CHAPTER-III
DOMESTIC SPACE
A house that has been experienced is not an inert box. Inhabited space transcends geometrical
space. (Bachelard, 47)
In his analysis of the “intimate values of inside space” (3), Gaston Bachelard’s musing
on the renewed significance of domestic space in terms of phenomenological inquiry
opens vistas for understanding the domestic space. What Bachelard proposes is a ‘topoanalysis’ i.e. “the systematic psychological study of the sites of our intimate lives” (8)
as he says “it was reasonable to say we “read a house,” or “read a room,” since both
room and house are psychological diagrams that guide writers and poets in their
analysis of intimacy” (38). Echoes of Bachelard distinguish Carl Jung’s Memories,
Dreams, Reflections, where he muses on the constructive psychological significance of
our intimate spaces. Jung argues that home is an anchor for psychic stability as
expressed in the ‘Foreword’ of the book, “my life is a story of the self-realization of the
unconscious. Everything in the unconscious seeks outward manifestation, and the
personality too desires to evolve out of its unconscious conditions and to experience
itself as a whole”. Inhabiting the domestic space is therefore integral to our psychic
well-being as the psyche is spatialised in the domestic space.
Hence the intimate space of human life is charecterised by ‘topophilia’ as
Bachelard opines “topoanalysis bears the stamp of a topophilia” (12). In Rohinton
Mistry’s fiction domestic space serves not simply a backdrop or setting where the
action unfolds; it appears to shape the psychical life of the character and vice versa. As
I attempt to show in the subsequent sections, the fictional representations of ‘domestic
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space’ in his fiction truly serves “as an exterior destiny to the interior being”
(Bachelard 11). My attempt is to opt for a ‘topoanalysis’ of domestic space as it is
“supposed to condense and defend intimacy” (Bachelard 48). Mistry’s fiction
dramatically captures the psychological significance of the intimate dwelling space
marked by moments of memory and dream thereby creating what Bachelard calls a
‘house of memory’ (60). Exploring the sense of trauma implicit in the Parsi history of
diasporic dispersal, an attempt has been made to highlight the fact that defining ‘home’
in terms of the occupation of a specific national territory in the Parsi context is
practically impossible like tracing a chimera as peripheralization is a constant part of
their experience of dislocation. Hence discussing all possible aspects of home-making
practices like designing the interior, furnishing the house, choosing colour for the wall
etc. this chapter highlights how the characters negotiate the idea of home as
geographical, cultural, and metaphorical construction in their mundane dwelling
environment. A discussion of Parsi cuisine as a distinctive cultural marker adds to the
idea of home-making practices thereby extending the values of intimate spaces into the
larger context of the political space of the nation. The discussion of penetrable,
tentative boundary highlights the Parsis as social recluse and their effort to create an
alternative community is analysed in terms of ‘makings’ and ‘markings’ of home. I also
proceed to examine the recurrent psychological nuances of the domestic space where
the characters experience “a rhythmanalysis of the function of inhabiting” (Bachelard
65).
My argument proceeds to highlight how the values of intimate space are
mediated through the influence of the outer world which modifies ways of inhabiting
the domestic space. As I argue further intimate and public become one contiguous
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space when marked by the transgression of sacred boundaries. The values of intimate
spaces are conflated within the larger space of the post-Independence nation as the
travails of nation constantly intrude in the domestic space. Bachelard’s ideas are central
to my conceptualisation of domestic space as I situate the intimate space into the sociopolitical space.
As I plan to demonstrate, the domestic interior with the furnishing and
assortment of memorial objects and furniture expresses the psychology of the
inhabitants. The representation of a dark, shadowy and cluttered interior is common to
Mistry as a way of negotiating boundaries. Mistry strategically dwells on the interior of
the home as well as the desperation of the characters to carefully alter it to highlight the
significance of the domestic space in the larger socio-cultural context. My attempt is to
show how home-making practices reach the heightened expression in the domestic
space with the attempt to desperately mark and claim the space in the wake of larger
failure of the nation-state.
The recurring pattern of unifying the psychic and the material states in terms of
inhabiting space distinguishes Mistry’s exploration of public as well as private spaces.
The fictional representation of domestic space in his writings often invites a nuanced
reading in terms of exploring the ways of constructing subjectivity as Mistry charts the
process of self-construction in the context of domestic space. To elaborate, Family
Matters (FM) starts with the description of an agonising conflict over the control of the
domestic space in Chateau Felicity where Coomy’s continuous prohibition against
locked doors along with the strict instruction to follow spatial rules persistently disturbs
Nariman’s idea of spatial freedom thereby leading to ennui and estrangement. As I
proceed to show, Coomy’s failure of inhabiting the domestic space creatively parallels
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Nariman’s creation of a memory-space thereby widening the definition of ‘home’.
Nariman, Roxana, Jal and the children foreground a different spatial logic of inhabiting
in terms of imaginative participation which, as I highlight, is absent in other characters
thereby leading to catastrophic withdrawal. Such a Long Journey (SLJ) foregrounds
how one’s claim to domestic space is mediated by childhood memories as expressed in
Gustad’s frantic effort to organise domestic space. A Fine Balance (AFB) too explores
the concern over domestic space in the context of Dina’s quest for independent identity
and the consequent search for a stable home experienced by all the characters. Mistry
upholds a domestic rhetoric which is signified by the critical consideration of domestic
interior in his fiction. He is acutely concerned with the ways the fascination for objects
and possessions reflect the inner lives of the characters and their turmoil as such
descriptive details are integral to Mistry’s narration.
Seen from the larger perspective of national unity and the relation between
nation and the domestic space, such descriptive details are integral for understanding
the aesthetic and ideological preferences of the characters. The cultural significance of
the domestic interior in A Fine Balance, Such a Long Journey, Family Matters can
hardly be negated when seen in the context of the status of the Parsis as social recluse
in a postcolonial nation with porous and tentative boundaries. Their attitudes towards
rootedness and incessant conflict over shared spaces of alienation and conflict is
integral to their spatial claims manifested in various ways. Consequently the spectacle
of alienation is staged in the domestic frontier fraught with overtones of a fraught
contact zone. The desire to regulate domestic boundaries is to assert control over the
porous nation-space and its cohesive rhetoric which is enacted in the domestic space.
Rohinton Mistry therefore, situates the values of intimate spaces into the larger context
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of the political space of the nation and highlights how the intimate domestic space can
also be invested with the fear of frequent transgression.
I
“To dwell means to leave traces. In the interior, theses are accentuated.
Coverlets and antimacassars, cases and containers are devised in abundance; in
these, the traces of the most ordinary objects of use are imprinted. In just the
same way, the traces of the inhabitant are imprinted in the interior.” (Benjamin,
9)
Articulating genuine ‘topophilia’, Mistry’s characters ensconced themselves in the
domestic space as it is imbued with their psychological associations. Mistry’s emphasis
on the frantic appropriation of domestic interior, furnishings of the rooms echoes the
psychic state of the characters as the inhabited spaces are psychologically choreographed to
meet their multiple demands. Dark, dismal and
dilapidated homes with shabbily
furnished interior mirroring the psychic turmoil and anxiety over ways of inhabiting
and negotiating domestic space runs constant in Mistry’s fiction. Mistry’s depiction of
the interior surely transcends the simplistic spatial and architectural significance as
each character inscribe distinctive mark on the domestic space in different ways thereby
precluding the possibilities of any conclusive interpretation of the intimate space. In the
process of remembering the lost space of home redolent with memories and dreams the
intimate space truly becomes the psychological diagrams valorised by Bachelard as
mirrored in their frantic efforts to remodel, furnish, change, and organize domestic
space. The depiction of the lugubrious interior in Mistry is the genuine spatial
manifestation of the unconscious process of negotiating versions of reality into a
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coherent image of stable subjectivity. In a section on “resistance and repression” in the
Introductory Lectures on Psycho-Analysis, Sigmund Freud himself represents the
unconscious in spatial terms by equating it with the interior of a bourgeois space.
Mistry’s fiction too parallels such depiction as wee see in the external
manifestation of the physical space of home. The dark interior in Gustad Noble’s home
is perhaps the best example to cite the psychological implication of the domestic space
as for Gustad burdened by the traumatic event of bankruptcy and consequent death of
his family members coupled with the failure of national belonging, the intimate space is
a fraught site. His vulnerability is expressed via the domestic space which truly
transcends the mechanical categorisation of an inert space. Gustad’s home is his sense
of being writ large as the following example highlights:
The room was dark like the others in the flat, with blackout paper taped over
the glass panes of the windows and ventilators. Gustad had put it up nine years
ago, the year of the war with China. How much happened that year, he thought.
Roshan’s birth, and then my terrible accident. What luck. In bed for twelve
weeks, with the broken hip between Madhiwalla Bonesetter’s sandbags. And
riots in the city- curfews and lathi charges and burning buses everywhere.
What a dreadful year 1962 had been. (Mistry, SLJ 9)
As we see, the pattern of papering the wall with black paper is infused with the
connotations of protecting the most intimate space in the wake of the disturbing reality
of war and riot. From the beginning of the novel, the dark interior in Gustad’s home
operates as a special marker expressive of his aversion towards light. The interior of his
flat problematizes the question of belonging in terms of a spatial logic and rhythm as
every available wall is covered with black paper. Even when the war was over, Gustad,
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however, did not remove the blackout paper on the ground that “it helped the children
to sleep better” (Mistry, SLJ 11). Dilnavaz, his wife interrogates his ridiculous idea but
being aware of Gustad’s psychic turmoil in the wake of his father’s death, she allows
the blackout paper to remain. Perhaps she recognises the individual need of inscribing
space as a source of holistic process of self-construction which Gustad was undergoing
in terms of integrating his psychological and spatial claims:
‘Remove the black paper whenever you are ready, baba. Far be it from me to
force you,’ she said, but registered pointed observations at regular intervals: the
paper collected dust and was difficult to clean; it gave spiders ideal places to
spin their webs; it provided perfect cover for cockroaches to lay their eggs; and
it made the whole house dark and depressing. (Mistry, SLJ 11)
Gustad’s inverted topophilia is best articulated in relation to his increasing alienation
from the public world as the ensuing frustration and increasingly alimentation from the
public space infuses the frantic need to make his mark on the intimate space i.e. the
immediate domestic environment of the flat engulfed in perpetual darkness as in his
house “weeks went by, then months, with paper restricting the ingress of all forms of
light, earthly and celestial” (Mistry,SLJ 11). Although his family members do not share
similar spatial logic, Gustad’s attempt to justify his spatial decision is augmented when
Pakistan attacks Kashmir and consequent declaration of blackout three years later.
Gustad was relieved that he did not remove the black paper as total blackout was
declared again as war becomes a recurrent affair, repeated reality in their life:
He reminded her how she had kept nagging about it nine years ago, after the
China war, nagging on and on. But in ’65, when there was war with Pakistan,
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was it not convenient to have the paper already in place? ‘Same thing again.
History repeats itself.’ (Mistry, SLJ 292)
The repeated application of the black paper on the wall is indicative of how public and
private is one contiguous space as reflected in an era of national tumult expressed in
newspaper heading like ‘Reign of terror in East Pakistan’ (Mistry, SLJ 12). Moreover,
the news of the proclamation of the Republic of Bangladesh by the Awami League also
pervades the Noble household which further destabilizes Gustad’s home. Each and
every visitor to his home including Ghulam Mohammed, Dinshawji is curious about the
wallpaper as the narrative is replete with such subtle queries. As Diana Fuss argues
windows are “vulnerable orifices that must be aggressively safeguarded against the
ever-present threat of external penetration” (74), Gustad’s effort to block windows as
visible in the frantic effort of applying black paper basically foregrounds the notion of
domestic space as a fraught zone mirroring individual as well as national turmoil. Dark
interior is also common to the description of Chateau Felicity, Jehangir Mansion in
Family Matters. When Murad and Jehangir try to locate the ground-floor flat where
their father had spent his youth, their father’s childhood home, Jehangir Mansion,
ironically, remains engulfed in mysterious darkness.
The desire to interiorize the house often reflects a sense of power and control as
commented by John Lukacs “the interior furniture of houses appeared together with the
interior furniture of minds” (623). In Mistry’s fiction, the descriptions of shabby
furnishings and cramped spaces abound as Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance,
Family Matters are replete with such descriptive details. In A Fine Balance, we see the
poor condition of Dina’s room with “the battered sofa, two chairs with fraying seats, a
scratched teapoy, a dining table with a cracked and faded rexine tablecloth” (Mistry,
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AFB 8 ) through Maneck’s eye which adequately mirrors Dina’s state of mind. As the
description proceeds we see the poor condition of walls badly in need of paint, the dark
and flaking ceiling, the discoloured walls with “missing chunks of plaster in several
place resembling freshly healed wounds” (Mistry, AFB 8 ) in the dingy little flat. Similar
description follows in Family Matters when Coomy describes the flat in Chateau
Felicity:
“Lovely place? A haunted house, fallen to rack and ruin! Look at these walls,
not a coat of whitewash in thirty years! What we will do if the roof leaks or the
last remaining toilet breaks, I don’t know. To think we could all have lived
happily together, right here, one family. But you insisted on leaving us.”
