The Moor's Last Sigh
By Salman Rushdie
In 1957, Moraes Zogoiby was born. And in 2006, I fell in love with him.
Treat this composition as no mere essay, reader. Because through only my words am I now going to express the unprofessed love that I have for Moraes, my Moor, the unlucky heir of an unlucky dynasty. Here is a tribute to a book which changed my life, and along with it the way I think.
Perhaps the most fundamental way in which anyone can question my madness-yes, my uncontrolled obsession for this book, is that, WHY do I call this novel my "favourite"? This masterpiece could have surely been termed as "one of my favourites". The answer to this question would be, that when perfection comes your way, everything else stops mattering. This book is perfect in all senses. I call it my literary paradise, my sea of philosophy only in which would I love to drench my soul. This is Salman Rushdie at his exceptional, admirable, phenomenal best.
In this pot pourri of masala, drama, betrayal, romance and violence set in pre and post-independent India, I discovered life-all shades of it. The story which commences in Cochin takes turbulent twists and turns through Mumbai before finally ending even more chaotically in the solitude of Benengeli. As I attempt at explaining the story of the novel, I am rendered helpless. It is difficult to pen down a tale which spans over a whopping hundred and seventeen years and involves a jigsaw puzzle of uncountable people. Uncountable and some very unbelievable, eccentric yet realistic characters form the foundation of this masterpiece.
I hated the "in this God-fearing Christian house, British are still best 'madder-moyselle' " haughtiness of Epifania da Gama and the way her toxic dominance devoured her husband's life. But I loved the "tall, beautiful, brilliant, brave, hard working" Isabella da Gama who was the complete epitome of young power. While I marveled over the love that Isabella and Camoens da Gama shared with each other, I could not help shedding a tear at the virgin plight of Carmen Lobo. When a husband as insensitively homosexual as Aires da Gama abandons his wife each night for his own erotic pleasures, what results is tragedy. In a patriarchal land which still believes that only a woman can be infertile, it hurt so much to see Carmen be compared to the deserts of Sahara for never being able to conceive(as if she ever got a chance to). The da Gama family in Rushdie-speak was completely Christian, egalitarian yet socially supreme and rich. Perhaps in this dynasty of contrasts, what happened henceforth was inevitable!
Genius was seduced by age. Christian fell in love with Jew. Art married business shrewdness. Aurora da Gama and Abraham Zogoiby- twenty one years away from each other's age yet so similar within their differences. Aurora- daughter of Isabella and Camoens, the inheritor of her mother's expletive tongue alongwith her infective charm that did not leave her even after she turned fifty. Aurora was artistically Goddess-like, a painter and a thinker who grew up to be the most controversial yet later most respected artist of her times. Associate with her, the shameless murder of her grandmother Epifania after which she merely "slept, as soundly as a child. And woke up on Christmas morn." Associate with her the insult she would unsparingly fling at one and all. Movie stars, Indira Gandhi, Nehru-the most famous people of the world had to surrender their esteem in front of her as her tongue whip-lashed their honour! But most importantly, associate with her, masterpieces of art. The creator of works such as The Moor's Last Sigh, The Kissing of Mohammad Ali Baig, Uper the Gur Gur and many more made even me appreciate her "oil painting, collage and water colour" genius.
Where Aurora ends, Abraham begins. Take this statement in all senses possible, reader. Abraham-the man belonging to a dying race (the Jews of India), the son of Flory Zogoiby and Solomon Castile. The man with a tainted ancestry, but with a mind that flourished over those taints. Associate with him money, power, business, undercover deals, underworld links, drugs, prostitutes and a deep deep love for Aurora. Abraham scares me with this love of his since that very love led to his transformation into an evil soul which made him kill his own wife. From being the "I will always look after you" kind of caring husband to becoming "an icy deity, who wrought havoc upon the mere mortals below", Abraham was always passionate about his love. The only difference was that as time passed, his passions progressively turned from being "for" Aurora to being "against" Aurora.
