The Museum of Failures

“‘The child should look like at least one of us, honey,’ Kathy had said. ‘And getting a…a white kid is going to be hard.’ He had tensed at the thought of yet another link tying him to a country he had been determined to leave behind. But Kathy had seemed so convinced that he’d acquiesced.”

While Remy and Kathy are looking to adopt, it was Kathy’s idea to adopt from India. This passage showcases two things: First, it displays Remy’s initial discomfort and desire to disconnect from his country of origin. Remy thinks of Bombay, and subsequently India, as a place that always disappoints. The passage also displays how Kathy and Remy are reluctant to adopt from the US because they will not be able to adopt a white child. Later in the novel, Remy acknowledges that they didn’t want to adopt a Black child, foreseeing the difficulties that child would face in life within the unsaid caste system in America.

“He had often thought of Bombay as the museum of failures, an exhibit hall filled with thwarted dreams and broken promises. The reels of red tape themselves were worthy of their own display room.”

Remy thinks of Bombay as a “museum of failures.” This motif, from which the title is derived, appears here for the first time and does so multiple times across the novel. It evolves from signifying just Bombay to eventually mean memories and the past as well. Remy, too, evolves from rejecting the museum of failures to embracing everything it holds and integrating it into his identity.

“In fact, earlier in the day, he had even contemplated having Mummy accompany him to the States when he left. That persistent hope, the immigrant’s dream of braiding the disparate strands of his life together, still crackled like a fire within him.”

Remy remembers how, after Cyrus’s death, there was a temporary peace between him and Shirin that had him thinking about taking her to the US with him. This passage displays how The Disparate Strands of the Immigrant Experience are something that many immigrants contend with reconciling over their lifetime. Remy eventually does reconcile these strands after he repairs his relationship with his mother: He promises to visit again at Christmas and take her back with him then.

“In her own scattershot way, Mummy had tried to spoil him and love him. And now it’s your turn, he said to himself, to set aside old animosities. This is how he’d communicate with her: in the language of sugar. He would pull out all the stops before he left; he would lavish time, attention, and sweets on her and hope that she would know that, despite everything, he cared.”

Remy remembers some of the happier moments of his childhood, recognizing that Shirin did, on occasion and in her own way, show him love. He chooses to reciprocate in the present through a similar medium: using food, particularly sugar. Food is a motif in the book, signifying connection and relationship. This is outlined in this passage, with Remy equating time, attention, and sweets with each other.

“Remy could see the future that awaited Monaz as clearly as if he were watching it unfold on a screen: A haughty, disapproving father-in-law, territorial fights with the sisters-in-law, a husband who stayed out late and thought he was entitled to an affair or two to compensate for his loveless marriage. Monaz would end up one of those nervous, obsessive women whose life revolved around her child, a half-Parsi child who would never be treated as an equal in their household.”

Remy listens to Gaurav describe his family and realizes that Monaz will have a miserable future if she marries this man. Remy and Monaz both belong to the Parsi community, a wealthy but dwindling minority in India. The community is a small one because they frown on marrying outside of it and disallow conversion; thus, Monaz would be excommunicated along with her child and would be equally on the outside within Gaurav’s family, who belong to a different community. The mention of the “screen” is metaphorical but highlights the way the media perpetuates cultural narratives that reinforce shame and secrecy.

“There was that time, when he was eight and she had said those awful words: I wish I had never given birth to you. He couldn’t remember what he’d done to make her say this. […] He did remember that she’d apologized an hour later, had covered him in kisses and begged for forgiveness and struck herself in remorse, which had frightened him even more than the careless words.”

Remy remembers a horrible moment from his past when Shirin claimed that she wished she had never had him. Despite Shirin’s apologies soon after, the moment sticks with Remy. This incident highlights the lasting damage that can be done within abusive relationships. Remy later learns of the context and motivations surrounding Shirin’s behavior and even forgives her. However, this does not negate or excuse the kind of hurt Remy experienced at Shirin’s hands growing up and brings up larger questions regarding trauma and abuse that go unaddressed in the novel.