(Mistry, FM 32)
“Auspicious Occasion” upholds a similar description of setting when we see Rustomji’s
musing on his home which is nothing but a torture for him:
He gazed pensively at the walls and ceiling, where bits of paint and plaster
were waiting to peel, waiting to fall into their pots and pans, their vessels of
water, their lives. . . . And in the flat the rain would send new beads of
moisture, to replace last year’s marks with new imprints. (Mistry, 20)
As argued by Marcus, “to appropriate space, to order and mold it into a form that
pleases us and affirms who we are, is a universal need” (66). Marcus’s notion of ‘house
as a mirror of self’ (1) brings out the relation between domestic space and construction
of self as “settings we make or modify become expressions of who we are’’ (27). As
she argues the phenomenon of projecting onto the domestic space one’s inner fears and
anxieties has often been seen as an expression of self as the interaction between people
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and their domestic context finds expression in the human desire of ‘place-making
activities’ (21).
Mistry’s protagonists therefore indulge in frantic spatial appropriation which
mirrors their psychological integration. Such ‘place-making activities’ are foregrounded in
Family Matters when the characters project their subjectivity onto the domestic space
in their effort to inscribe the domestic space highlighting Bachelard’s interpretation of
the intimate space escaping the categorisation of a mechanical space. Coomy is the best
example of such tendency as evident in her frantic desire to air out the room of Chateau
Felicity to get rid of Nariman’s smell which she thinks had penetrated every corner of
the flat inviting Jal’s response that the smell is “probably stuck in your head. More
psychological than real” (Mistry, FM 94). Furnishing and re-furnishing of the material
environment is established as a way of integrating the psychic space when we see
Coomy re-appropriating the space of Chateau Felicity by a process of thorough
cleaning. The interior of Rustom’s flat in AFB too bespeaks of the loss of emotional
values thereby instigating a sense of essential loneliness as Dina awakens to emptiness.
Dina Dalal’s life follows a similar pattern of restoring psychic integration in terms of
following the mundane routine of domestic work after her husaban’s death as expressed
in her desire to indulge in “the exact habit of housework that she had developed when
Rustom was alive” (Mistry, AFB 48). After her husband’s death the familiarity of the
domestic space is engulfed in utter emptiness and the escape is possible only by
following the domestic ritual. But, in his absence, the appeal of the intimate space
vanishes and she eventually renounces the weekly cleaning ritual to escape the void
prevalent in the “familiar rooms suddenly seemed remote and mysterious, filled with
furniture yet inexplicably empty” (Mistry, AFB 48). But the same flat undergoes a
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spatial transformation with the coming of the tailors thereby banishing the void and her
renewed interest in ‘place-making activities’ resurfaces:
She decided this was a good opportunity to give the flat a thorough going-over.
In every room she heard the echoes of the tailors’ tireless banter, haunting her
while she scoured the kitchen, swept ceilings with the long-handled broom,
cleaned the windows and ventilators, washed all the floors. (Mistry, AFB 500)
As evident, the hope for the familial blessing is the factor instrumental in restoring
normalcy to the interior. To elaborate, In Family Matters the arrival of the Chenoy
family seems a ‘whirlwind’ to Coomy whereas for Nariman “it feels like a fresh breeze
has stirred the stale air” (Mistry, FM 36). His previous conceptualization of the
dwelling environment as ‘unhappy’ which “justified the gloomy style of portrait
photography” (Mistry, FM, 16) undergoes a transformation when the Chenoy family
arrives for his birthday party. Earlier Nariman felt that “the ancestral countenances
grew increasingly cheerless with each passing day” (Mistry, FM 16) but the dwelling
environment dramatically changes with the arrival of Roxana’s family:
The joy and laughter and youth they brought was an antidote to the somberness
enveloping his flat, the hours when he felt the very walls and ceilings were
encrusted with the distress of unhappy decades. The furniture too, of teak and
rosewood, the huge armoires and four-poster beds looming darkly, glum hulks
waiting for some dreaded end, seemed once again welcoming and hospitable.
And that long row of family portraits in the passageway—today their dour
grimaces seemed comical. (Mistry, FM 21)
Apart from dark interior cramped space and lack of enough space runs constant
through Mistry’s narrative as expressed in the ways the characters choreograph their
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spatial needs. Gustad’s concern over cramped space triggers the painful childhood
memories he fails to resolve and Such a Long Journey represents a poignant picture of
transforming the meagre family space devoid of all spatial amenities. Gustad Noble
makes all possible spatial arrangements to create a comfortable domestic space for his
children:
In the darkness he could see the slatted frame-door he had hinged to the side of
the bed fifteen years ago for Sohrab, who had been a turbulent little sleeper, as
though his mischievous daytime games were conitinuing into the night. The
nightly barricades they udsed to form alongside the bed with dining chairs did
not work, he always pushed the chairs away. So the slatted door it had to be.
Sohrab promptly named it the bed-with-the-door, and found the addition a
useful appendage when he constructed a bed-house out of all the bolsters and
blankets and pillows he could gather. (Mistry, SLJ 8)
His home is replete with such forms of special spatial arrangements as he fails
to arrange a proper bed for his children in the cramped space of his home. Hence,
Sohrab sleeps “on the narrow dholni which was rolled away under Darius’s bed during
the day” (Mistry, SLJ 8). Gustad’s concern parallels Yezad’s in Family Matters as both
are found busy in transforming the cramped home space as a way of inscribing
individual claim on domestic space. After Nariman’s arrival in the cramped space of
his flat, Yezad’s concern for the domestic space comes to the surface when we witness
the elaborate process of transforming the balcony into a makeshift home for his son.
His helpless anger reminds us of Gustad as for both the domestic space restricts the
possibilities of adequate spatial appropriation. For both the domestic space is experienced
and mediated in relation to the echoes of lost places in childhood which act as a
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hindrance in their experience of the present home. Gustad’s unconscious attempt is to
actualise the memories of a rewarding childhood spent with his grandfather in his home
whereas Yezad fails to translate his childhood memories of expansive space into the
tiny flat of Pleasant Villa.
The experience of cramped space as a unique marker is constant in Family
Matters. Although Coomy insists on the “happy, homely atmosphere” (Mistry, FM 88)
of Roxana’s flat, readers are already aware of the cramped space of Pleasant Villa
distinguished by frequent spatial negotiations on the part of the family members. The
following graphic description by Roxana upholds nothing but the failure of domestic
space-making as it highlights the continuous spatial appropriation the characters
undertake:
“The daytime settee, on which you two are sitting, is Jehangir’s bed at
night. Under it, Murad’s cot. There.” She lifted a corner of the counterpane.
“Nice and low, comes out at night, slides back in the morning. Next to
it, one armchair, and a Formica teapoy, which Murad moves aside when he
pulls out his bed. And our huge dining table for two, with four chairs. Shall we
go to the back room now, where Yezad and I sleep?” (Mistry, FM 89)
But Mistry offers a possibility of reconciliation in terms of the familial blessing which
makes difficult and impossible spatial negotiations and choices easier. None except
Nariman Vakeel realises the significance of the blessing. When pushed out of his
comfortable flat into the cramped little space of Pleasant Villa, Nariman’s pithy
remark,“ “that huge flat is empty as a Himalayan cave for me, this feels like a palace” ”
(Mistry, FM 104) sums up the appeal of the domestic space when enjoyed with family.
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Chateau Felicity, in comparison seems devoid of familial bliss as both Jal and Coomy
never got married. Murad’s statement “it always feels gloomy in their house” (Mistry,
FM 37) sums up the failed essence and appeal of Chateau Felicity as home. Roxana
beautifully expresses the essence of the dwelling place called home, “ “A house isn’t
sad or gloomy,” said his mother, “that depends on the people who live in it . . .” ”
(Mistry, FM 386). Similarly, Dina Dalal’s condition in A Fine Balance sums up the
importance of home as the symbol of psychic wholeness when the hired goondas
ransack her home, “fluff from the shredded cushions floated around, settling slowly to
the floor. Dina picked up the slashed casings; she felt dirty, as though the goondas’
hands had molested her own being” (Mistry, AFB 423). Haunted by the repeated
experience of dislocation, Dina fails to protect her being which leads to the complete
annihilation of her independent self. Coomy in Family Matters offers another instance
of the failure to come to terms with her being as we see in the failed structural
renovation undertaken by her. The broken ceiling further helps to ground her existential
dread as for her the emptiness of the intimate space is disorienting.
In The Victorian Parlour, Thad Logan analyzes the dual role of Victorian
drawing room as a cultural artifact “delimiting the horizons of character, and
constituting the particular visual, spatial, and sensory embodiments of human culture at
a particular historical moment,” and as a “subject of mimetic representation” (1,202).
Applied in the context of Mistry’s fiction, Logan’s conceptualisation of “semiotic
economy” offers an interesting understanding of the interior. The engagement of the
characters with cluttered interior and shrunken furniture entails the troubled relation
with the nation as replicated in their failure to belong. To elaborate, in an increasingly
hostile nation rife with political tensions, Gustad’s failure to relate as well as belong is
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reproduced in the architecture/interior of the house covered with black paper. Similar
anxiety can be traced in the description of the interior of the homes as spatial alienation
is integral to Mistry’s conceptualization of unique Parsi home where the experience of
the interior space is intricately mediated through the reality of the space of the nation.
Yezad’s expression “the same corruption that pollutes this country is right here, in your
family, in Jal and Coomy’s shameless trickery and betrayal. Think of the example they
have set. Is it any wonder Jehangla took the bribe?” (Mistry, 245) in Family Matters
foregrounds the possible interrelations between the intimate and public spaces.
II
In his exploration of domestic spaces as psychological diagrams Bachelard’s
phenomenological approach situates the mundane and mechanical work of domestic
servitude in the context of a nuanced understanding of the relation between domestic
drudgery and our sense of being. From his perspective:
The minute we apply a glimmer of consciousness to a mechanical gesture, or
practice phenomenology while polishing a piece of old furniture, we sense new
impressions come into being beneath this familiar domestic duty... he increases
the object’s human dignity; he registers this object officially as a member of
the human household.( 67)
Extending his argument in the context of Mistry’s exploration of the relation between
objects, furniture and being, we find the ways the characters negotiate and nurture the
dwelling environment in terms of cherishing the extensive assortment of furniture and
funerary objects like table, chair, bookcases, cabinets and their spatial arrangement
within the domestic space. I contend that surrounded by such collection of memorial
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pieces, the characters foreground a domestic rhetoric based on the psychic integrity
achieved via the objects and possessions. Mistry does, in the process highlight the role
such inanimate objects play in restoring moments of psychic integrity as the specific
spatial arrangement and placement of objects is expressive of our sense of being. The
spatial configuration and reconfiguration of the intimate space is reflective of
reconfiguring the psychic environment as our dwelling ambience is related to our
psychic ambience.
Consequently, the objects are humanised as integral to our intimate space.
Bachelard’s anthropomorphic interpretation when extended in the context of Such a
Long Journey foregrounds a similar conceptualisation of claiming domestic space in
terms of nurturing the cherished objects. Gustad Noble for example inhabits the
domestic space in terms of restoring intimate, human values to the family heirloom
which serve as extensive metaphor of psychic integrity:
He caressed the arms of the chair he sat in, thinking of the decades since his
grandfather had lovingly crafted it in his furniture workshop. And this black
desk. Gustad remembered the sign on the store, he could see it even now.
Clearly, as though it is a photograph before my eyes: Noble & Sons, Makers Of
Fine Furniture, and I also remember the first time I saw the sign- too young to
read the words, but not to recognize the pictures that danced around the words.