Would it be injustice if I would obliterate introductions of the various characters which adorn this book? The eccentric Vasco Miranda, the loyal Lambajan Chandiwala, the schizophrenic Uma Sarasvati, the lustful Dilly Hormuz, the greedy Jaya He, the cunning Mainduck, the stunning Nadia Wadia, the helpless Jimmy Cashondeliveri-a horde of names flood my mind accusing me of not paying the attention that Rushdie, so meticulously, gave them all. But humbly so, there is a distinction between a great mind and a potentially great one. As the latter occupies my head, I find myself incapable of compressing the plethora of lives that are printed in the pages of the novel. So right now, it becomes imperative to dedicate my words to that person in this tale who I love so much. The story is here because of him. It is his tragedy-his unluckiness-and ultimately, his last sigh.
Moraes Zogoiby or Moor as he was called for most of his life forms the heart of this book, an adorable heart indeed! Enchanting me with his tale "complete with sound and fury", Moor impresses with his humility, his frankness and the purity of his heart. "Mine is the story of the fall from grace of a high born cross breed…only heir to the spice n trade business crores of the da Gama-Zogoiby dynasty…" he says. Indeed, born out of the last salt-and-pepper fragrant lovemaking of Aurora and Abraham, Moor was special. And so, his life too was destined to be unique.
When he was ten, he found sexual solace in the arms of his tutor, Dilly Hormuz.
As a twenty year old, he began work as a high end goon for Raman Fielding. But he had to retire very shortly due to ageing problems.
As a thirty six year old, he had to battle acute asthma and health issues where each breath of his seemed like a mountain to conquer.
Reader, I acknowledge the questions that must be creeping up in your mind. A ten-year old in a sexual liaison? A twenty-year old unable to work as a goon anymore? A thirty six-year old having lungs which were ailing and ready to collapse? Well, this is the biggest punishment that Nature could ever have awarded Moor. In layman terms, my hero grew up two times faster than normal, because of, in his words, "some cock up in the DNA…premature ageing disorder…too many short life cells." Impossibly so, Moraes was twenty when he was supposed to be ten and seventy two when he was supposed to be thirty six. Perhaps it is the desperation of his to cling on to life, his attempts at looking for people who would not make him uncomfortable about himself and his vulnerability which everyone took advantage of, made me discover the fact that he was so lovable.
With one deformed hand and a life slipping away quicker than it should have, Moraes earns from me sympathy, and also awe. Awe-inspiring are his ideologies of life. All that he speaks echoes the amalgamation of age and innocence inside him, and his golden words have imparted to me various philosophies that make me think, "how come I never came up with that before?"
Who would have thought about the importance that a lung enjoys in our life? With words such as "baby's first yowl, lover's lament, inflated staccato" being attributed to something as ignored as a lung, I did think some more about my respiratory organ! Which man could ever understand the latent pains that married women go through better than my sensitive Moraes who describes their plight as the "grief knotted in a twist of fabric at the end of a dupatta." Betrayed, banished, misunderstood, beaten and misled by time, here is a man each second of whose life is a treasure he cherishes. Moraes is an inspiration, my guide who motivates me to live each second as if my life too has been fast forwarded!
The book is simply amazing. Rushdie magic for sure! Inspired I was by Rushdie's view of shooting stars being mere "unlucky rocks" and not controllers of destiny. I loved his opinion about the post-independence riots in India when he says that "when empire's sun set, we didn't kill our enemies. We reserved that honour for each other." My Einstein of literature made up a new equation of corruption "D=mc squared, where D is for dynasty, m for mass of relatives and c… for corruption" and left me awestruck! Because of him, I could see "Mother India with her garishness …who loved and betrayed and ate and destroyed and again loved her children...stretched into great mountains like exclamations of the soul…".Indian films, Indian politics, Indian history et al thrive inside this creation by Rushdie. After reading the book, I realised that the author is essentially Indian, and I admire him for that.
Surely, "a sigh isn't just a sigh. We breathe in air and breathe out meaning." I was truly lucky to have got a chance to feel that meaning pour into my soul. I feel like a better person already! Last lines from the last words of the epic tale. "I'll drink some wine…lay me down upon this graven stone, and close my eyes…hope to awaken, renewed and joyful, into a better time."
Rubbing some of this hope into myself too, I will think of Moraes whenever I am in need.I salute Rushdie for giving me a lifelong inspiration in the form of Moraes. And also my favourite book, Moor's Last Sigh.
