they instead provide entourage the rest of the way. Dina’s brother Nusswan passes by in his car and is full of disbelief when he learns that it is actually a funeral procession for a beggar and not some big personality. This cremation ceremony reminds Maneck of Avinash’s cremation where he should have been (AFB 499-508). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 93 Mistry also represents the dark side of the begging business: The Beggarmaster has gouged out the eyes of two children and turned them into beggars. Their uncle Monkey-man is distraught about that fact and as a result murders Beggarmaster as revenge. RTI activist Anil Galgali, who runs an NGO, Athak Seva Sangh, in an article “More you cry, more you earn” said: "I have noticed an increase in the number of children begging in and around Mumbai. These kids are governed by a senior handler, who collects all the cash they make by begging. It is a thriving racket at the expense of children." Galgali has also lodged a complaint with the railway police, highlighting the plight of handicapped beggar kids. "Those beggars with an eye gouged out or limbs amputated are victims of a more sinister, cruel mafia. They will do anything to force the public to pity the children and give money," said Galgali. Hall explains Roland Barthes’ semiotic approach to representation thus: When in his collection of essays, Mythologies (1972), the French critic, Roland Barthes, studied ‘The world of wrestling’, ‘Soap powders and detergents’, ‘The face of Greta Garbo’ or ‘The Blue Guides to Europe’, he brought a semiotic approach to bear on ‘reading’ popular culture, treating these activities and objects as signs, as a language through which meaning is communicated (Hall 2012 36). Hall explains that for Barthes, ‘Clothes are also signs.’, ‘The clothes themselves are signifiers’ and ‘concepts like ‘elegance’, ‘formality’, ‘casual-ness’, ‘romance’ are the signifieds.’, ‘Barthes called the first descriptive level, the level of denotation; the second level, that of connotation. Both, of course, require the use of codes.’ (Hall 2012 37-38) By making the choice of describing various aspects of the country like the village, the town, the hill-town, the outskirts of the city and the town and the city of Dubai, one can read many positive and negative connotations of Mumbai by comparing its cityscape to other spaces.Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 94 Peter Morey quotes Rohinton Mistry in “Thread and circuses: performing in the spaces of city and nation in A Fine Balance” about his decision of writing about more than the Parsi community and writing about the Indian village: ‘I made a conscious decision in this book to include more than this, mainly because in India seventy five per cent of Indians live in villages and I wanted to embrace more of the social reality of India.’ Mistry represents the Chamaars’ village to be beautiful, warm and community oriented but rampant with casteism, caste violence and where migration to the city is the only way to progress: Ishvar was afraid that if his nephew doesn’t eat well in the city the people in the village will accuse him of eating all the food and of starving his nephew. When the train stops Omprakash goads it to move by slapping the seat between his thighs. Ishvar makes a joke about the train not being as obedient as the bullocks in their village. Omprakash jokes back, ‘Give the train a dose of opium and it will run like the bullocks (AFB 4).’ Maneck and the tailors find the city and its streets confusing and they all have plans to return to their native places once they have achieved their goals in the city: Ishvar says, ‘We have also come for a short time only. To earn some money, then go back to our village. What is the use of such a big city? Noise and crowds, no place to live, water scarce, garbage everywhere. Terrible.’ Moreover, Ishvar says, ‘Nothing is as fine as one’s native place...A river runs near our village. You can see it shining and hear it sing. It’s a beautiful place (AFB 7).’ According to Peter Morey, ‘the tailors’ village is a site where a feudal economy of power remains in place. It is a space of continuity and community in adversity, at least among the lower castes. But it is certainly not an idealised locale: Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 95 superstition and violence are rampant, and gender inequalities are shown in the fact that sweetmeats are circulated when a male child is born, but no such celebration attends the birth of a girl. Moreover, it is also a site of the repetitions of caste-based brutality. The lower castes are beaten, tortured and killed for a number of trivial offences. The proximity of a summary ‘justice’ and barbarity feeds into Mistry’s exploration of the ambiguous coordinates of order and chaos. Most outrageous of all in this rigidly hierarchical society is the transgression signified by Dukhi’s decision to better his family’s prospects by turning from tanning to tailoring’. Peter Morey quotes Partha Chatterjee’s comments on caste to suggest what is at stake in Dukhi’s refusal to endure hereditary and perpetual servitude: ‘The essence of caste, we may say, requires that the labouring bodies of the impure castes be reproduced in order that they can be subordinated to the need to maintain the bodies of the pure castes in their state of purity. All injunctions of dharma must work to this end.’ The tailors originally belonged to the Chamaar caste of tanners and leather- workers. However, Dukhi sent his two sons to be apprenticed as tailors at the nearby town and thus rebelled against the caste system. According to the space division in many Indian villages, the Chamaars lived downstream from the Brahmins and landowners. Dukhi like every Chamaar child learned the full catalogue about the crimes a lower-caste person could commit and its corresponding punishments so that he could survive well in the village (AFB 95-97). Dukhi is fed up of the discrimination in his village, turns his back on it and starts cobbling in the town. With the help of his friend Ashraf, later he works as a labourer at a lumberyard and prefers that to cobbling. However, during the harvest season Dukhi discontinues going to the lumberyard as conveyance to and from town was difficult to manage. When he returns to the village Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 96 the news he hears is the