(Mistry, SLJ 6)
These objects and furniture help him to recreate the aura and ambience of the childhood
home in terms of the values of embedded intimacy, “once again, the furniture from his
childhood gathered comfortingly about him. The pieces stood like parentheses around
his entire life, the sentinels of his sanity” (Mistry, SLJ 6). As the novel proceeds, we see
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that in Gustad’s memory the values of intimacy and grandfather are conflated as he is
“the human being who dominates the corner of his most cherished memories”
(Bachelard 14). Gustad’s reminiscence is triggered by the memories of his grandfather
who personifies sanity as an anchor of psychic integrity. After his death and consequent
bankruptcy, the family heirloom serves the similar purpose as Gustad describes the
pervasive presence of his grandfather and father:
For Grandpa: who made furniture as stout-hearted as his own being, who knew
that when a piece of furniture was handed down, the family was enriched by
much more than just wood and dowels. . . . For Pappa: lover of books, who
tried to read life like a book and was therefore lost, utterly lost, when the final
volume was missing its most crucial pages... (Mistry, SLJ 254)
In the wake of the increasing hostility of the external world Gustad’s
withdrawal into the intimate domain helps to create what Bachelard called ‘the house of
memories’ (14). His inability to relinquish the family heirloom is expressive of his
desire to create a spatio-temporal continuam. To elaborate, the bookcase is one of the
few pieces of furniture Gustad felt emotionally attached to as it is part of the Noble
family legacy, “ “one or two books at a time, and eventually I will have enough to fill
that bookcase. It’s all a family really needs. A small bookcaseful of the right books, and
you are set for life” ” (Mistry, SLJ 103). The large and heavy Noble family furniture is
cherished “more for their affective than their aesthetic value” (Fuss 71). Although for
others, these pieces, seemingly lifeless lead to a cluttered interior; for Gustad these
objects and furniture to a great extent operate, in short, “as the antidote to lost time”
(Fuss 71). The possibility of making a home is possible only by inscribing the interior
with such memorial pieces which question the way these are devalued in common
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parlance. Gustad’s passionate attachment to family heirloom and withdrawal into the
intimate space of memory is a reminder of his withdrawal from the national trauma
raging in the external world in the wake of war and personal betrayal. The objects truly
offer him the promise of restoring balance and normalcy to his otherwise disturbed
psyche in terms of offering the possibility of locating the lost home in the “intimacy of
fusion” (Bachelard 57). In the words of Bachelard:
For how forcefully they prove to us that the houses that were lost forever
continue to live on in us; that they insist in us in order to live again, as though
they expected us to give them a supplement of living. How much better we
should live in the old house today! How suddenly our memories assume a
living possibility of being! (56)
Similar tendencies of recovering the spatio-temporal threads of the lost location where
the self is at home is repeatedly experienced in the novel in terms of Gustad Noble’s
frequent intrusion into the realm of stability and security achieved via the intimate
space furnished with family heirloom. He remains adrift throughout his life; rooted
only in the memory-space. His refusal to recognize the reality external world is visible
in the following musing on family heirloom:
If I could let the rotten world go by, spend the rest of life in this chair.
Grandpa’s chair, that used to sit with the black desk in the furniture workshop.
What a wonderful world, amid the din of hammering and sawing, the scent of
sawdust and sweat and polish. And in Pappa’s bookstore, with its own special
sounds and smells, the seductive rustle of turning pages, the timeless fragrance
of fine paper, the ancient leather-bound volumes in those six enormous book-
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filled rooms, where even the air had a special quality, as in a temple or a
mausoleum. (Mistry, SLJ 141)
Gustad’s complex and ambivalent relationship with the family possessions is indicative
of the failure of the nation-state to guarantee a secured location where the self is at
home. Ironically such failures permeate the intimate space frequently and the sacred
boundaries are thus destabilised. The permeability of the nation’s border is to some
extent negotiated in terms of the ways of inhabiting domestic space. As we see Gustad
Noble defines and lives life only in terms of valorising the values of intimate space
which he constantly guards, nurture and modifies. The increasing alienation from the
postcolonial reality is countered by the creation of a house of memory with cherished
objects. The Noble family artefacts help him to inscribe his claim on the domestic
space by dissolving past, present and future into one time-space continuam as
expressed in the hopes he nurtures for his sons, Sohrab and Darius. Although he hopes
that they would inherit his love of family legacy of the art of carpentry and hold onto
these artefacts in the same way he does; his sons do not share the similar attitude. As
we see Gustad is proud to see his son make a plywood display case “with his greatgrandfather’s tools” (Mistry, SLJ 65). As specified, “this was Gustad’s greatest source
of joy; to see Sohrab use those tools. He repeated what he said so often, that it must be
in the blood, this love of carpentry” (Mistry, SLJ 65).
Gustad’s valorisation of the intimate space and sense of interiority is intricately
connected with the art of preserving and cherishing the objects over time. His attempt
echoes Stewart’s statement “not simply a consumer of objects that fill the décor, the
self generates a fantasy in which it becomes a producer of those objects, a producer by
arrangement and manipulation” (158). According to him, by amassing and arranging
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objects, characters in nineteenth-century novels construct and display something of
their interiority and Mistry has an acute sense of the ways that they are visibly
connected to the construction of identity. In Such a Long Journey, while repapering the
wall with Darius Gustad recreates “the fenestrae of his life for Darius to look through”
with “Great-Grandpa’s hammer in his hand” (Mistry, SLJ 294). The following lines
clarify the status of the hammer in the history of the Noble household, “What did it
mean when a hammer like this was passed from generation to generation? It meant
something satisfying, fulfilling, at the deep centre of one’s being” (Mistry, SLJ 293).
His effort echoes his desire to traverse the onslaughts of time in terms of sharing the art
of carpentry as a source of intergenerational resource as “having crossed the countless
little thresholds of the disorder of things that are reduced to dust, these souvenir-objects
set the past in order, associating condensed motionlessness with far distant voyages into
a world that is no more” (Bachelard 143). Reminiscing about domestic space is,
therefore, a necessary pretext for musing on the possessions which define home by
spatialising the flow of memory and history. The process of sharing familial history
becomes mutually therapeutic as Gustad withdraws into nostalgic reminiscence when
he feels the wet handle of the hammer:
But how bountifully my grandfather used to sweat. Even in the prosperous
days, when there were others to do it, he loved the heavy work. And the
runnels pouring off his forehead, coursing down his face and neck. Deep in the
midst of a job, two huge patches under his arms, and his vast shirt all soaked at
the back, clinging to his skin, the wet appearing in the shape of a big heart.
Then it was off with the shirt and the sudra. The sweat flowing in great streams
now, falling on pieces of wood, on the work table, on tools around him,
sprinkling the layers of sawdust, which turned dark where the drops landed like
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life-giving water, like parched soil vitalized by a gardener. And the sweat from
Grandpa’s palms, soaking the handle of this hammer. To darken and burnish
the wood. His hands first, and then my hands. Making the handle smoother and
smoother. Sohrab should have... but Darius will. He will add his gloss to the
wood. (Mistry, SLJ 293).
Gustad seems to be thoroughly possessed by the memory of the family legacy and at
the deep core of his heart; his home contains all that he had inherited from his
ancestors.
Gaston Bachelard opines that “through housewifely care a house recovers not so
much its originality as its origin. And what a great life it would be if, every morning,
every object in the house could be made anew by our hands, could “issue” from our
hands (69). Mistry’s protagonists help to foreground similar impulse of awakening the
soul of the furniture and objects and ones’ own in the process. To elaborate, Gustad
Noble and Yezad Chenoy are often found weaving a pattern of nurturance in terms of
‘housewifely care’. Surrounded by remembrances of the intellectual and familial bonding
he shared with Major Billimoria, Gustad holds on to Major’s letters the way Yezad
holds on to the piles of papers, letters written to Canadian Embassy. Yezad, like Gustad
preserves old files, stationery, books, and frequently nurtures theses pieces as reminder
of the life he dreams. Encumbrances and loss of dear ones thread through their lives
and their refusal to de-clutter is indicative of their inner turmoil. The ‘makings’ of
home reaches to its height in terms of the ‘markings’ they inscribe on the intimate
space. The familial duties foreground such patterns of nurturing our being.
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In Family Matters, Yezad’s father and the clock had become emotionally
intertwined and the comforting ticking of the clock transports Yezad to the kitchen in
Jehangir Mansion:
How comforting its ticking, reassuring, like a steady hand guiding the affairs of
the universe. Like his father’s had that held his when he was little, leading him
through the world of wonder and upheaval. And his father’s words, always at
the end of the story, Remember your kusti prayers:manashni, gavashni,
kunashni—good thoughts, good words, good deeds...(Mistry, FM 324)
The prayers are eternally audible in the ticking of the clock and the emotional
attachment to the object is visible in the description that follows:
He strained to make out the position of the hands: one thirty—and stared at the
octagonal face, the glass door in its frame of dark polished wood, the brass
pendulum catching just a gleam of light. He gazed at it, the clock that used to
hang in the kitchen in Jehangir Masion, the one remembrance of his childhood
home, of his father...
As he looked, the clock swallowed up time. And he was back in that groundfloor flat, watching his father with the big chrome key in his hand, inserting it
on the left, winding clockwise, the on the right, anti-clockwise. His father
moving the hands through the hours, waiting for the bongs, setting the precise
time, closing the glass door with a click after giving it a wipe. And the little
boy that Yezad used to be was asking again to hear the story behind the
engraving: In gratitude for an exemplary display of courage and honesty in the
course of duty, the story of his father stranded in an exploding city with a
fortune in cash... (Mistry, FM 324)
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Mistry’s fiction is replete with examples of such attachment when we cite the examples
of Gustad Noble, Yezad Cheony, Miss Kutpitia, Professor Nariman obsessed with
furniture and objects and routine activity of nurturing such objects. To illustrate,
Gustad’s fondness for the ivory paper knife that belonged to his grandfather is worthmentioning in this context as he is often seen caressing the knife, the chairs and tables
crafted in his grandfather’s factory. His son Darius finds him “caressing the dark brown
wood of the handle” with “a faraway smile on his face” (Mistry, SLJ 293) while
teaching him the family tradition of carpentry. The way he cherishes the objects
thereby increasing their dignity in the context of intimate values makes us envisage his
family of origin via the inherited objects. The family possessions when situated in the
context of care and nurture truly reflect an emerging reality of being as specified by
Bachelard:
Objects that are cherished in this way really are born of an intimate light, and
they attain to a higher degree of reality than indifferent objects, or those that
are defined by geometric reality. For they produce a new reality of being, and
they take their place not only in an order but in a community of order. From
one object in a room to another, housewifely care weaves the ties that unite a
very ancient past to the new epoch. The housewife awakens furniture that was
asleep. (68)
The pattern of ‘housewifely care’ as mentioned above is a recurrent pattern in Mistry’s
fiction. The ‘show-case’ fiercely protected and nurtured by the “interdiction against
touching anything” (Mistry, FM 24) in Family Matters provides an apt symbol of such
tendency. Perhaps it is the only piece of furniture Jal and Coomy are attached to. The
cabinet with “the assortment of items- the vases, silver cups, a plastic gondola with
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gondolier, the Air-India maharaja perched atop the nose of a jumbo jet, an Eiffel
Tower, two grinning monkeys” (Mistry, FM 25) is expressive of their deprived
childhood leading to passionate preservation of objects. The cabinet is regularly
nurtured by them whereas the domestic space is replete with signs of a cluttered
interior. The sacrality of the cabinet and the pattern of nurturance makes Murad and
Jehangir secretly call it a ‘shrine’ and it is truly transformed into a ‘shrine’ later
thereby highlighting the almost spiritual significance of nurturing the furniture and
performing mundane domestic work. Roxana’s desire to refurbish the interior of
Chateau Felicity takes almost the resonance of a spiritual quest for ordered universe as
she restores the devastated flat to normalcy through her ‘housewifely care’. She truly
translates the geometric reality of the objects into the reality of being when she starts
“allocating rooms: her parents’ room with attached bathroom for herself and Yezad, her
former room for Jehangoo, Coomy’s for Murad—the two could share the bathroom in
the passageway. And Jal was happy where he was” (Mistry, FM 390). Preoccupied
with list of repairs, she relishes her weekly visits to their new home:
She continued to muse, imagining fresh paint for the walls and rearranging the
furniture. The furniture, she said, especially the beds, needed to be refinished.
And she remembered that in the drawing-room one of the four matching
lightshades had a crack. Also, some crystals were missing from the diningroom chandeliers. (Mistry, FM 390)
She unifies the household in terms of restoring dignity to the objects and furniture, a
task Coomy fails to indulge in thereby leading to her fatal accident. Roxana’s nurturing
presence is amply visible when she chooses objects with care and in the process
inscribes her presence on the domestic space. ‘Housewifely care’ is therefore a potent
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way of making the home with individual marking as we see her accompanying Yezad
to choose household appliances. The mundane work of choosing kitchen appliances is
equated with a dream as she relishes the work.
Dina in A Fine Balance resembles the group of characters whose actions are
indicative of their nurturing instinct as the potent way of inscribing domestic space with
individual marking. In the process of constructing the material ambience of home they
anchor nothing but psychic integration as Jung discusses in the process of building his
house. To elaborate, apparently independent Dina’s craving for her father’s “huge
wardrobe, the one with the carved rosewood canopy of a sunburst and flowers” (Mistry,
AFB 41) suffices as the apt example as she is ready to “forgo everything else, she said
for this one item” (Mistry, AFB 41). Unlike Nusswan, unconscious of the psychological
nuances of domestic space and furniture, and objects; her desire to preserve the
furniture from their parents’ possessions in her new home is indicative of the tendency
to valorise the values of intimacy which her brother fails to understand.
