DEPARTMENT OF ENGLISH

UNIVERSITY OF DELHI
INTERNAL ASSESSMENT ASSIGNMENT
COVER SHEET
SEMESTER I

NAME OF THE STUDENT: LAVISHA TANEJA

COLLEGE: SRI VENKATESWARA COLLEGE DELHI UNIVERSITY

EXAM ROLL NO: 2121002

PAPER CODE:120351104

PAPER NAME: FICTION

TITLE OF PAPER: Bombay/Mumbai in Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters.

DATE OF SUBMISSION: 26th March 2022

DECLARATION: I certify that this is my own unaided work, and does not contain
unreferenced material copied from any other source. I understand that plagiarism is a
serious offence and may result in a drastic reduction of marks awarded for the term
paper. This assignment has not been submitted, or any part of it, in connection with
any other assessment.
Bombay as a city in Mistry’s “Family Matters” is humanized and portrayed as a
character in the novel vividly showing the negative and positive traits of the city with
all its entailed social ramifications. Hansen observes that many Bombayites grieved
'the loss of the old name' which was associated with 'the older experience of Bombay,
the dreams of Bombay as a metaphor of India's diversity, the imaginings of
modernity'. In this paper, I intend to explore Mumbai being traversed and navigated
both spatially and metaphorically as a cultural signifier via the gaze of Mistry as a
diasporic narrator and the different characters.

Mistry paints an ominous picture of Mumbai with its ‘insecure roads, dug up
footpaths which lead to Nariman’s accident, colossal traffic, dearth of suitable
accommodation and the struggle to imagine a home in the limited amount of space
afforded, people living close to drains, the state of apartments and buildings with
crumpling plaster, perforated water tanks and broke drainage pipes as depicted in case
of Pleasant Villa where Roxana lives’ (1).The city is regarded as dangerous by all its
citizens, especially for the elderly and the minorities. It is under these circumstances
that Nariman’s walking routine is regarded by his stepchildren as dangerous
expeditions. “The streets are a death trap...pedestrians have to compete with traffic,
dozens of fatalities daily” (Mistry). Bombay was particularly adversely affected by
the Babri-mosque riots as Shiv Sena capitalised on the tensions to orchestrate riots
and attack Muslim households in their attempt to recreate Bombay as an exclusive
‘Marathi cultural space’.

The process of renaming was associated with their dictatorial authority to claim
ownership of the city. The renaming also highlighted how Bombay’s once known
cosmopolitanism symbolic of nation’s secularism was threatened by narrow sectarian
politics and increased communal tensions turning away from Nehruvian legacy of
secularism. The contested nature of Bombay’s identity is crucial to Mistry’s
representation of the minority Parsi community continuously trying to negotiate their
position within this environment belligerent to non-Hindu citizens. The Parsis of
India: Preservation of Identity in Bombay City, a book by Jesse.S. Palsetia highlights
the contributions made by Parsis to the development of the city of Bombay that led to
urbanisation transforming into a major commercial centre.

Mistry has associated the city with its dreadful political environment remarking on
the role of Shiv Sena in spreading Hindu fundamentalism and Marathi chauvinism in
Bombay. The novel also shows Shiv Sena as a Hindi fundamentalist force, lamenting
over the ruthless and oppressive measures taken by these religious fanatics
responsible for ruining the multicultural and harmonious coexistence of society.
Mistry is engaging with the city’s transformation from Bombay to Mumbai directly
within his novel through the demands of Shiv Sena thugs for renaming Bombay
Sports Goods Emporium. Mistry’s insistence on naming of Bombay as Bombay rather
than Mumbai is a significant step representing his resistance towards the Marathi-
Hinduisation of the city.

Mr Kapur’s shop can be read as an allegorical representation of mini Bombay

where multiple ethnic identities, Mr Kapur along with Hussain and Yezad coexist.
Vikram Kapur’s strong sense of attachment and his desire to become the part and
parcel of the city, to become more familiar prevails due to the fact that he was a
migrant himself whose family fled from Punjab in 1947. Mr. Kapur's unrealistic
optimism in the face of doom is described by Mistry as the shopkeeper seeks to
preserve his vision of the possibilities of multicultural harmony in Bombay. His
passion for the city and his refusal to change the name of his shop implicates a socio-
political signifier of secular inclusivity. He glorifies the city of Bombay in his
conversations with Yezad. “Bombay endures because it gives and it receives. Within
this warp and west is woven the special texture of its social fabric, the spirit of
tolerance, acceptance and generosity”(Mistry). His adoration for the city and the
desire to purge it from social evils instills a motivation to contest in the municipal
elections to reform the city but soon he decides against it, when he realizes that the
city is a facade of glamour and is pervaded with social atrocities. Mistry accuses Siva
Sena of wreaking havoc in the city by changing names and sowing the seeds of
conflict and division between different ethnicities of one nation. Mr Kapur’s tragic
death infers Mistry’s skepticism towards such possibilities of resistance against the
authoritarian ideological manoeuvres of Shiv Sena.