same as before; about lower castes being punished unfairly for minor errors at the whims of the upper castes (AFB 105-109). When Narayan comes back to the village to practice tailoring, the Chamaar community is quietly proud of him. Word also spreads in neighbouring village about Narayan who had done the unthinkable; abandoned leather for cloth. Roopa doesn’t allow a Bhangi to get clothes stitched from Narayan. They have an argument about this and Roopa allows transactions with castes lower than Chamaars to carry out transactions outside Narayan’s hut. So there is a hierarchy amongst lower-castes as well and Mistry represents that through this incident (AFB 132-139). When Omprakash is eight, he is sent to town to learn tailoring at Muzaffar Tailoring Company. The school in town didn’t discriminate amongst high and low caste and accepted everyone unlike the village school which remained restricted. Narayan feels very restricted by the village rules, he complains to this father Dukhi, ‘I want to be able to drink from the village well, worship in the temple, walk where I like.’ Narayan wants to exercise his right to vote without Thakur Dharamsi manipulating the entire election. When Narayan asserts his right to vote, he is badly beaten up, tortured and killed. And his entire family in the village is burned alive in their home. Ishvar and Omprakash hear the devastating news and try to register a police complain but the police are on the side of Thakur Dharamsi. Muzaffar Tailoring Company is kept shut for two days and on the third day they start sewing again (AFB 141-148). Ishvar gets a letter from Ashraf Chacha saying that four Chamaar families are interested in meeting Om regarding his wedding. Ishvar suggests that Om’s wife-to-be and he can live on the verendah of her flat. However, Dina is against the idea initially but agrees to it later. There is a lot of happiness and excitement surrounding Om’s imminent marriage and their visit to the village to select the bride (AFB 468-476). Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 97 Mistry represents the town as liberating, urbane, cosmopolitan, full of camaraderie, and a gentler place than the city but which is unable to compete with the city. The town is first introduced to Dukhi’s sons when they go to apprentice at Muzaffar Tailoring Compnay. Mistry describes Ashraf’s shop in town thus: ‘Muzaffar Tailoring Company was located on a street of small family businesses. There was a hardware store, coal-merchant, banya, and miller, all in a row, the shops identical in shape and size, distinguished solely by the interior noises and smells. Muzaffar Tailoring Company was the only one that displayed a signboard. Ashraf’s shop was cramped, as were the living quarters over it: one room and kitchen. He had married last year, and had a month-old daughter. His wife, Mumtaz was less pleased than he to have two more mouths staying with them. It was decided that the apprentices would sleep in the shop (AFB 116). Ashish Nandy in his essay “The City of the Mind” says: ‘For the surrounding villages, the small town was not merely an outpost of the state, it was a relatively friendly neighbourhood town in touch with the village.’ Moreover, Nandy adds: ‘The small town was different from the metropolis by virtue of the fact that it had to define itself with the help of the village but never entirely in opposition to the village. The tradition survives, even if in an attenuated form.’ Ishvar and Narayan after living in the town get influenced by it. Mistry represents this when Ishvar and Narayan had sewn clothes for their parents; they plan to fool their parents by pretending that ‘they had gone shopping for the gifts in a big store in town, just like rich townspeople’. However they forget this little joke they had planned in the excitement of explaining how they sewed the clothes for their parents (AFB 120). The cosmopolitanism and the solidarity of the townsfolk are revealed when riots break out Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 98 due to the Partition of India. The town wears a desolate look due to the killings and destruction that took place. Basic necessities like milk and vegetables too were unavailable due to the riots. Ashraf being the only Muslim in his locality fears for his life and that of his family. However, his neighbours stand by him and give him the courage to stay on in the town. Ishvar and Narayan save the lives of Ashraf Chacha and his family by pretending that the shop is owned by Hindus when a mob on a rampage comes to the tailoring shop (AFB 122-131). Ashraf’s tailoring business takes a beating when a big ready-made clothes shop opens up in town. Ashraf knows that their prices are lower as the shirts they sell are made by the hundred in factories in the city. There was no way he could compete with that sort of mass production. Ishvar and Omprakash fantasise about the city by the sea when they make plans to work in Mumbai. Ashraf Chacha gifts Ishvar and Omprakash his treasured pair of dressmaking and pinking shears before they leave for the city. Ashraf and Mumtaz bid an emotional farewell to Ishvar and Omprakash who too are overwhelmed by their kindness (AFB 150-152). Mistry represents the hill town as a beautiful, dreamy, warm, friendly, relaxed and less commercial than the city but which takes to commercialization due to the corrupting influence of the city: Maneck explains the tailors on their first meeting that he hates it in the city, finds it confusing and plans to return to his home town in the mountains after the college was over. He elaborates, ‘My home is in the north. Takes a day and night, plus another day, to get there. From the window of our house you can see snow-covered mountain peaks (AFB 7).’ Maneck often dreamt of the beauty of the mountains where he lived, the dogs in his neighbourhood to whom his father was very kind, and the morning breakfast rituals with his parents (AFB 201). The back story of Maneck’s mother Aban Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 99 Kohlah is revealed when Dina and her friend Zenobia are reminiscing about their school days. Farokh Kohlah who had a business in a hill-station was introduced to the Sodawallahs by family friends. The family was impressed with him. The Sodawallahs took a vacation at the hill-station the following year. Aban fell in love with Farokh Kohlah and the natural beauty of the place. She married and settled there (AFB 204). Farokh Kohlah’s family was very rich but all the wealth was lost due to the Partition as most of their property was on the other side of the border. The only business left was the shop in the hill town. Farokh is afraid that after the novelty of the exotic locale had worn off his wife will miss the city but his wife loved the hill town and even helped him with running the shop. When Maneck is born he too loves the hill town and helps with his father’s shop. The shop had a casual approach to commerce and the customers were very friendly. Apart from the small products, Kohlah’s Cola or Kaycee was a drink which made the business flourish. The soft drink was made with a secret formula passed down since last four generations. Farokh Kohlah loses one of his eyes when one of the bottles explodes while he is making the soft drink in the basement. Friends advise Farokh to modernise and commercialise his soft drink but he is not interested in such prospects as he is an old-fashioned man. Maneck loved his life in the hill-town and helping his father with the shop. His father decides to send him to a boarding school. This makes him feel sad and betrayed by his family. Maneck does not like his boarding school. However, his father promises to let him run the shop after his schooling is complete and that prospect makes completing school easier for him (AFB 205-213). Maneck goes along with his mother to Mumbai as a child in order to visit her family. He is thrilled by the city but after a few days he misses his father. When he comes back he tells his father, ‘I am never going to leave the mountains again.’ The life in the hill town changes a lot due to Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 100 commercialization and due to money minded politicians. Farokh Kohlah grows irritable due to the sudden changes in the hill town and his business too declined. Maneck’s closeness with his parents too declined with the passage of time. Farokh Kohlah doesn’t keep up with the changes taking place around him and mourns the destruction of nature that commercialisation has caused (AFB 215-218). Maneck too urges his father to modernise his business but he declines saying, ‘Hard sell. What kind of language is that? Sounds absolutely undignified. Like begging. These big companies from the city can behave like barbarians if they want to. Here we are civilized people (AFB 220).’ When Maneck is leaving for college in Mumbai his parents ask him to be careful with his money and warn him that people are very different in the city from their hill town. Their advice to him implies that city people are very discriminating about the way they treat people from different religion, class and caste and not as friendly as people from the mountains (AFB 224). At the hostel, Maneck tells Avinash about their house in the hill built by his great-grandfather and reveals that because of the steep slope they have steel cables to keep it tied in place. Avinash is not willing to believe this but Maneck explains that there was an earthquake and the foundations shifted downhill. That was the reason for connecting cables. On hearing this account, Avinash is amused and says, ‘Sounds like a house with suicidal tendencies.’ They also joke about his father’s business going downhill and then Avinash tells Maneck about his own family (AFB 237). Maneck was nostalgic about his childhood in the hills when he returns from Dubai for his father’s funeral. After cremation Maneck and his mother set off to spread his ashes in his beloved mountains. His mother slips on a slope, injures her leg and has to be carried back home in a palkhi. He stays back and completes spreading the ashes Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 101 and wishes that he had gotten a chance to be close to his father. When Maneck is probed by his mother about his sadness he reveals, ‘You sent me away, you and Daddy. And then I couldn’t come back. You lost me, and I lost – everything.’ He finds old newspapers in his father’s basement. He reads about the Emergency days, sports events and then he reads about three girls that hanged themselves. He is devastated to learn that those girls were Avinash’s sisters. Rain pours and he contemplates all his losses and his life and weeps (AFB 587-596). Majdanek was a German Nazi concentration camp on the outskirts of Lublin, Poland, established during the German Nazi occupation of Poland. Although initially established for forced labor and not for extermination, the camp was used to kill people on an industrial scale during Operation Reinhard: the German Nazi plan to murder all Jews within the General Government in Poland. More than 79,000 people were killed at Majdanek (59,000 of them Polish Jews) during the 34 months of its operation. Unlike other similar camps in Poland, Majdanek was not located in a remote rural location away from population centres, but next to a major city. Moreover, there was also Sachsenhausen concentration camp which was established on the outskirts of Berlin where during the years 1936-1945 more than 200,000 people were imprisoned and more than 60,000 people were murdered. When Mistry describes the scene where twenty-five thousand people were forcefully taken for a political rally, he uses humour to describe the ennui of the audience and ridicules the antics of the Indian government. However, masses of people being taken to the outskirts of the city against their will are reminiscent of Nazi Germany: Buses arrive at the hutment where the tailors lived in order to capture an audience for the Prime Minister’sProperty speech. of Christ The peopleUniversity. being taken for the speech were Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 102 promised tea, snacks and five rupees each. Ishvar, Omprakash and Rajaram were also dragged into the bus. They were taken to the outskirts of the city where the meeting was being held. Rajaram explains that gathering people from the villages is much more difficult due to its scattered population. However, it is easier to get a large number of people from the slums in the city. The audience comprised of about twenty-five thousand people. Rajaram’s opinion was that being at a political rally was like being at a circus. The audience was mostly bored due to the numerous speeches but was forced to applaud and pay attention. Apart from speeches there was also some drama like