As we see, like Gustad she too wants to recreate the homely atmosphere of the
lost home in terms of localising memory but Nusswan’s denial to part with the
wardrobe on the ground that “the scratches would be unfair to their father’s memory,
and, besides, its proportions wouldn’t suit the tiny rooms” (Mistry, AFB 41) mirrors the
future course of her life of spatial dislocation devoid of intimacy as well as her
brother’s failure at domestic space-making. Eventually, Dina gets the smaller and
plainer cupboard, a little desk, and twin beds which hold no promise for her but still she
manages to translate the banal interior of Rustom’s flat into a blessed space of intimacy
through her familial, domestic duties. Unlike her brother whose failure to translate the
home into a place of intimate physical and psychological bonding is expressed in the
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way he calculates the values of possessions by calling Dina’s dining table ‘ugly little’
and the sofa as something “from Bawa Adam’s time” (Mistry, AFB 562), Dina appears
to be more sensitive. His plan to dispose these pieces of to a jaripuranawalla expresses
his limited understanding of values of domestic intimacy. Dina’s reaction is starkly
different as these pieces are integrated to her psyche:
She did not plead for the memories which fleshed the ribs of her meager
belongings....... At night in bed, she covered herself the quilt and took to
recounting the abundance of events in the tightly knit family of patches, the
fragments that she had fashioned with needle, thread, and affection. If she
stumbled along the way, the quilt nudged her forward. (Mistry, AFB 562-563)
Similarly attachment is visible in “Condolence Visit” where the interior containing
familiar furniture and engulfed in darkness contains the universe for Daulat who views
the possibility of survival only in terms of clinging to objects that evoke passages of
memory:
But half-dark was light enough in this room into which had been concentrated
her entire universe for the duration of her and Minocher’s ordeal. Every little
detail in this room she knew intimately: the slivered edge of the first
compartment of the chest of drawers where a sudra could snag, she knew to
avoid; the little trick, to ease out the shirt drawer which always stuck, she was
familiar with; the special way to jiggle the key in the lock of the Godrej
cupboard she had mastered a long time ago. (Mistry, 67)
“Condolence Visit” is an interesting exploration of passages and tumults of memory
evoked by the familiar objects which are “hybrid objects, subject objects. Like us,
through us and for us, they have a quality of intimacy” (Bachelard 78). Distinguished
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by the repeated metaphor of light and darkness, the story shows Daulat’s
transformation after the death of her husband. Daulat fails to empty the Godrej steel
cupboard out and clings to the familiar objects as a source of continual nurturance. Her
passion for the cupboard, chest of drawers reminds the passionate outporing of
Bachelard. To quote Bachelard “wardrobes with their shelves, desks with their drawers,
and chests with their false bottoms are veritable organs of the secret psychological life.
Indeed, without these “objects” and a few others in equally high favour, our intimate
life would lack a model of intimacy” (Bachelard 78). Her desire to cling to the familiar
possessions valorises the enactment of the pattern of intimacy in terms of posing the
cupboard as the spatial anchor of such values. The detailed description follows in
“Condolence Visit”:
This cupboard would be the hard one to empty out,with each garment holding
memories of parties and New Year’s Eve dances, weddings and navjotes.
Strung out on the hangers and spread out on the shelves were the chronicles of
their life together, beginning with the Parsi formal dress Minocher had worn on
the day of their wedding; silk dugli, white silk shirt, and the magnificent
pugree. (Mistry, SL 67)
Musing on the lost art of pugree-making and enjoying the values of intimacy Daulat
expresses a poetic way of inhabiting the domestic space as Bachelard specifies:
Every poet of furniture-even if he be a poet in a garret, and therefore has no
furniture-knows that the inner space of an old wardrobe is deep. A wardrobe’s
inner space is also intimate space, space that is not open to just anybody... In
the wardrobe there exists a center of order that protects the entire house against
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uncurbed disorder... Memories come crowding when we look back upon the
shelf. (Bachelard 78-79)
Hence the objects and furniture truly become the ordering centre in Daulat’s life
thereby shaping it in terms of a new direction.
As we see objects and furniture do play a significant role in our psychological
life by evoking the memory of our loved ones and exteriorising it in a time-space
continuam as evident in Daulat’s experience. But the experience of objects and interior can
evoke different reactions in different persons. Marcus’s discussion of British psychoanalyst
Michael Balint’s categorisation of ocnophil and philobat can shed new lights here. As
she argues:
The first type, for which Balint coined the term philobat is a person who enjoys
innovation and ambiguity, who seeks out activities involving a temporary loss
of equilibrium (sking, sailing, climbing, roller-coaster rides), and for whom
objects—both human and physical—may sometimes be seen to be getting in
the way. The ocnophil, on the other hand, clings to familiarity and to secure
places and people, shuns unpredictable or thrill-seeking experiences, and
cherishes objects, both human and physical. (88-89)
Similar tendencies can be traced in the obsessive yearning of the characters to
hold onto possessions sometimes operating as symbols of entrapment. What Mistry
highlights is that the obsessive engagement with ‘housewifely care’ as the way of
inscribing one’s spatial claim may lead to disastrous consequences as we see in the case
of Gustad Noble, Coomy, Yezad Chenoy and others. Although they cannot be categorised
as completely ocnophilic in nature, they surely manifest such tendencies in their
obsessive engagement with objects and possessions. As visible in Gustad’s case, in the
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wake of Sohrab’s departure Gustad’s dream of making the bookcase is shattered and
the bookcase takes the burden of his failure; “the new books had sat on one corner of
the desk since they were brought home four Fridays ago. And my plans for the
bookcase-turned to dust. Like everything else” (Mistry, SLJ 128). Moreover his
fascination with the family heirloom which Sohrab fails to share is an obvious example
here. Preservation of objects and possessions is implicit in his idea of inhabiting the
domestic space. Ironically, Sohrab interprets the holder-steel, a favourite possession of
his father as a fossil and shares no affection for the ivory-knife that originally belonged
to his grandfather. Similarly, the kitchen clock in Family Matters is the sole material
reminder of Jehangir Mansion and Yezad’s obsession for it is visible throughout the
narrative as Roxana reminds us that Yezad was not allowed anything else except the
clock although he was entitled to his share of furniture. Such resonance resurfaces
frequently in Mistry’s as the possessions operate as multilayered symbol of psychic
integration as well as the experience of disintegration in terms of sheltering memories
and dreams.
III
Memories are motionless, and the more securely they are fixed in space, the
sounder they are. (Bachelard 9)
Bachelard’s quotation highlights the fact that memory is always located or housed in
space and can also be used to ‘mark’ a space as one’s own. Such sense of ownership is
best exemplified in the domestic space as “an entire past comes to dwell in a new
house” (Bachelard 5). The analysis of intimate domestic space must take into consideration
the effective marking of memory and dream as both unite space and time in terms of
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multiple spaces. Bachelard rightly opines that “through dreams, the various dwellingplaces in our lives co-penetrate and retain the treasures of former days” (5). The idea of
marking the domestic space with flashes of memory and dream distinguish Mistry’s
representation of the intimate space as the “knowledge of intimacy needs localisation in
the spaces of our intimacy” (Bachelard 9)
The representation of the domestic space in Mistry’s fiction is replete with the
flow of memory and dream operating as a spatio-temporal marking. Nariman in Family
Matters and Gustad Noble in Such a Long Journey are the best examples to highlight
the effective sense of memory-marking as their claim to the domestic space is mediated
through their memory of lost time and spaces. Nariman, to elaborate is found to be fond
of darkness the way Gustad is. For both the dark interior is a space to piece together the
lost threads of memory and make the home they have lost. Both take recourse to what
Bachelard calls a ‘house of memory’ (Bachelard 60). As we see, Nariman blesses the
darkness as it offers him the scope to dream about the days with Lucy. In the dream
when he watches his wife ransacking the drawers for stack of letters, birthday cards, the
little notes Lucy used to send him and photographs to burn them all in the thurnible, the
pain of “mementos of their halcyon days, fed one by one to the burning coals” (Mistry,
FM 326) and turning into ashes tortures him. Being used to the presence of the glum
portraits of his forefathers on the walls Nariman was overpowered by the presence of
the dead as he says, “strange, how their eyes looked at him— as though they were the
living and he the dead” (Mistry, FM 77). But after his accident when he is being shifted
to the Pleasant Villa, he muses on the possibility of asking the “ambulancemen to make
a tour of each room so he could examine everything, fix it in his mind before the door
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closed behind him” (Mistry, FM 77). His physical dislocation does not entail a mental
dislocation as both Chateau Felicity and Pleasant Villa are conflated in his dreams.
In Such a Long Journey Gustad Noble expresses similar concerns as his
negotiation of the domestic space is often mediated through the memories of his
childhood days. His sense of possession indicates the values of the intimate space
available only through memory. Both Gustad and Nariman exemplify the qualities of
what Bachelard calls dreamer of dwellings; “housed everywhere but nowhere shut in,
this is the motto of the dreamer of dwellings” (Bachelard 62) as they traverse multiple
spatio-temporal zones. Such an example occurs in Such a Long Journey when Gustad’s
writing table becomes a space unifying multiple strands of memory unfolding in rapid
succession:
In the name of progress they discarded seemingly unimportant things, without
knowing that what they were chucking out the widow of modernity was
tradition... Mixing memory and sorrow, he thought fondly of the old days. At
last, he dipped the nib in the ink bottle and began. The shadow of his writing
had fell on the paper. He moved the lamp to the left, completed the address,
and dated the letter. As he wrote the salutation the power returned. The bulb
blazed over the dining-table. After hours of darkness, the harsh electric light
flooded the room insolently from corner to corner. He switched it off and
resumed writing by the kerosene lamp. (Mistry, SLJ 61)
His meditation on writing as the prime creative outlet can be interpreted as the latent
manifestation of memory as ‘marking’ as well as localising memory in spaces of comfort.
A dark interior and the inability of the characters to sleep run constant in
Mistry’s fiction. The darkened flat in Chateau Felicity parallels Gustad’s dark interior
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in Such a Long Journey where he longs for sleep but the childhood memory of the
bankruptcy and consequent illness of his mother made sleep a troublesome exercise for
him, “sleep was no longer a happy thing for him then, but a time when all anxieties
intensified, and anger grew—a strange, unfocused anger—and helplessness; and he
would wake up exhausted to curse the day that was dawning” (Mistry, SLJ 8). His only
wish is therefore to guarantee peace and tranquillity for his children as they sleep. As
we see, Nariman too finds sleep difficult and only with the help of Jehangir and Murad
he is able to sleep.
Mistry’s representation of the domestic space is therefore mediated through the
downpour of memories and dreams as expressed in the repetitive pattern of recurring
dreams. As we see dream and memories are the manifestation of the need to inscribe
one’s presence in the domestic space otherwise lost in past. The search for the elusive
and ephemeral home is only possible through the ephemeral flow of memory and
dream. As I highlight, the dwelling space is necessitated by the act of remembering
which frequently surfaces in Mistry’s conceptualisation of domestic space validated by
values of intimacy. To elaborate, Dina’s plan “to go through them one by one, examine
like a coin collection, their shines and tarnishes and embossments” (Mistry, AFB 479)
leads her to torrent of memories. Similarly, Daulat in “Condolence Visit” finds the
darkness of her flat comforting after the death of her husband and withdraws into the
silence of the flat “where moments of life past and forgotten, moments lost, misplaced,
hidden away, were all waiting to be recovered. They were like the stubs of cinema
tickets she came across in Minocher’s trouser pockets or jackets, wrung through the
laundry, crumpled and worn thin but still decipherable” (Mistry, 69).The whole
ensemble of the room upholds the rhetoric of domestic intimacy in terms of translating
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it into a space where moments lost in time and space are relived in the domain of
intimacy.
However not all the characters value the home as the domain of intimate
habitation. As the analysis charts we see how some characters still consider the home as
only a ‘geometric space’ and fails to unlearn the habit of mechanical ways and rhythms
of inhabiting domestic space. The failure to enjoy values of intimacy leads, as I contend
not only to a failure to inscribe one’s mark on the domestic space but also disintegration of
psyche. Coomy in Family Matters offers an interesting account of such failure which
ultimately leads to her death. As we see, she waters the seed of destruction already
manifested in the incessant hammering of Edul Munshi, the maniac handyman living in
Chateau Felicity. Edul is generally considered as a clown and maniac and very aptly his
menaceing presence distinguishes the beginning of the novel. His home is replete with
the failed attempt at ‘place-making activities’ in terms of the destructiove potential of
his hobby leading to domestic disasters. His incompetence is gradually transferred to
the Vakeel family home:
His broken heart mended in a few days, and he tackled the job again, the
shelves staying up this time. But there were gaping holes in the wall plaster.