On one side Mistry seems to endorsing the fact that the people residing here are
resilient and the city is known for its resourcefulness and secularism but he is
simultaneously presenting an alternate reality where the communal riots occur
because of religious fundamentalism.The feeling of alienation from the cultural
mainstream is uniquely reflected in the way Mistry’s characters are displaced and
attempt to search for a new identity through emigration (Yezad’s struggle to migrate
to Canada) or reinvention of themselves through cultural representation(2). Mr Kapur
also becomes representative of the novelist as he enshrines the positive attributes of
the city that made it fortified and resilient to all kinds of threats that tend to crumble
and break down the harmony. The railway station scene where people assist each
other irrespective of their religion or caste exemplifies Bombay in the way Mistry
reminisces, which shows harmony in disparity.

Peter Morey offers a more careful contextualisation of Family Matters within the
rise of Hindu nationalism, remarking that the moral taint that everywhere affects
Bombay life also increasingly makes its presence felt in the lives of Nariman's family.
Bombay “languishes…like a patient in intensive care” establishes a nexus between
Nariman’s deteriorating health and the grim political environment of the city.The city
for Nariman holds an entirely different meaning who explores it as a flaneur, casually
strolling around and seeing it in poetic terms whose passive participation provides
him a privileged position as an observer, part and apart from the city. He sees
“sculptured landscapes” and “a magic show” in the market activity (Mistry). For him
the bustling life of the city outside his place was like air for starving lungs, after the
stale emptiness of the flat. Nariman’s position in his home as that of an outsider as
Coomy constantly asserts her authority over it as he has no legal claim to the flat, is
analogous to the renaming of Bombay where the Non-Hindu population of the city are
alienated and threatened by the government because of their ethnic identity.

Nariman’s relationship with Lucy Braganza alienates him from his already-
isolated Parsi community where they constantly struggle to create a cocoon, separate
world for themselves where they could exercise their agency and construct their own
narratives. But their inter-faith relationship that could be tolerated on the public
beaches of the city, spaces that serve as rendezvous points for Bombay lovers is
completely unacceptable to their family members. Nariman’s feebleness can be read
as Mistry’s ambivalence about resisting communalism in Bombay as his
powerlessness is echoed in the narrative structure of the novel also exemplifying
Homi Bhabha’s concept of “personal is political”(3).

Yezad’s movement towards religious orthodoxy begins as a result of the disruption

to his family home and his visits to the Wadiaji fire temple as a space where he can
filter out world’s problems, as an escape from the brutalities of city where Parsis as a
minority community are being marginalised in the Hindu nationalist discourse.
Yezad's claims to belonging to the city are couched within a nostalgia for the past
rather than the present, implying that Bombay itself has become an imaginary
'homeland' distanced from the contemporary space of Mumbai.(4)

WORKS CITED:

(1) Fading Frankincense:Reading culture in Rohinton Mistry’s Family Matters

https://www.academia.edu/15112332/
Fading_Frankincense_Reading_Culture_in_Rohinton_Mistrys_Family_Matters/

(2) Exploring Language, Literacy, and Cross-Cultural Representation: A Semiotic

Analysis in Mistry’s Family Matters
http://jogltep.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/10/4-jogltep-Semiotic-Analysis-of-
Cultural-Representation-in-Rohinton-Mistry.pdf

(3)Imagining Bombay: the Literary Representations of a Postcolonial City

https://tspace.library.utoronto.ca/bitstream/1807/74776/1/
Minerva_Kelly_201411_PhD_thesis.pdf

(4)Representations of Migrant and Nation in Selected Works of Rohinton Mistry and

Salman Rushdie- Caroline Victoria Herbert
https://etheses.whiterose.ac.uk/1580/1/uk_bl_ethos_434203.pdf

(5) Rohinton Mistry Family Matters