Rohinton Mistry Critical Essay | Critical Essay by John Eustace

Critical Essay by John Eustace

SOURCE: Eustace, John. “Deregulating the Evacuated Body: Rohinton Mistry's ‘Squatter.’” Studies in Canadian Literature 28, no. 1 (2003): 26-42.

In the following essay, Eustace focuses on the preponderance of fecal matter in Mistry's various works, particularly in the short story “Squatter.”

These squatting figures—to the visitor, after a time, as eternal and emblematic as Rodin's Thinker—are never spoken of; they are never written about; they are not mentioned in novels or stories; they do not appear in feature films or documentaries. This might be regarded as part of a permissible prettifying intention. But the truth is that Indians do not see these squatters and might even, with complete sincerity, deny that they exist: a collective blindness arising out of the Indian fear of pollution and the resulting conviction that Indians are the cleanest people in the world.

—V. S. Naipaul, An Area of Darkness

In attempting to expose bodies already...
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