And the patching he accomplished left the surface uneven as the wall of a
mountain cave. Manizeh assured him it was fine, that for modern décor,
interior designers recommended textured walls. (Mistry, FM 152)
Edul is renowned to bring disasters wherever he goes. The text is replete with incidents
where the dripping leak of the tap leads to a flood thereby creating a “series of
progressively larger disasters” (Mistry, FM 152). Although childless Edul and Manizeh
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do enjoy moments of conjugal bliss which is later disturbed when he is called to Vakeel
family commonly regarded as a house of unhappiness and sorrow.
Edul along with Coomy are the perfect examples of the failure to inhabit the
domestic space imaginatively as both suffer from the consequence of considering the
home as only a space bound by mechanical rules. His frantic indulgence in the
overambitious renovation projects, “his dreams of installing new flooring, performing a
bathroom renovation, constructing built-in closets” (Mistry, FM 152-153) are symbolic
of his failure to inhabit the domestic space what Bachelard terms ‘poetically’. The
house remains an inert structure for him and Coomy identifies with Edul in spite of Jal’s
repeated warning. Coomy’s failure to relate to her step-father is transferred to her
mechanical ways of negotiating the space of Chateau Felicity as she indulges in the
destruction of her own home. Initially Coomy and Jal borrow Edul’s hammer to
damage the ceiling to delay Nariman’s home-coming and in the process replicates the
devastation in their own home. The symbolic role of the hammer can hardly be negated
here as we are introduced to its persistent hammering since the beginning. Gradually,
the interior of Chateau Felicity becomes symbolic of the horrific transformation of the
domestic space with “debris covering the drawing-room floor” (Mistry, FM 163) as
Coomy proceeds to delay her step-father’s home-making further.
Although Jal initiates the process of destruction, gradually he becomes an
unwilling participant, a ploy in Coomy’s scheme as he is sensitive to the emotional
values embedded in the domestic space of Chateau Felicity. Being a sensitive reader of
the spatial layout, his reading of the domestic space is mediated through the positive
echoes of bonding he shared with his family and unlike Coomy he is unable to
withstand the destruction plotted by his sister. The memories are not obstacles for his
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spatial logic of valued intimacy and his poignant outburst highlights the underlying
horror rooted in the failure to dwell imaginatively rather than projecting the torrent of
painful memories onto the domestic space:
“Why should you care? Family does not matter to you! You keep nursing your
bitterness instead of nursing Pappa. I’ve begged you for thirty years to let it go,
to forgive, to look for peace.”
He started pacing again, raising his arms to the ceiling, shaking them
in despair. “Look around, look at what you’ve achieved.”
She looked, hoping to calm him by doing his bidding, and saw the dust
and plaster everywhere. She raised her eyes and saw the mutilated ceiling. She
shuddered. For the first time since the hammer blows, her heart sank.
“Don’t turn away! You said you wanted a ruin, so feast your eyes!
Happy? Ruined house, and ruined relations with our one and only sister.”
(Mistry, FM 166)
The pitiful state of the ceilings with gouges and cracks mirror the failure on the
part of Coomy who is never found to indulge in the ‘housewifely care’ as pointed out
by Bachelard. Unlike Roxana she fails to inscribe her mark on the domestic space. As
wee see, her food is stale and she does not enjoy the pleasure of serving in fine bone
china. Domestic work is a necessary obstacle for her as visible in her repeated
complaints. As discussed earlier she fails to enjoy the comfort of spacious apartment
when her sister enjoys the mundane domestic work. The shrunken house “sunk in our
misfortune, in plaster and dust” (Mistry, FM 261) and the dismal interior of Chateau
Felicity therefore truly mirrors her psyche.
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As the novel proceeds to invert the description of home-making practices when
Edul Munshi’s hammer continues “its endless tattoo” (Mistry, FM 272), Coomy too
undergoes a failed process of inscribing her mark by inhabiting the intimate space as
the spatial destruction parallels her psychic disintegration culminating in death. The
hint of destruction is brilliantly woven into the narrative with descriptions of minor
accidents. The material environment of Chateau Felicity gradually resembled a
decaying and diseased surface. Gradually both jal and Coomy learn to cope up with the
rapidly changing familiar space as Coomy’s plan to employ Edul for adding steel girder
with steel posts, hydraulic jacks further destabilizes their home. The detailed
description of the restructuring of the interior and the dramatic description of the stages
of fatal renovation is fraught with intense emotional reactions from everyone including
Jal. To borrow Marcus’s term, both Coomy and Edul fail to translate their desire of
‘place-making’ into actuality. Their failure is generated by their constant withdrawal
from the creative ways of appropriating the domestic space. As we witness, the entire
process of reshaping and renovating Chateau Felicity is not generated by the impulse of
home-making; rather it is imbued with the impulse to consider home what Bachelard
calls a ‘geometric space’ only. Consequently the rhythm of inhabiting the space is
excluded from the mechanical experience of spatial transformation they indulge in
leading to the catastrophic failure in the form of death of Coomy and Edul. The failure
of mechanistic interpretation is extended to Edul’s home in the form of withering away
of conjugal bliss as their happy home is also plunged into misery as a result of the
broken ceiling.
The haunting memories of her deprived childhood and the consequent failure at
‘place-making activities’ (Cooper, 21) makes Coomy feel inhibited and hence she fails
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to enjoy the blessing of domestic intimacy valorised by Bachelard. Jal remains the only
person who still enjoys a sense of domestic bliss as Yezad opines; “happily ever after—
inside a ruin” (Mistry, FM 381). Coomy’s psychic state augments the feeling of being a
recluse and her withdrawal from the pleasures of domestic chores is indicative of her
inner confinement manifested in the destruction of Chateau Felicity.
Mistry’s representation of domestic space distinguished by the spatial logic of
intimacy and memorialisation reaches to the neurotic edge in Miss Kutpitia whose
neurotic response to domestic space can be attributed to personal trauma which is
reflected in the actual designing of domestic space devoid of values of intimacy. Miss
Kutpitia’s home in Such a Long Journey exemplifies the fact of failed intimacy
embedded in the interior which bears the mark of frantic effort on her part to withdraw
in the recesses of her psyche. Coomy’s instinct for destruction is translated here into the
frantic impulse to hold on to memories as expressed in her effort to keep the house just
as it was before the death of her nephew Farad and his father. Her eccentricity is
established in the novel as we see she earns the reputation of being “a miser, a typical
lose-screw eccentric” (Mistry, SLJ 85) who enjoys living “with dust and cobwebs
everywhere, stacks of old newspapers piled to the ceiling, empty milk bottles in
corners, curtains tattered, sofa cushions spilling their insides, and cracked light shades
hanging from the ceiling like broken birds and bats” (Mistry, SLJ 85). Strange tales of
supernatural visitation and long conversations ensuing from absent voices haunt her
home as none is allowed to intrude and violate her privacy. She remains mostly homebound and her refusal to step outside and consequent seclusion is triggered by the grief
over the loss of her loved ones in an accident. Her desire to sequester herself in
domestic space is a way of inscribing the belief of their eventual return, an act
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impossible to realise. Her home is the space which memorialized the love for her
family lost forever.
The almost mummified interior of Miss Kutpitia’s home reflects her
recessiveness and desire to be invisible as we hardly hear her voice. “Doors represent
for the poet the possibility of crossing over or passing through. They are the concrete
visualization of the tenuous border between the finite and the infinite, the mortal and
the immortal, the human and the divine” (Fuss 15). The closed doors therefore symbolise
the failed possibilities of coming to terms with one’s life and Miss Kutpitia’s home is
always represented with set of locked doors. When Gustad goes to use the telephone we
found Miss Kutpitia welcoming him with a set of keys as her retreat into psyche is
reflected in the lugubrious interior of her closed home. As we see, she does not
encourage any changes in her interior which remains claustrophobic till the end. The
description of her home where “windows were shut tight, the heavy curtains drawn.
Thick, stubborn odours of mildew and disuse loomed in the doorway” (Mistry, SLJ
283) is replete with the nuances of the nephew memorialized who died a tragic death
leading to her trial for “three and a half decades of reverently observed isolation”
(Mistry, SLJ 283). Dilnavaz therefore cannot but help to notice “the gleam in the old
woman’s eyes as, in the manner of an artist unveiling the piece de resistance, she threw
open the portal and bade them enter the forbidden chamber” (Mistry, SLJ 283). The
detailed description of her home is unique in terms inverting the unifying experience of
domestic space:
Shades of grey and white shrouded everything. Cobweb wreaths and
layers of dust made it difficult to identify objects, except for the ghostly
furniture. But as her senses adapted to the eerie stillness and the crepuscular
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glow of the dim, dust-coated light bulb, the shadowy chamber started
grudgingly to yield its secrets. She was now able to see that the rags hanging
on the clothes-horse had once possessed the crisp, starched form of a boy’s
shirt and short pants, perhaps a school uniform. From the lower rod, two dark,
holey rags dangling like moults of mysterious reptiles were definitely the
remains of socks. And what seemed to be a strip of shrivelled leather had been
a belt of the finest snakeskin. Yes, it was clear.
...this must have been the room of Miss Kutpitia’s nephew Farad, who
had once filled her cup to overflowing. The one who had died with his father in
the car accident on the mountain. (Mistry, SLJ 283)
The interior truly mirrors her psychic state as her desire to “mend and fix, ever since, in
her own peculiar way” (Mistry, FM 283) coupled with the effect of “the tropical
climate” (Mistry, FM 283) leads to a ruinscape. From Bachelard’s perspective, she
commits the same mistake of considering the house as an inert entity, a geometric space
taking the burden of memory and guilt. Her desire to inscribe her claim on domestic
space is indicative of the heightened awareness of the failure of inhabiting the space.
Perhaps Mistry’s warning is clear. Although she does not replicate Coomy’s fate, Miss
Kutpitia offers an interesting dimension of home-making. The ‘house of memory’
reaches to its extreme in her home. The detailed description of her interior through
Dilnavaz’s eye is worth quoting here:
The damp of thirty-five monsoons, rampant humidity-loving fungi, numerous
types of variegated moulds – all played their clammy smeary parts in the
process of decay and disintegration. There was the boy’s desk, with an exercise
book lying open. Its pages curled and yellow. Next to it a stack of textbooks,
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the one on top brown-paper-covered, with the title penned by a boy’s yet-tomature hand, in fading ink that had defied the intervening years: High School
English Grammar and Composition by Wren and Martin. Fountain-pen and
inkpot, dry as dust. A warped, cracked ruler. Pencils. Erasers like little chunks
of hardwood. Draped over a chair, a green raincoat covered with fuzzy, grey
growth; under the chair, black gumboots, gone furry grey. On the bed, the
mattress’s black-striped ticking showed through gaping holes in the bedclothes where generations of moths had feasted for ten thousand nights. But the
sheet and blanket were neatly arranged, the pillow in position, awaiting the
occupant’s return. (Mistry, SLJ 284)
In her psyche place and the people who lived with and around her became intertwined
in such a way that memories had begun to take precedence over real relationships. She
lives like a recluse when the spatial relations are overpowered by the memories of lost
home imagined in terms of human presence no longer visible. Hence her existence is
marked by the desire to cling to familiar surrounding the way an ocnophil will do.
Marcus uses the term domocentrism to describe “the desperate clinging to what is
inside”(80). As argued by Marcus:
People who are domocentric are so profoundly connected to their house
that this relationship has become both a substitute for, and a barrier to,
close relationships with other people. In other words, their dwelling and
its contents have become such compelling psychological defences that
they appear to interfere with interpersonal relations and with a deeper
connection to a person’s transpersonal self or spiritual self. (80)
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Miss Kutpitia too exemplifies similar tendencies of withdrawing into the intimate space
as the detailed description of Farad’s father’s room follows the similar pattern of
mourning:
His lawyer’s robe, in shreds more grey than black, was suspended from the
door latch on a wire hanger. Sheaves of legal documents, bundles of court
papers, each tied correctly with pink cloth ribbon, were in neat piles on a metal
desk. A hairbrush, shaving kit, attaché case, magazines, occupied a bedside
table. And everywhere, the cobwebs hung densely, wreathing the light fixtures,
curtains, doorframes, windows, cupboards, clothes-horses, ceiling fans. Like
tohruns and garlands of gloom, the cobwebs had spread their clinging arms and
embraced the relics of Miss Kutpitia’s grief-stricken past. (Mistry, SLJ 284)
The ruin is therefore, according to Marcus, a manifestation of the separation from
higher self achieved only with the destruction of “the precious grief-nurturing
reminders of her beloved nephew and brother” which “perished within the brick walls
of those reliquaries” (290) and the consequent grace of surrendering:
Only Miss Kutpitia understood the mystery of the benign fire. For thirty-five
years, the very essences of all the hoarded mementoes had worked like a gentle
salve upon the unkind gashes of her sorrow. They soothed her grief with their
secret marrow, and Miss Kutpitia understood this well.