rose petals being thrown from a helicopter thrice out of which the last time was the only successful attempt. There was also an eight-foot cut out of the Prime Minister which towards the end fell because of the wind from the helicopter and injured some people from the audience who had to be carried away for medical help. At the end of the rally the tea and snack were depleted and people were only given four rupees instead of the five which were promised. There was also a rush to get to the buses as they were leaving in ten minutes and people were afraid of being stranded. The tailors and Rajaram concluded that it was a waste of their working day and their daily remuneration (AFB 261-267). When the Nazis decided to expand Auschwitz, a concentration camp was built on the outskirts of a town near Auschwitz. We are told in the novel that the forced sterilizations also took place in the outskirts of the town where the tailors initially learned their trade. Thus both the German State and the Indian State find it convenient to commit crimes against citizens on the outskirts of the town, out of the purview of the townspeople: Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 103 The tailors learn that the sterilizations usually take place in tents erected outside town (AFB 524). After their market expedition and before they could reach home, the police forced the tailors into a truck and Ashraf Chacha was hit on the head and was bleeding. The tailors were taken to a sterilization camp on the outskirts of town. In spite of Ishvar’s attempted explanations and pleadings both Ishvar and Om were sterilized against their will. Ishvar despaired that his plans for his nephew’s wedding will never come true. While they were resting after their operations, Thakur Dharamsi passed by Om’s bed. He gave orders to a doctor for castrating Om which was carried out. Ishvar and Om were left devastated (AFB 534-543). Mistry represents Dubai through the character of Maneck. The depiction of the city is also the description of Maneck’s psyche. Dubai is shown as an empty, suffocating, troubled, alienating and an impeccably clean but soulless commercial city: When Maneck was in Dubai he felt trapped there. He went to a house for some work where he came across a maidservant. She spoke to him in Hindi asking for his help. She was overworked, molested by the men in the house, locked up in her room at night and her passport was confiscated. All Maneck did was to anonymously telephone the Indian Consulate. When he came back to his hometown in the mountains in India, he felt trapped like that maidservant in Dubai. When his mother asks him about Dubai, he replies, ‘It’s okay. Lots of big hotels. And hundreds of shops selling gold jewellery and stereos and TVs.’ He felt very uprooted in Dubai and never made an attempt to connect to its people, language or culture (AFB 584-585). When Mrs. Grewal asks him about what he has been doing in Dubai he just smiles in reply. While thinking about the shop which was the centre of his universe once he wonders what kept him away all those years. And he thinks not clean and gleaming Dubai, for sure (AFB 591-592). Thus one can say Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 104 that he was very detached from Dubai. When he goes to meet Dina Dalal in Mumbai she too asks him about how it was working in the Gulf. And he replies, ‘It was...it was - empty. Empty...like a desert (AFB 605).’ Conclusion Stuart Hall while talking about Roland Barthes’ semiotic approach to representation explains that Barthes attempts to see several acts like wrestling, soap powders and detergents, the face of Greta Garbo and the Blue Guides to Europe as signs and considers them as texts to be read. Moreover, ‘He ‘reads’ the exaggerated gestures of wrestlers as a grandiloquent language of what he calls the pure spectacle of excess. Hall also gives another example of this signifying practice, ‘In much the same way, the French anthropologist Claude Levi-Strauss studied the customs, rituals, totemic objects, designs, myths and folk-tales of so-called ‘primitive’ peoples in Brazil, not by analysing how these things were produced and used in the contest of daily life amongst the Amazonian peoples, but in terms of what they were trying to ‘say’, what messages about the culture they communicated’ (Hall 2012 36-37). One can read Rohinton Mistry’s representation of peculiar characters who support the Emergency, the politicisation of Maneck’s campus, the use of conversations, posters, slogan-shouting, and a motto on a stamp, the tailors’ hutment colony being demolished, the tailors struggle for a shelter, and the tailors being hauled to the outskirts of the city along with beggars, the incentivisation, corruption and incompetence involved in forced sterilizations, and the power and arbitrary nature of arrests under MISA as signs which construct the ‘myth’ of Mumbai as a city which suffers under the Emergency rule. Mistry encodes the text with different aspects of the Emergency like ‘city beautification’, forced sterilizations and arrests under MISA Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 105 which the reader decodes and interprets according to his/her knowledge and experience of the Emergency. Mistry represents caste in the novel by describing a catalogue of unjust punishments meted out to a marginalized community, he represents violence as intrinsic to the caste system, he also represents the complex working of the caste system where there is discrimination amongst lower castes as well and he represents through the character of Omprakash the ghastly effects of the combination of state violence and caste violence. Moreover, Mistry encodes the text with the details of Chamaars’ profession as tanners and leather workers which introduces many readers to this particular caste and gives a sociological glimpse on the workings of rural India. Hall explains Barthes’ theorizing of ‘myth’ thus: Myth is a peculiar system, in that it is constructed from a semiological chain which existed before it: it is a second- order semiological system.’ He adds that, ‘we must here recall that the materials of mythical speech (the language itself, photography, painting, posters, rituals, objects, etc.), however different are the start, are reduced to a pure signifying function as soon as they are caught by myth.’ He also explains the most defining aspect of ‘myth’: Whether it deals with alphabetical or pictorial writing, myth wants to see in them only a sum of signs, a global sign, the final term of a first semiological chain’ (Hall 2012 68). Although Mistry’s medium is the written word, he uses different signs or materials of mythical speech like the cityscapes, characters’ perspectives on the city and comparison of the cityscape with other spaces. In an interview with the University of Toronto Magazine Mistry reveals what he aims while writing: “I want to tell a darn good story.” And in order to tell a darn good story, Mistry employs signs like cityscapes to construct the city of Mumbai in his fiction. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 106 Works Cited Books Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation”, Stuart Hall eds. Representation: Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. < www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/.../HallRepresentation.PDF > “Interim Report II”, in Era Sehziyan eds. The Shah Commission Report. Chennai: Aazhi Publishers, 2010. 32, 77. Print. “Introduction”, in Era Sehziyan eds. The Shah Commission Report. Chennai: Aazhi Publishers, 2010.77, 78.Print. Mistry, Rohinton. AFB. London: Faber and Faber, 1996. Print. Morey, Peter. “Thread and circuses: performing in the spaces of city and nation in AFB”. Rohinton Mistry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.95, 111,113,115.Web.3 Jun 2013. < www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=341372 > “Third and Final Report”, in Era Sehziyan eds. The Shah Commission Report. Chennai: Aazhi Publishers, 2010. 88,184,208,209,214,220. Print. Journal Articles n.p., n.d., Web.30 May 2013. < http://iussp2009.princeton.edu/papers/90798> Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 107 Scuto, Giuseppe, Dr. Caste Violence in Contemporary India. Munich: Creativecommons.org, May 2008.Web.1 May 2013. < www.indianet.nl/pdf/CasteViolenceInContemporaryIndia.pdf > Website Articles “A Fine Balance”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 28 Sept 2012. Web. 31 May. 2013. Agnivesh, Swami and Rev. Valson Thampu. “Casteless society and India of our dreams”, n.p., n.d.Web.30 May 2013. < http://www.swamiagnivesh.com/casteless.htm> “Caste”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 1 May. 2013. “Chamar Tribes”.Indianmirror.com. www.Indianmirror.com n.d. Web.1 May.2013. “Compulsory sterilization”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 10 Jan. 2013 Cook, Sharell. “India Beggars and Begging Scams: What You Should Know”, About.com Guide , n.d.Web. 30 May 2013. < http://goindia.about.com/od/annoyancesinconveniences/p/indiabegging.htm > George, TJS. “Nostalgia over the glory days of Bombay: Even CIA fought its cold war there”, Point-of-view blog.13 Feb 2012.Web.30 May 2013. < http://tjsgeorge.blogspot.in/2012/02/nostalgia-over-glory-days-of-bombay.html> Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 108 “German Plans for Expanding Auschwitz”, en.auschwitz.org, Państwowe Muzeum Auschwitz-Birkenau w Oświęcimiu.n.d.Web.30 May 2013. id=30 > Gibson, Stacey. “Such a Long Journey” University of Toronto Magazine. 2002. Web. 10 Jan 2013. < http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/cover-story/rohinton-mistry-profile-such-a-long- journey-review/> “Independence Day (India)”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. “Indira Gandhi”. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. “Housing in India”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 30 May 2013. “Maintenance of Internal Security Act” Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. “Majdanek concentration camp”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 30 May 2013. “Mumbai”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 7 Dec. 2012. “Mumbai's beggars earn Rs 180 cr a year”, Times of India, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.23 Jul 2006.Web.30 May 2013. “1984 anti-Sikh riots”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 19 Apr. 2013. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 109 “Partition of India”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 17 Apr. 2013. “Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp”, www.jewishgen.org. 9 May 2013.Web.30 May 2013. Siddhaye, Ninad. “Beggars with creative minds roam city streets”, DNA, Diligent Media Corporation Ltd.2 Aug 2010.Web.30 May 2013. minds-roam-city-streets> Singh, Vijay. “More you cry, more you earn: Child beggars thrashed to shed more tears”,Times of India, Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd.13 Nov 2012.Web.30 May 2013. beggars-women-and-child-welfare-handler> “The Bombay Rent Act, 1947”, Wordpress.com. n.d.Web.19 Apr.2013. india/> “The Bombay Suburban Railway”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 8 Jan 2013. Web. 30 May. 2013. “The Emergency (India)”, Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikimedia Foundation, Inc. 30 Nov 2012. Web. 31 May. 2013. “The Indian Liquor Industry”, Icmrindia.org. 2010. Web.30 May 2013. r%20Industry.htm> Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 110 “These 4 policies can rid Mumbai of its housing problem”, Firstpost.com. 11 Feb 2013.Web.30 May 2013. problem-620971.html > Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 111 Chapter 4 Conclusion This chapter looks at the findings and analysis of Political Representation of Mumbai in the two novels which have been studied. Moreover, it analyses that Mumbai’s popularity in fiction is due to its economic efflorescence. In addition, I have collected critical opinions on the representation of Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry’s fiction. Finally, I conclude this chapter with the comparison of findings about representation of Mumbai from both the texts. Mistry constructs a Mumbai in SLJ by creating it within language that has reference to real political events of 1971 like the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the Nagarwala scandal and public artefacts like the cityscapes and social constructs in the perspectives of characters on the city as well as events. The author encodes this text with the political representation of Mumbai as ‘a city in siege’, as ‘a city in throes of conspiracy’ and as ‘a city of struggle, squalor, pleasure, nostalgia, loss, spirituality and political power struggles’ and thus constructs Mumbai. The political events like Operation Chengiz Khan, Air Raid Sirens and Blackouts during the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, Erotic Satire on the Pakistani Army, the use of medical metaphors ,the use of signs like newspaper photograph, newspaper headline, PM’s radio broadcast announcing war with Pakistan and the subsequent increase in the newspaper prices, domestic and office discussions, debates and character conversations, school collection drives for the refugees leads to the construction of Mumbai. The political representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city in siege’. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 112 The fictionalization of the Nagarwala financial scandal which involved a member of the Parsi community, the lack of information about the scandal, the identity of Nagarwala and the then PM Indira Gandhi’s involvement in it, four letters sent by Jimmy Billimoria to Gustad, the secretive nature of the favour he wants from Gustad, a dead bandicoot, a dead cat, a threatening note and the hacking off of the vinca bush outside Gustad’s house, the deposition and withdrawal of bundles of money from the bank, Gustad’s meeting in Delhi with an ailing Billimoria, Billimoria’s version of the truth about the scandal, the death of Billimoria who was the key witness in the scandal in jail, and the newspaper article about Billimoria’s death are the signs which construct Mumbai. The political representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city in throes of conspiracy’. The fictionalization of the Nagarwala financial scandal which involved a member of the Parsi community, the lack of information about the scandal, the identity of Nagarwala and the then PM Indira Gandhi’s involvement in it, four letters sent by Jimmy Billimoria to Gustad, the secretive nature of the favour he wants from Gustad, a dead bandicoot, a dead cat, a threatening note and the hacking off of the vinca bush outside Gustad’s house, the deposition and withdrawal of bundles of money from the bank, Gustad’s meeting in Delhi with an ailing Billimoria, Billimoria’s version of the truth about the scandal, the death of Billimoria in jail who was the chief witness in the scandal, and the newspaper article about Billimoria’s death are the signs which construct Mumbai. The political representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city in throes of conspiracy’. Stuart Hall in his essay The Work of Representation uses Roland Barthes’ analysis of a pasta advertisement. Hall states that at the level of the myth or meta- Property of Christ University. language, the Panzani ad becomes a message about the essential meaning of Italian- Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 113 ness as a national culture. Hall also gives the example of the picture of a Jaguar car advertisement as an image of ‘Englishness’. Similarly, Mistry constructs the city of Mumbai in the novel which can be looked at the level of myth or meta-language as Stuart Hall puts it. Then we find that the cityscapes and character perspectives become a message about the figure of Mumbai in his fiction. Cityscapes like the Khodadad building, the compound wall and its transformation , Crawford Market, Chor Bazaar, and spiritual cityscapes like the Towers of Silence and Mount Mary Church, and characters’ perspectives on the city like Gustad’s struggle, good times and nostalgia, Dinshawji’s loss of the past and lament on street name changes and the Shiv Sena’s stranglehold over the city are the signs which the author employs to construct Mumbai in the novel . The political representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city of struggle, squalor, pleasure, nostalgia, loss, spirituality and political power struggles.’ The cityscapes and the character perspectives and especially nostalgia are imbued with an essentialism contributing to a particular Mumbai which is part Parsi and part diasporic. Besides the analysis of political representation of Mumbai in the text, the researcher has found the official judgement on R.S.Nagarwala vs. State, and found that there is some common misinformation about the identity of Nagarwala and the Nagarwala incident mentioned in the works of four critics and academicians. The research has also included the findings of the Reddy Commission Report on the incident, and has included the politician Morarji Desai’s opinion on the incident in the thesis as an attempt to fill in the gap of knowledge that exists about the Nagarwala scandal. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 114 Peter Morey in his book Rohinton Mistry talks about the nature of politics in Mistry’s novels, ‘Despite these preoccupations, Mistry has refused to be labelled a political writer, insisting that didacticism is the death of true art, and commenting that ‘If politics … come in to my work, they come in a secondary way.’’ Mistry’s novels are marked by the quietist nature of the characters’ personal lives while ‘politics’ in spite of being ‘secondary’ wrecks havoc in the lives of his characters. The political representation of Mumbai in A Fine Balance is done by employing signs like Mumbai as ‘a city grappling with a draconic state and its life-denying laws’, Mumbai as ‘an all-embracing and redemptive city’ and of Mumbai as ‘a city great in its magnanimity but also great in its inadequacies’. Thus, Mistry constructs Mumbai which is the signifying field on which Emergency politics are played out in the novel. My argument is that Mistry constructs a Mumbai in AFB by creating it within language that has reference to real political events of 1975-77 like the Emergency, casteism and caste violence and public artefacts like the cityscapes and social constructs in the perspectives of characters on the city as well as events. We find that the cityscapes, character perspectives and comparisons to other spaces construct the city of Mumbai in the novel. Mistry’s representation of peculiar characters who support the Emergency, the politicisation of Maneck’s campus, the use of conversations, posters, slogan-shouting, and a motto on a stamp, people at the cinema being forced to stay for the national anthem by the Shiv Sena, rigorous ticket checks on the trains, the tailors’ hutment colony being demolished under the ‘City Beautification’ program, the tailors’ struggle for a shelter, and the tailors being hauled to the outskirts of the city to do labour work at an irrigation project in subhuman conditions, the incentivisation, corruption and Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 115 incompetence involved in forced sterilizations, and the power and arbitrary nature of arrests under MISA are signs which construct Mumbai. The political representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city grappling with a draconic state and its life-denying laws.’ Major political events during the Emergency like demolition of hutments and houses for the ‘City Beautification’ program, forced sterilizations and arrests under MISA are the main aspects of the Mumbai Mistry constructs in AFB: • 20,527 Mumbai buildings and residences were demolished which is represented through the demolition of the tailors’ hutment colony and their subsequent homelessness. • The Maharashtra State Government achieved 6.11 lakh sterilisations, during the year 1975-76 and 8.33 lakh sterilisations in the year 1976-77 which is represented through the forced sterilizations of Ishvar and Omprakash. • 5,473 persons were detained under MISA (The Maintenance of Internal Security Act ) in the State of Maharashtra which is shown through five minor characters being arbitrarily arrested under the law of MISA. Cityscapes like the overcrowded Mumbai train, the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel, the Court House, Dina Dalal’s flat signify Mumbai as ‘an overpopulated, chaotic, struggling, yet friendly and egalitarian city’. The character perspectives like those of Dina, Ishvar and Omprakash, Maneck and the beggars signify Mumbai as ‘city of struggles, squalor, Emergency politics, tragedies and grotesque poverty yet also a city of opportunities, survival, culture, romance, friendships and nostalgia.’ The political Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 116 representation of Mumbai comes across as ‘a city great in its magnanimity but also great in its inadequacies’. Mumbai’s comparison to the village, the town, the hill town, to the outskirts of the city and outskirts of the town and Dubai constructs Mumbai. Mistry gives a sociological insight into the dynamics of the caste system by representing a catalogue of unjust punishments suffered by the marginalized community, violence as intrinsic to caste system, the complexity of sub-caste politics and the details of Chamaars’ work as tanners and leather workers. Here Mumbai can be read as ‘a city of opportunities, egalitarianism and emancipation’ as opposed to the oppressive village. The character Omprakash suffers from both state violence and caste violence on his return to the town and in an attempt to go back to the village. However, he turns to the city once more and becomes a beggar there. This further reinforces Mumbai as a sign of ‘an all-embracing and redemptive city’. Knowledge is often created where trade flourishes. So it is no wonder that Mumbai is the setting for many Indian English novels in general and specifically for Indian Parsi English novels. The economics professor Vivek H Dehejia elaborates this argument in the article “Bombay to Mumbai: The death pangs of a great city” says, “My literary friends sometime forget that cultural efflorescence springs from economic dynamism, and very rarely the reverse. The roots of Bombay’s centrality as the commercial and financial capital of India, a position it wrested from Calcutta in the decade or so following independence, were laid much earlier, by the Merchant Princes in the 19th century, and by successive business houses in the years that followed. They gave Bombay the economic muscle to become the new nation’s cultural capital, a crown ceded only fitfully by Calcutta. That once-great city by the other sea tells its own Property of Christ University. cautionary tale: Secular economic decline leads eventually to intellectual and cultural Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 117 decay, and a once thriving bazaar of ideas becomes a moribund curatorial culture of embalming and preserving the desiccated relics that remain.” Rohinton Mistry admits that as a young reader of fiction he was very much influenced by the representation of England in the works he read. Angela Lambert in her interview for The Guardian writes: ‘From this early reading he got the impression of an England that both mirrored and glamourised the reality; a country where confident, laughing children shared exciting adventures with a bouncy, barking dog while their elder sisters flirted languidly over tea on the lawn and their parents conducted wars of attrition with servants and tradesmen. Mistry knows this innocent sunlit England never really existed, but just as the Bombay of his novels is a literary construct, so was that England: part wishful thinking, part imagination and part truth’ Mistry elaborates: “Part of the tragedy of the educated middle classes in Bombay was this yearning for something unattainable that came from what they had read. Would that sense of a future elsewhere have been avoided if we had concentrated on an Indian literary canon? I don't know." Just as Mistry, as a young reader, consumed the representation of England in fiction which shaped his world-view, people all over the world read Misty’s fiction and view India and Mumbai through the myths that he has created. Rohinton Mistry's younger brother Cyrus, a writer and playwright in The Guardian interview says, "To the extent that Rohinton's novels are about Parsees, he is chronicling a vanishing world. His picture is accurate." But Firdaus Gandavia, a Parsee writer and teacher also based in Bombay, thinks Mistry is out of touch. "He is stuck in the groove of the 70s when he left India and went to Toronto. His concerns seem distant to anyone actually living in Bombay; so much more has happened in the meantime." Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 118 Mistry counters, "I would say my Bombay is rooted in fact, but I'm writing about a city that has disappeared. In 1975, when I left, its population was less than half what it is today, and that transforms a city in unimaginable ways. If I'd never left I would have adjusted and learned the mechanisms for coping, as the other 14 million inhabitants have. Today when I go back I feel like a marathon runner who's no longer in training." This re-invention of the past, seen with the sharp eyes of a child and then filtered through veils of nostalgia, is common to writers in exile. Bruce Westwood, Mistry's Canadian literary agent and friend, says: "Rohinton has been a Canadian citizen and resident of Toronto for 27 years now. He has lived here for longer than he lived in India, but his books are still set in the Bombay of his youth, reinvented with perfect recall. At times he seems to have idealised it into a childhood paradise, like Nabokov's Russia." Peter Morey in his book Rohinton Mistry comments on the importance of Mumbai in his fiction: “Despite having lived in Canada since 1975, Mistry’s fiction is imbued with the spirit of Bombay. Bombay is more than merely a location. It provides what might be described as a habitat in which characters live, breath and confront their spiritual and material demons. Indeed, Bombay is a vast treasure house of stories. In A Fine Balance the city is a space of shared stories: a ‘story spinning mill’. For Mistry, such stories, told and retold to new acquaintances, work to mitigate the confusion of life, offering a temporary unity, and a balm to the psychic sufferings caused by time and change. In a sense, this can be seen as one of storytelling’s deepest and oldest functions.” Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 119 In an interview with Dylan Foley's BookPush for his novel Family Matters, Mistry shares what Mumbai life represents to him: “Bombay always has been seen as a city where Hindus, Muslims and other religious groups could live in peace. With the recent bloody riots in India, where Hindus and Muslims were killed, the future looks dark. "Bombay always represented the hope of India," said Mistry. "I use the past tense because the last 10 years, there is a question mark. Look, if people can live in Bombay cheek-by-jowl, then they can do it in the rest of India." In SLJ, Mumbai is politically represented as a ‘city in siege’ because of an outside force like the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War and it also becomes ‘city in throes of conspiracy’ in order to deal with that outside force. However, the Mumbai in AFB is suffering from the inside, due to the nation’s self-created problems and thus it is a ‘city grappling with draconic state and its life-denying laws.’ The cityscapes of Mumbai in SLJ are urban. However, in AFB the village comes looking for the city as a site of redemption. Thus the ‘communal, cosmopolitan, overcrowded, spiritual and nostalgic’ Mumbai of SLJ shows that it can also be ‘an all- embracing and redemptive city’ in AFB. And like Dickens’ London, Mistry creates the figure of Mumbai in AFB as ‘a city great in its magnanimity but also great in its inadequacies’. Mistry in representing Mumbai in his novels is creating a particularised figure of the city. A figure of the city constructed through the language used, cityscapes foregrounded, perspectives of the characters regarding political events and its aftermath, nostalgia opens up a signifying field where the performativity of the language as well as human life is acted out.Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 120 In SLJ the urban Mumbai and a middle class Parsi family is the centre of the story. On the other hand, in AFB Mumbai is one of the many spaces which inhabit the novel. In AFB, Mistry paints on a larger canvas where he contrasts the notion of the city with the village, town, hill-town, the outskirts and the city of Dubai. Moreover, he explores more than the Parsi identity in the novel by describing the life of the Chamaar community. Rather than focusing on one family, he describes many families from different geographical and economic strata. Not only that, he also plays with the idea of ‘family’ by constructing a modern family of four living in a Mumbai flat. Thus the story-teller of Mumbai, Mistry creates an urban, Parsi, middle-class, conspiratorial, detective story-esque myth of Mumbai in SLJ while in AFB the myth of Mumbai is larger as the city is not the only centre yet is central to the narrative. It is the picture of a city which is evolving, struggling to survive while SLJ is the narration of an episode from an urban citizen’s life. Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 121 Works Cited Books Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation”, Stuart Hall eds. Representation: Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997, n.d. Web. 10 Oct. 2012. < www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/.../HallRepresentation.PDF > Morey, Peter. “Contexts and Intertexts”. Rohinton Mistry. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2004.23.Web.3 Jun 2013. < www.oapen.org/download?type=document&docid=341372 > Website Articles Dehejia, Vivek H. “Bombay to Mumbai: The death pangs of a great city” The Express Tribune. Jul 2011. The Lakson Group of companies. Web. 12 Mar. 2013. Gibson, Stacey. “Such a Long Journey” University of Toronto Magazine. 2002. Web. 10 Jan 2013. < http://www.magazine.utoronto.ca/cover-story/rohinton-mistry-profile-such-a-long- journey-review/> Lambert, Angela. The Guardian Profile: Rohinton Mistry: Touched with fire. Guardian.co.uk. Apr.2002. Web. 10 Jan. 2013. < http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2002/apr/27/fiction.books> Foley, Dylan. “Rohinton Mistry on Bombay Life and the 1993 Riots in "Family Matters"” Blogspot.in 23 Nov.2011.Web.08 June 2013. < http://dylanmfoley.blogspot.in/2011/11/rohinton-mistry-on-bombay-life-and- 1993.html> Property of Christ University. Use it for fair purpose.Give credit to the author by citing properly, if you are using it. 122 Bibliography Books Bhautoo-Dewnarain, Nandini. Rohinton Mistry: An Introduction. New Delhi: Cambridge University Press India, 2007. 69. Print. Dodiya, Jaydipsinh. “A Fine Balance Between Hope and Despair Through a Long Journey: A Critical Study of Rohinton Mistry”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 7-8. Print. Hall, Stuart. “The work of representation”, Stuart Hall eds. Representation: Cultural Representations And Signifying Practices. New Delhi: Sage Publications, 1997, n.d. Web. 10 Oct.2012. < www4.ncsu.edu/~mseth2/com417s12/.../HallRepresentation.PDF > Hemalatha, M. “Theme and Technique in Rohinton Mistry’s SLJ”, Jaydipsinh Dodiya eds. The Novels of Rohinton Mistry: Critical Studies . New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. 103. Print. “Interim Report II”, in Era Sehziyan eds. The Shah Commission Report. 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