Image: MORAN via Unsplash
Salman Rushdie’s The Moor’s Last Sigh is extraordinary, not just in its scope and ambition, but in its ability to evoke emotion, both laughter and tears, through its deep exploration of human relationships. Cast as a family chronicle, through which the narrator and protagonist, Moraes Zogoiby (nicknamed Moor), examines the lives of his remarkable family, the novel also traces India’s transformation from colony to independent nation throughout the twentieth century.
With the influence of the Zogoiby family palpable in every area of national life, the lines between history and fiction become increasingly blurred. As figures such as the Gandhis and Jawaharlal Nehru enter the novel, the Zogoibys shape their journeys, working behind the scenes and in the public eye, with ever more unlikely plots that seem verified by the facts with which they mingle.
From a fortune based in the family’s spice-trading business, the family survived several scandals to gain increasing positions of power, using wit, talent and corruption to advance their status. Both Moraes’ mother’s Da Gama heritage and his father’s Zogoiby side claim legendary European heritage, from the great explorer Francisco and Boabdil, the last Moor, who was forced into exile from Granada by Isabella and Ferdinand of Spain, which links them to India’s colonial past. Moor takes his reader through the adventures of his ancestors, leaving breadcrumbs to his own existence scattered among their exceptional stories of wedding-night escapades, Indian Leninists and destructive familial feuds.
The Da Gama men are portrayed as romantics, following the follies and foibles of their hearts, uninterested in the gritty business of the spice trade. The women, on the other hand, are formidable, launching family coups, scheming across generations and tearing each other apart. None is more impressive than Moraes’ mother, Aurora, whose determination to complete her mother’s mission of familial domination is made clear when the reader sees her watch her grandmother die of a heart attack while calmly closing the door to avoid any witnesses.
Such bloody-mindedness and ferocity leads her to the pinnacle of Indian art, becoming the artist of her generation, in the form of a mother of the newly independent nation. In her husband, Abraham Zogoiby, she finds her match: he takes over the family business and transforms a regional spice-giant to a drug-smuggling business of international scope. Together, they move to Bombay and are placed at the heart of society, acquiring wealth and notoriety in equal measure as they mix in the highest of circles.
There they give birth to four children, Christina, Inamorata, Philomina and Moraes, more commonly referred to as Ina, Minnie, Mynah and Moor. One becomes a world-famous model, the next a devout nun, while Mynah trains as a high-flying, fearless, feminist lawyer, determined to hold the authorities to account. Moor, on the other hand, struggles to escape the clutches of his mother. Imbued with the curse of aging at double-speed, so he looks twenty by the age of ten, he becomes his mother’s principal subject, inspiring the series of ‘Moor’ paintings which secure her burgeoning fame.
It is through this relationship that the reader is invited to analyse Aurora’s artwork, which provides a constant theme throughout the novel. As Aurora rises to become the artist of the new India, her work encapsulates the struggles and successes of the nation. The in-depth depictions of her paintings illuminate them for the reader, as if they are walking through a gallery with the immense knowledge of Moraes as their guide, tracing the changing nature of his mother’s work in the face of personal and national strife.