But she also knew that the qualities which made-these objects special,
made them glow with the aura which their owners had imparted to them, were
not eternal- that one day they would lose their luminescence and become
worthless. When that happened, she would be on her own.
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Now, with the fire, it was evident that the day had arrived.
The fire’s conduct made it plain-all that was healing and life-giving in
her treasures had already been drawn forth by her, leaving feathery
husks too insubstantial to feed the flames. (Mistry, SLJ 291)
IV
The discourse on domesticity cannot avoid including a perspective on gender roles.
Mistry’s perspective on gender roles is visible in the representation of housewives/
mothers whose home-making practices are visible in their continual effort to nurture
and nourish as argued by Bachelard “in the intimate harmony of walls and furniture, it
may be said that we become conscious of a house that is built by women, since men
only know how to build a house from the outside, and they know little or nothing of the
“wax” civilization” (68). Although they are mostly confined to the domestic space,
Mistry foregrounds that the ‘makings’ of home will be impossible without their
participatory contribution in terms of essential ‘markings’. Often mediated through the
housewifely duties and culinary activities, their marking on domestic space cannot be
negated to foreground a domestic rhetoric of unified existence. Mistry invests them
with a strong claim to domestic space as they transform the mundane spaces into a
space of experiencing the integrity of being.
As seen in Family Matters, Roxana, unlike her sister Coomy is a dutiful wife
and mother whose continual devotion marks the cramped space of Pleasant Villa into a
place of domestic happiness. She is visualised preserving her integrity against all odds
and her continuous effort to care for everyone in the family is visible in her daily
chores. She nurses Nariman back to health and performs the daily routine of going to
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market, buying vegetables, cooking dinner without any sign of frustration. As her son
specifies, Roxana’s intention is to assure everybody’s happiness and she is found
continuously checking it. Mr. Rangarajan’s comment sumps up the significance of the
housewives:
“Just?” Mr. Rangarajan was aghast. “What are you saying, dear lady?
Housewifery is a most important calling, requiring umpteen talents. Without
housewife there is no home; without home, no family. And without family,
nothing else matters, everything from top to bottom falls apart or descends into
chaos. Which is basically the malady of the West. Would you not agree,
Professor Vakeel?” (Mistry, FM 156)
The description of daily chores distinguishes the ways the female characters
‘mark’ the domestic space. In Such a Long Journey Dilnavaz, Gustad Noble’s wife
resembles Roxana in her daily schedule as both indulge in the similar household works.
Both are found religiously filling the water drum and buying milk and preserving the
family’s physical and mental health. Roxana preserves a separate routine for her
husband in the morning with separate teapot and cozy as Yezad loves morning and the
breakfast hour. Dilnavaz too measures her time in terms of the mundane activities as
we see “that familiar hissing, spitting, blustering was a summons to wake” (Mistry, SLJ
5). The detailed description of her filling the matloo and adding six drops of dark
crimson solution of potassium permanganate to the water runs constant in the novel.
She consciously uses municipality’s daily water quota and her constant worry over not
boiling the water disturbs Gustad. As seen, they justify their presence through the ideal
housewifely duties. Roxana kept regular track of the three earthen jars, especially the
large, dark brown one where she stores the ration-shop rice and hides wheat and mango
in rice.
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It can be said that they express a kind of epistemology of home where the
human existence is enacted in terms of performing the mundane household practices
thereby inscribing the domestic space with ritualistic ardour as depicted in Roxana’s
interpretation of her routine:
Her father and her son were still sleeping when she lit the stove and made tea
at three-thirty, dropping the leaves directly into the kettle of boiling water.
Afternoon tea did not merit the teapot and cosy she used in the morning. And
when she thought about her routine, crystallized into domestic perfection over
the years, she found it odd because morning was the hectic time—the leisurely
ritual would have better suited the afternoon. (Mistry, FM 99-100)
Performing mundane activities mark the domestic space as sacred as the housewives
lend a spiritual significance to the domestic space. Roxana visualizes her husband “as
brave and strong as any Rustam or Sohrab, her hero, whose mundane exploits deserved
to be recorded in his very own Shah-Nama, his Yezad-Nama, and she thanked fate,
God, fortune, whoever was in charge” (Mistry, FM 102). We witness a spiritual
transformation of the mundane work in the following lines of Family Matters:
The unhung washing was waiting on the balcony. She shook out the
clothes, fretting about the wrinkles already settled in the fabric, and kept
glancing inside the room to make sure Jehangoo was behaving himself. The
balcony door framed the scene: nine-year-old happily feeding seventy-nine.
And then it struck her like a revelation—of what, she could not say.
Hidden by the screen of damp clothes, she watched, clutching Yezad’s shirt in
her hands. She felt she was witnessing, something almost sacred, and her eyes
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refused to relinquish the precious moment, for she knew instinctively that it
would become a memory to cherish, to recall in difficult times when she
needed strength...
And for a brief instant, Roxana felt she understood the meaning of it
all, of birth and life and death. My son, she thought, my father, and the food I
cooked…A lump came to her throat; she swallowed. (Mistry, FM 98)
Resembling a sacred revelation this example infuses time and space into a larger reality
of mythic time.
The housewives “represented for generations basic gestures always strung
together and necessitated by the interminable repetition of household tasks performed
in the succession of meals and days, with attention given to the body of others” (Giard
154). When applied in the context of Mistry’s representation of housewives, it is seen
that their claim to domestic space is mediated through their act of preserving the body.
To elaborate, in Family Matters, Roxana’s desire to reduce the amount of egg intake of
her husband parrallels Maneck’s mother, Aban Kohlah’s request to Dina to give
Maneck not more than two eggs in Such a Long Journey. Her letter contains “tips for
his breakfast: fried eggs should be cooked floating in butter because he disliked the
leathery edge that got stuck to the pan; scrambled eggs were to be light and fluffy, with
milk added during the final phase” (Mistry, AFB 193). Mrs. Fitter in Family Matters
renowned for her delicious kheema also expresses similar concern. Mostly confined in
kitchen her only worry is whether Shapurji wants his egg on the kheema or on the side.
Similarly Manizeh, Edul Munshi’s wife too spends hours in inquiring whether he wants
the fish fried or in a sauce.
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However failure to provide proper nourishment is interpreted as the failure to
claim domestic space in terms of housewifely duties as seen in the desperate attempt of
Roxana, Dina, Dilnavaz and others. When in spite of their tireless effort, the slow
erosion of the domestic happiness becomes first visible in their failure to provide
proper nourishment, they are haunted by a sense of failure. Roxana’s pain is evident
when she serves the meatless dinner with only cauliflower and potatoes and Irish stew
without mutton. The lack of butter makes her worried when Murad leaves the table
without touching the slice of bread. Moreover when her frugalities start becoming
visible in her choosing a small tin of oil and omitting butter from the meal, the failure
to preserve and nourish the body continually haunts her. Dilnavaz’s worries too follow
the similar pattern when daily cooking and chores is haunted by a sense of domestic
failure. The desperation to preserve the nourishing pattern is visible when she sells her
bangles to arrange for the special diet prescribed for her daughter, “boiled foods, not
even a hint of spice, coconut water every morning, chicken soup for lunch and dinner,
juice of three sweet lemons in the afternoon, and a drink of Bovril as and when desired
in between” (Mistry, SLJ 219). She is even ready to buy Bovril in the black market
which highlights her sacrificial effort to preserve the child’s body. Mostly the
housewives are seen using leftover food for dinner and their discontent is clearly
visible. Roxana’s worn out, old and smudgy home-planning envelopes for milk, tea,
butter and bread symbolize her failure to preserve the healing touch of nourishment
What Mistry highlights is that even though they face multiple odds the housewives
survive and make a strong claim to domestic space through their innate managerial
instinct.
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In the words of Luce Giard, these housewives “entering into the vocation of
cooking and manipulating ordinary things” use the “subtle intelligence full of nuances
and strokes of genius, a light and lively intelligence that can be perceived without
exhibiting itself, in Short, a very ordinary intelligence” (158). The ‘ordinary intelligence’
therefore remains crucial to the role they are playing as housewives as well as members
of the community. To elaborate, the housewives practice this ‘ordinary intelligence’ at
multiple levels to sustain the domestic rhetoric of integrated existence. Hence,
housewives using ‘ordinary intelligence’ and translating it into an essence of reality of
being in the world is recurrent in Mistry’s fiction as “the preparation of a meal
furnishes that rare joy of producing something oneself, of fashioning a fragment of
reality, of knowing the joys of a demiurgic miniaturization” (Giard 158).
Almost every female character in Mistry’s fiction enacts the desire to fashion a
sense of reality which will justify their claim to the domestic space. In A Fine Balance
Ruby justifies her role of the ideal housewife by scolding Dina for substituting
cauliflower for cabbage; oranges for chickoos. Ruby’s complaint follows only the
gastronomic trajectory when she accuses Dina for sabotaging the carefully planned
meals for her husband as the perfect designing of meals are part of her existence as
dutiful wife. While defining ‘doing-cooking’, Luce Giard in ‘The Nourishing Arts’
says how women are traditionally confined to the domestic space especially the
kitchen. According to her women occupy a “level of social invisibility” and a “degree
of cultural nonrecognition” (Giard 156). As she argues culinary practices are believed
to occupy a basic, marginal position; “at the most rudimentary level, at the most
necessary and the most unrespected level” (Giard 156). Commonly judged as repetitive
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and devalued as monotonous, such practices are excluded from the practical world of
archival knowledge. But, in reality they are part of the ordinary culture:
With their high degree of ritualization and their strong affective investment,
culinary activities are for many women of all ages a place of happiness,
pleasure, and discovery. Such life activities demand as much intelligence,
imagination, and memory as those traditionally held as superior, such as music
and weaving. In this sense, they rightly make up one of the strong aspects of
ordinary culture. (Giard 151)
In Mistry’s fiction, the Parsi housewives like Roxana, Dilnavaz, Ruby, Dina, Mrs.
Fitter, use such ‘ordinary intelligence’ to inscribe their mark on the domestic space.
Their continual preoccupation with household activities inverts the conventional notion
of the mundane rhythm of culinary work as banal and repetitive in nature. Mistry’s
housewives establish the fact that the culinary work is basically “a repetition of an
archaic structure, a knowledge linked to very ancient social codes, stabilized in old
forms of equilibrium, that is, in an obscure and hardly rational medley of preferences,
necessities, and received customs” (Giard 201). Cooking replicates the pattern of
cultural exchanges and the symbolic role of culinary production can hardly be negated.
Mistry offers a nuanced understanding of the symbolic potential of culinary activities
as the practice of it inscribes the domestic space with a cultural and historical
dimension. The role of the female characters as preservers of individual body is
extended to the larger context of preservation of community.
Interestingly, Alamai in Such a Long Journey as an exception to this category
provides a different perspective on the practice of home-making. Unlike others, we find
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no reference of her indulgence in culinary activities which inverts the domestic scheme
of order foregrounded by Mistry. She always packs leftover food for her husband and
his epicurean delight is expressed in the names like brinjal sandwich, cauliflower
sandwich etc. Unlike Roxana, Ruby, Dilnavaz who make their mark on the domestic
space through culinary activities, Alamai refuses to indulge in such activities thereby
failing to inscribe the domestic space with her presence. Her refusal to engage in the
mundane “secret, tenacious pleasure of doing-cooking” (Giard 153) is relevant in the
larger context of preserving Parsi culture. Her individual failure to retain the joy of
culinary activities stretches to the domain of an alternative portrayal of the dying
community and her husband rightly compares her to the vulture, symbolic of death, “
“whatever my domestic vulture gives, I eat without a word. Or she will eat me alive”
”(Mistry, SLJ 70). He also adds to the nuances of her role, “‘Better that my dear
domestic vulture eats me up than the feathered ones. With her I have a guarantee—she
at least won’t scatter pieces of my meat all over Bombay’.” (Mistry, SLJ 72)
Alamai not only fails to inscribe her claim to domestic space but also fails to put
a ‘mark’ on the larger social space as preservation of ethnic cuisine will help to inscribe
the culture into the public space. Seen in the context of the increasingly dwindling
number of the Parsis in postcolonial India, the culinary activities can be said to serve
the purpose of an archive where knowledge of the dying culture is preserved for the
posterity. The significance of her failure at home-making practices is best understood in
the context of marking and preserving the cultural territory of the Parsis in terms of
insertion of Parsi cuisine in the larger socio-cultural environment.
The attempt to inscribe one’s mark on the domestic space reaches to its zenith
in the kitchen where the most evident sign of marking a female space within the
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domestic sphere articulates an expression of construction of female subjectivity.
Conventionally recognized as “the blessed place of a sweet intimacy” (Giard 191), the
kitchen gives spatial expression to human relation expressed through the mundane job
of the housewife busy in ‘doing-cooking’. Such attempts to translate human intimacy
into actuality distinguishes Dina’s effort to transform the gloomy kitchen, the dingiest
room in Rustom’s flat into a place of mutual sharing in A Fine Balance. The kitchen
appears as foci of all transformations in the novel. The initial description of the kichen
with“ceiling and plaster blackened by smoke” (Mistry, AFB 40) and Rustom’s inability
to paint it before their wedding undergoes a huge transformation with Dina’s
remodeling of the kitchen. Reconstructing it with kitchen utensils like pot and pans,
stove, cutlery, board, and rolling pin, a set of kitchen knives along with the old brass
and copper vessels, a kettle, Dina preserves the memory of Rustom’s mother thereby
making it truly a blessed place where tradition and modernity thrive together into a
cohesive existence. Her effort of combining traditional kitchen equipment with the
modern ones is reflected in the detailed description of her work to fix the leaking
vessels and rivet the broken handle of the kettle that belonged to Rustom’s mother. But
after his death, this place without the comforting rattle of pots and pans confirms the
loss of the “exact habit of housework that she had developed when Rustom was alive”
(Mistry, AFB 48). Earlier she enjoyed the elaborate and protracted ritual of making tea.
But now in the privacy of the dingy kitchen, she is seen sitting with her cup of tea
“remembering, sometimes crying softly, and the tea wet cold. She often poured it away
after drinking half a cup” (Mistry, AFB 48). The kitchen thus becomes symbolic of the
frozen space where no intimacy lingers. But with the intrusion of the paying guest and
the tailors later in her household, the mundane activity of making tea resonates with
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symbolic overtones of a healing process: “she reinforced the piece, twisting the corners
around a nail. The kettle blurted its readiness with a healthy spout of steam. She held
back for a vigorous boil, enjoying the thickening haze and the water’s steady babble:
the illusions of chatter, friendship, bustling life” (Mistry, AFB 84).
Eventually, the kitchen radiates its earlier aura of blessed intimacy as Dina’s
makeshift family grows larger. Her initial abhorrence for the stranger’s body is later
translated into intimate, mutual sharing. Earlier suspicious of the non-Parsi presence in
the form of the tailor’s, Dina slowly accepts and welcomes their presence and the
significant turn of events take place when Dina makes tea for the tailors. Although,
previously the tailors are not allowed to use the household equipments and Dina keeps
segregated set of cups and plates, slowly both Dina and Maneck abandon eating with
knife and fork, the ‘fancy tools’ (Mistry, AFB 396) to make the tailors comfortable.
Gradually, with the return of culinary joys her breakfast hour becomes the happiest
when the noise of human voice lingers in her kitchen. Her earlier visible torment when
she says to Maneck “nothing worse than cooking for just one” (Mistry, AFB 390)
gradually vanishes. Initially, with Maneck, she has a Parsi paying guest but with the
coming of the tailors, she began to look forward to the morning reunion and nightly
ritual of preparation of food as purely therapeutic:
Once more, she was acutely aware of the painful thinness flitting and darting
about the flat, especially in the kitchen, in the evenings, when it charmed her to
watch his flour-coated fingers fly, kneading the dough and rolling out the
chapattis. The rolling pin moved like magic under his hands. His skill, and the
delight he took in it, had a mesmerizing effect. It made her want to cease her
own chores, just stand and stare. (Mistry, AFB 464)
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Slowly, the friendship between them grew and Maneck too starts playing the role of a
brother to Om. He teaches Om the great skill of eating with sophisticated ‘fancy tools’
and starts accompanying Om for the snacks and drinks at Vishram in spite of Dina’s
repeated warring that a fine Parsi boy like Maneck cannot tolerate the roadside snacks.
But Maneck’s participation secretly makes Dina happy when he buys dinner for her and
willingly participates in the mundane activity of daily cooking. Gradually, Dina’s
typical Parsi household embraces the presence of the hitherto strangers and the charge
is visible in their changing food habits with the growing contribution of the tailors’
from chapattis, puris and wadas to vegetarian dishes like paneer masala, shak-bhaji,
aloo masala and Dina too starts enjoying their food.
From Luce Giard’s perspective, the nourishment of the body is carefully
translated into the act of preparing a planned meal and consequently the process of
preparing the meal becomes therapeutic for everyone in Dina’s household. The detailed
description of making of masala wada using Rajaram, the hair collector’s recipe
replicates the breakdown of her earlier rigid spatial and emotional boundaries in the
kitchen and the consequent magical transformation of the domestic space:
Dina stood savouring the fragrance of the wadas that were slowly turning
mouth-watering brown in bubbling oil. She watched as the cleanup
commenced with laughter and teasing, Ishvar warnring the boys that if the
grinding stone was not spotless he would make them lick it clean, like cats.
What a change, she thought—from the saddest, dingiest room in the flat, the
kitchen was transformed into a bright place of mirth and energy. (Mistry, AFB
393-394)
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The makings of home reach to its height with Dina’s realisation of the failure of
individual marking and she gradually welcomes the tailor’s claim to her flat and the
process initiates in the kitchen space. Eventually Dina realizes the value of mutual
sharing and gives permission to the tailors to use her verandah as home when they face
multiple spatial dislocations due to the strict laws of Emergency. The domestic space
mirrors the unity of integrated existence of a family although it is makeshift and
temporary in nature. Maneck advises that Dina must save her cutlery for her daughterin-law, i.e., Om’s wife which grants her the role of a mother. Moreover, Dina too starts
considering the tailors as her family and wants to retain the daily routine of eating
together by dismissing the idea of the bringing a separate kerosene stove on the
veranda. Slowly noises from the kitchen are no longer the source of nightmare, and the
mundane process of cleaning the rice, picking out the pebbles from the rice dish works
as a therapeutic cure as the tailors’ trust her with bits of their past, their food habits in
the village. The reminiscence of their past in the village with abundance of food thus
follows:
But she used the excuse to lavish on him special treats like cream, dry fruits,
and sweetmeats, bursting with pleasure while he ate. Now and then her fingers
swooped into his plate, scooped up a morsel and tenderly transported it to his
mouth. No meal was complete unless she had fed him something with her own
hands.
Roopa, too, relished the sight of her lunching, munching grandson. She
sat like a referee, reaching to wipe away a crumb from the corner of his mouth,
refilling his plate, pushing a glass of lussi within his reach. A smile appeared
on her wrinkled face, and the sharp light of her memory flickered over those
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pitch-dark nights from many years ago when she would creep out into enemy
territory to gather treats for Ishvar and Narayan. (Mistry, AFB 142)
The nuances of Dina’s home especially the kitchen where the barrier of cultural
difference is erased through the secret pleasures of culinary activity debunk the nation’s
idea of unified progress thereby highlighting the actual failure of the nation during
Emergency to accommodate the marginal sections of the society. Her kitchen celebrates
the cultural cohesiveness the Emergency seeks to impose but fails miserably. Unlike
Dina’s kitchen, the corruption of the nation directly invades Gustad’s kitchen-space in
Such a Long Journey when Jimmy sends money in package as if like onions, potatoes
and they are bound to hide it in the coal-storage alcove. The hidden space under the
choolavati where coal was stored in the old days symbolizes the dark, hidden space of
corruption which the nation painstakingly wants to evade but cannot.
As elaborated, memory operates as a unifying marker of spatio-temporal reality,
the memory of food and kitchen linger in Mistry’s imagining of the domestic space. For
example in Such a Long Journey, Maneck Kohlah’s home-imagination is replete with
memories of food as the lingering smell of breakfast cooking in the kitchen as well as
the taste of toast and fried eggs upon his tongue distinguish his home imaginings. Food
is thus an important part of his home imaginings and the memories of his mother
basically locate Aban Kohlah in the kitchen stroking the boiler with shiny black coal
and filling the tea kettle, slicing the bread, and keeping an eye on the stove. Both
Gustad and Maneck enjoy such similar dreamlike moments of watching culinary
activities which in turn determine their future. Maneck’s memory of the morning hour
is marked by the “aroma of fried eggs” travelling like an “appetizing emissary”
delivering “wordless messages to Maneck and his father” (Mistry, AFB 199). In A Fine
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Balance, Maneck’s memory of place is intertwined with memory of food. The
significance of the inextricable association between the childhood memory of food and
the idyllic place is relevant in the context of not only physical but also spiritual
sustenance in an increasingly alien world:
The cooking sounds, the twilight chill, the fog rising from the valley began
escorting a host of memories through his troubled mid. Childhood mornings,
waking, standing at the enormous picture widow of his room, watching the
snow-covered peaks as the sun rose and the mountain mists commenced their
dance, while Mummy started breakfast and Daddy got ready to open the shop.
The smell of toast and fried eggs made him hungry, so he pushed his warm feet
into the cold slippers. (Mistry, AFB 577)
His imagination echoes Luce’s comment “doing-cooking is the medium for a
basic, humble, and persistent practice that is repeated in time and space, rooted in the
fabric of relationships to others and to one's self, marked by the "family saga” and the
history of each, bound to childhood memory just like rhythms and seasons” (157).
Gustad’s memory of place is also related to the image of food. The description of the
holiday in Matheran includes detailed description of the food they ate; cups of hot
bournvita, cornflakes, toast with roses of butter and marmalade. But, unlike Maneck,
Gustad’s childhood memories of food fail to offer him any sustenance as the poignant
childhood memory of the dinner in Matheran where the chef makes a special pudding
for them with flavoured sugar and gelatin and breaks the bowl lingers in his adult mind
as a source not of salvation but of a mundane act achieving frightening intensity. The
innate sense of fatality pervades his memory of the dinner when the bowl was broken
and eaten. Gustad’s refusal to eat makes him remember the inevitable conflation of
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time and space into the act of breaking the bowl as “remembering the dinner-table, the
crunching down of the broken bowl” was “such a terrible, final act” (Mistry, AFB 243)
for Gustad. He carefully stores the dark brown bottle-Hercules XXX which is Major
Bilimoria’s final gift brings the welter of memory of mutual sharing back and he is at a
loss as to what to do with the bottle.
Apart from the kitchen, Mistry’s depiction of home-making is extended to the
representation of other domestic spaces where the characters create a makeshift home
whenever necessary. To elaborate, apparently marginal to the actual domestic space,
veranda and balcony emerge as interesting sites where too spatial appropriation takes
place in an elaborate way thereby challenging the sacred spatial demarcation of the
familial domestic space. Like the kitchen constant home-making practices are visible in
such spaces also. To elaborate, in A Fine Balance, Rustom’s parents’ decision to
convert the verandah, an open gallery into a playroom to supplement the cramped space
of the flat initiates the process of elaborate home-making which culminates when Dina
allows the tailors to live in the veranda. Although delayed still this decision is
necessary for her own survival as the enlarged household ensures the satisfaction of
having a makeshift family. Mirroring the spatial failure of the secular nation on the
verge of progress to accommodate the homeless and marginal people, the veranda
symbolising communal harmony and unity offers an alternative to the national space.
Apart from providing personal happiness and comfort, the dingy flat emerges as the
spatial symbol of mutual trust and bonding the nation fails to cultivate in spite of the
various programmes for spatial control. After the long, arduous and failed struggle of
finding a space of their own during Emergency, the veranda’s security and comfort
offers the hope of a new accommodation to the tailors. Ironically, their accommodation
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parallels Dina’s psychological transformation into a confident entrepreneur who
secretly cherishes the human presence in her flat hitherto devoid of happiness of
company. Slowly, along with Ishvar, she again participates in home-making practice
when Om’s marriage is discussed and the veranda “soon to be home for the married
couple and the uncle” (Mistry, AFB 501) becomes an extension of the larger family and
Dina undertakes the task of spatial appropriation which is highly symbolic in the
context of the novel:
The only solution she could come up with was to string a curtain down the
middle of the veranda..........Two nails plus a length of twine, and the symbolic
partition was erected. She stood back, examining each side of the curtain. The
lives of the poor were rich in symbols, she decided. (Mistry, AFB 501)
Although initially she left the tailors on the verandah and allowed Maneck into
the front room, slowly the spatial segregation vanishes as they enjoy the blessing of a
family with minimal friction. When Zenobia notices the “patchwork curtain rigged
down the middle of the veranda” (Mistry, AFB 537), her reaction is obvious, “The whole
jing-bang clan will end up on the verandah. Half their village. And you’ll never be able
to get rid of them. The place will turn into a pigsty, with all their primitive unhygienic
habits” (Mistry, AFB 537). But her remark cannot dissuade Dina who was willing to do
justice to her household which provided her with a family:
Could she describe for Zenobia the extent to which Maneck and Om had
become inseparable, and how Ishvar regarded both boys like his own sons?
That the four of them cooked together and ate together, shared the cleaning and
washing and shopping and laughing and worrying? That they cared about her,
and gave her more respect than she had received from some of her own
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relatives? That she had, during these last few months, known what a family
was? (Mistry, AFB 540)
Dina misses the presence of the tailors and Maneck to counter the emptiness of her
secluded life as their presence acts as a magic wand to escape from the evening gloom
and the consequent depression; “but as dusk fell and the streetlamps came on, her spirit
remained buoyant. Like magic, she thought, the difference made by another human
presence in the flat” (Mistry, AFB 272). The memory of elaborate home-making with the
tailors not only leads to spatial transformation but also lingers in Dina’s mind as a
constant source of solace. Such elaborate home-making practices in the balcony are
also visible in Chenoy household in Family Matters with the arrival of Nariman when
Yezad prepares a tent house with borrowed rexine for his son in the veranda:
He spread the rexine on the balcony and made holes at suitable distances along
the edges, feeling a twinge at each perforation. He would buy metal eyelets
tomorrow at the Bora’s hardware shop, reinforce the raw punctures, make it
strong as tarpaulin. With short lengths of rope through each hole, he fastened
the sheet to the balcony railing. (Mistry, FM 110)
As evident in Family Matters, the marginal location of balcony contributes to the sense
of isolation as expressed in the torrent of memories Nariman experiences. The flow of
Nariman’s constant dreaming replicates the renewed use of the balcony space thereby
connecting Pleasant Villa and Chateau Felicity. The actual isolation experienced by
Nariman in Chateau Felicity where the Vakeel family continuously intruded in his
private space resurfaces in his dream in Pleasant Villa. In Chateau Felicity, he is always
found to escape to the balcony when his father’s friends intrude into his privacy:
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Then Soli entered the balcony, and Nariman pretended to be engrossed in a
book. Hey, Nari! Why are you alone? Come and join the circle, you seely
boy.”….Seizing his arm, he pulled him into the drawing-room, into the centre
of the gathering. (Mistry, FM 13)
The balcony is the place where he can escape from the meaningless “splash and yell”
(Mistry, FM 13) and replicate the world he and Lucy had struggled to create “a cocoon,
she used to call it. A cocoon was what they needed, she said, into which they could
retreat, and after their families had forgotten their existence, they would emerge like
two glistening butterflies and fly away together” (Mistry, FM 13). Tinged with profound
emotions the balcony becomes a vivid symbol to sustain his soul in terms of integrating
space and time. Although apparently a spacious apartment with seven bedrooms, the
space of the Chateau Felicity characterised by frequent violation of privacy seems
confining and gradually Nariman unconsciously appropriates the balcony as his true
home.
V
As elaborated earlier Mistry’s housewives are stronger in terms of negotiating
and inhabiting domestic space unlike the men who fail to claim domestic space for
external pressures as their frantic act of spatial appropriation mirrors the psychic
appropriation. To elaborate, in Such a Long Journey
Gustad’s projection of his
personal crisis onto the domestic space as reflected in the repeated application of the
black wallpaper and his consequent aversion to light is repeatedly countered by
Dilnavaz’s complaint, “in this house, the morning never seems to come” (Mistry, SLJ
11). Her narrative of ensuing spatial order in the domestic space is often met with
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resistance from her husband and gradually she learns to “deal with with dust, webs and
household pests” (Mistry, SLJ 11). The paper becomes the sole target of her frustration,
“very nice this is. Son collects butterflies and moths, father collects spiders and
cockroaches. Soon Khodadad Building will become one big insect museum” (Mistry,
SLJ 11-12).
Apparently it seems that they lack shared spatial need but it is Dilnavaz who
anchors Gustad’s pattern of thinking and orders his world by providing an atmosphere
of conjugal and familial bliss in the wake of harsh, external reality. Unlike Gustad, her
patient understanding is woven into the fabric of the text as she performs her domestic
duties. Dilnavaz’s complaint about the accoutrements of objects gathered by Gustad
can be attributed to her fondness for an ordered domestic space reflective of
harmonious existence, “with so much junk I cannot clean or dust properly, and all that
paper still on the windows and ventilators. God know when . .” (Mistry, SLJ 116).
Slowly Dilnavaz fails to tolerate the clutter when his continuous preoccupation with
memories and refusal to de-clutter disturbs the sense of order she aims to inculcate in
her home, “so much rubbish in this house. And you bring more books” (Mistry, SLJ
116). Unlike Gustad her demand for an ordered physical fabric mirrors her anchoring
presence not only as an ideal wife but also the psychic anchor for Gustad burdened by
the loss of his grandfather and father. Memories seem no burden for her as she knows
the art of actualising memories in the domestic space thereby allowing her sense of
being to flourish which Gustad fails to embrace as unlike Dilnavaz, his image of home
is mediated only through the memories of a loving grandfather and father. The
profound absence of the family member generates the crisis which he eventually
projects on the domestic fabric in terms of symbolic activities like papering the wall,
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arranging the furniture etc. The absence of creative collaborations achieves a different
expression in relation to his wife’s daily chores as unlike his wife Gustad’s spatial
feelings of alienation are stronger.
In Family Matters, Yezad and Roxana’s relationship undergoes similar trajectory
with Nariman’s arrival. Like Gustad Noble Yezad too emerges as a person who is
unable to compromise his spatial needs and is acutely conscious of his spatial relations
embedded in an ordered domestic fabric established in home. Unlike Roxana who tries
to impose a sense of order amidst difficulty Yezad’s patience runs out when he has to
negotiate his earlier spatial demand for the presence of Nariman. Minute spatial
changes, therefore, lead to frequent confrontation as he is unwilling to compromise his
spatial needs. A telling example occurs when he calls the children’s tent in the balcony
and by extension his home a jhopadpatti thereby highlighting his utter failure at homemaking:
“Why do you say needlessly nasty things?” she appealed. “Why must you call
the children’s tent, something they enjoy a jhopadpatti?”
“Just look at it: Villie’s smelly old plastic tablecloth. Go to any slum, you’ll
find plastic is the building material. What can I call this but a jhopadpatti?”
(Mistry, FM 246)
What Mistry specifies here is that unlike Roxana whose inner strength radiates through
difficulty, Yezad fails to enjoy the conjugal bliss as a result of his personal failure to
come to terms with the spatial as well as emotional reality which ultimately leads to
religious bigotry. The extreme consequences of the conflict between spatial needs and
spatial separation will ensue later but the hint is already woven into the narrative as he
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repeatedly frustrates Roxana’s attempt to impose a sense of order in her home.
Although she makes all possible efforts to preserve the sense of implied bliss and
ordered life they enjoyed earlier in the face of impending doom and ensures the feeling
of security through her secret healing touch, Yezad creates obstacles thereby inscribing
the familiar domestic space with his failed sense of inhabiting. The spatial layout of the
flat is his prime target as his anger and frustration is repeatedly projected onto the
spatial fabric. A telling incident occurs when he finds “wet clothes on hangers
suspended in the doorway” and reacts by tearing the shirts, “take them to Chateau
Felicity. Your bloody brother and sister can dry them in their seven rooms” (Mistry,
FM 143). His complaint invites the response, “Millions of people live in the gutters of
Bombay!” Roxana shouted back. “Eating and sleeping next to drains and ditches! This
whole city stinks like a sewer! And you are worried about Pappa’s bedpan? How stupid
can you be?” (Mistry, FM 146). Although his religiosity and spatial needs are amply
highlighted in the novel I argue that it is Roxana who sketches the spiritual space for
him to as a symptomatic response to his spatial demands in the wake of frustrated
attempts. Her inner strength is visible when she vehemently protests against his creation of
an orthodox household.
Mistry’s description of spatial marking is also extended to a child’s imaginative
marking of domestic space as “our psychological development is punctuated not only
by meaningful emotional relationships with people, but also by close, affective ties
with a number of significant physical environments, beginning in childhood” (Marcus
2). The sense of nurturance and protection etched in the familial environment is crucial
to our future spatial alliances and in Family Matters, we witness how the children are
coping up with the spatial transformation of their home when Nariman comes to live
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with them. Previously, we find Jehangir always busy with the world of his puzzle as
voiced by his father, “Your son is completely addicted. The way he concentrates, you’d
think he was looking for his own place in the world” (Mistry, FM 78). As a sensitive
boy, Jehangir’s acute spatial awareness is visible from the beginning: he is fond of the
fragrant curtain of wet clothes dividing the room in two compartments as it helped him
to transform the familiar room into a world of childhood fantasy:
Then he pretended to be one of the Famous Five, or the Five Find-Outers, who
all had their own rooms and lived in England where everything was beautiful.
His imagination transported the clothes-curtained room to the English
countryside, into a house with a lovely garden where robins sang and roses
bloomed, and to which he could return after having an adventure or solving a
mystery. How perfectly he would fit in that world, he thought. (Mistry, FM
79)
Their household is a blessed one with the ground-floor violin continuing its
practice. Here we witness a domestic space igniting memory, love, mutual trust and
bonding expressed by spatial metaphors when Yezad is able to see the whole world in
Roxana’s eyes. But slowly that spatial bonding vanishes with repeated attempt to adjust
in the cramped apartment. There follows the description of spatial reordering to
accommodate Nariman. Moreover, when Jehagir hears that locomotion will be
gradually difficult for his grandfather “his tears caused the darkness to become blurry.
He hadn’t realized nightmare could be just as vivid as daytime, and as liable to
distortion” (Mistry, FM 173). The poignant experience of child’s experience of
domestic space follows:
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The last few weeks puzzled him. It was quarrels and sarcastic comments all the
time. Gone away completely was his parents’ tenderness, and the happy looks
they used to exchange in secret (not secret from him, though, he saw
everything).The pleasant whispers and soft laughter from their bed at night
would put him to sleep like a lullaby, assuring him all was right with his
world. Now it was falling apart. Angry hisses and harsh mutterings from their
room made him cry in the dark. (Mistry, FM 172)
The imaginative world of place-making offers him no comfort and coupled with his
grandfathers’ agony, slowly his world falls apart haunted by nightmares:
Jehangir wanted to believe his father, but first the world that had fallen apart
had to be pieced together again. He wished it was like making a jigsaw
puzzle—open the box, reconstruct Grandpa’s flat in Chateau Felicity, fix
Grandpa’s bones, patch up the quarrel with Coomy Aunty and Jal Uncle. And
most important of all, piece together the lovely mornings of story and laughter
and joking, which seemed to have disappeared so completely. (Mistry, FM
251)
The child’s imaginative way of inscribing spatial claims is translated into reality when
juxtaposed with the spatial of old and aged people with restricted mobility. As we see
in the novel, Nariman’s condition provides an apt example and Mistry shows that
nothing works except mutual bonding and acceptance to conquer the experience of
spatial void. Slowly, in spite of cramped space Jehangir and Murad find their comfort
in looking after their grandfather and gradually the nightmares vanish, “Jehangir
groped across the space between the settee and the cot to take his grandfather’s hand,
and was soon sound asleep. He did not dream again that night” (Mistry, FM 174). The
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bonding defines their life in such a way that they are reluctant to leave the cramped
space of the Pleasant Villa to a more spacious apartment. Although Roxana tries to
actualize the imagined, ideal space of the new home in terms of forming exciting
spatial alliances, she fails to convince her son:
“Remember the room I showed you? All yours. You’ll have your own
cupboard, your own desk, bookshelf. You can put up your drawings and
pictures, whatever you like. You’ll live like the Famous Five.”(Mistry, FM
392)
But Jehangir has moved out of the imaginative way of dealing with space as evident in
his reply “Enid Blyton is rubbish” (Mistry, FM 392) and the cramped space of the old
home holds more promise in terms of providing a pivotal point of memory as we see
him trying to imprint permanent images of the empty rooms of the Pleasant Villa while
leaving for Chateau Felicity.
Replete with spatial claims and negotiations, the representation of domestic
space in Mistry’s writings infuses a renewed sense of being in the world by inscribing
one’s mark on the material environment and in the process making a home which
lingers in our memories and dream. Often mediated by the demands of the public world
this intimate space, marked by our practices of home-making truly transcends the
domain of practical demands. As shown in the beginning of the chapter, Mistry’s
protagonists and characters truly transfer the geometric space of home into an inhabited
space which eludes systematic categorisation and coherence and this art of inhabiting
will be discussed in the next chapter in the context of other spaces.
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