“Remy had never had much to do with the religion. But as he walked the corridors of Parsee General Hospital, he felt an ancient tug, a longing in his blood, a sense of kinship with the elderly men and women he passed, artifacts of a bygone genteel age. If they did adopt Monaz’s son, Remy would perform the boy’s Navjote, the religious thread ceremony that initiated children into the Zoroastrian faith.”

As Remy walks into the Parsee General Hospital where Shirin has been admitted, he feels an unexpected sense of connection with his community and culture; he even considers performing the Navjote for the son that he and Kathy will eventually adopt. Religion is a motif in the book and highlights how Remy is beginning to explore and reconcile different aspects of his immigrant experience by reconnecting with his culture. Remy’s reconnection with his culture is paralleled by him doing the same with his family, and it is symbolic that he feels such a tug for the first time in the hospital where he is going to reunite with his mother.

“All children believe that the world begins with their birth. But to be an adult was to acknowledge the endless circles of life that began before one’s time and would continue long after, to realize that one’s story was shaped and written by unknown others. His own history had begun so much earlier than his actual story began.”

Remy reflects on how his life was not shaped in a vacuum; the experiences and decisions of the people before him have also contributed to how his life has turned out. Remy discovers the depth of this truth when he learns about Cyloo from Shirin. Cyloo’s existence and his parents’ respective reactions to Cyloo directly contributed to The Complicated Nature of Family Relationships within the Wadia household. This, in turn, prompted Cyrus to encourage Remy to go to America, resulting in the life that Remy has at present.

“He was smiling when he got off the phone. As always, Kathy had recalibrated him. For the umpteenth time, he was grateful for that rarest of gifts: a happy marriage.”

Remy feels better after a conversation with Kathy on the phone. Kathy as a character is never present on the page; she is glimpsed solely through Remy’s phone conversations with her and his memories. Nevertheless, she comes through as a solid and dependable partner to Remy, meaning that their relationship is the polar opposite of Remy’s own parents’. Remy’s ability to have made this connection points to his inherent sensitivity.

“He sat beside her, stroking her hair. An overwhelming feeling of tenderness swept over him, and it puzzled him, the extraordinary fact that the most ordinary and universal of emotions—love for his mother—should feel so fraught and precious.”

Remy is surprised by the tenderness and love he feels for Shirin. The conflicting emotions that Remy feels simply at experiencing love for his mother—which, as he acknowledges here, is perhaps the most basic of emotions—displays how intensely strained his dynamic with Shirin has been. There is a contrast between the nature of the emotion in isolation and how complicated it feels for Remy.

“Remy felt cornered. Many Parsis seemed to have a gut-level aversion to the notion of adopting another’s baby, and he didn’t know if Mummy was one of them. Or what if Mummy got excited at the prospect of a grandson? He had no plans to take her to America with him. How would she handle that rejection?”

Remy dithers about telling Shirin about the adoption. This passage showcases two things: First, the Parsi aversion to adoption that Remy explains here sheds light on the community and its ideas about purity. Second, at this stage of the novel, Remy is still complicit in secrecy, as he has not yet been fully confronted by The Harmful Effects of Secrecy and Shame. Once he learns about Cyloo and sees how keeping his brother’s existence a secret has affected his family, Remy is far less indecisive about being honest to those around him.

“Nobody would ever love him as unconditionally as his father had, not even Kathy. As he walked out of the fire temple with Gulnaz, Remy felt comforted and orphaned by this thought.”

Remy reflects on Cyrus’s deep love for him. Later in the novel, when Remy learns about Cyloo, he realizes that while Cyrus’s love for him has always been true, it has not been unconditional. Cyrus’s love for Remy was dictated by Remy’s health and abilities in contrast to his brother’s.

“‘Better for you to hate me,’ she said. ‘Me, rather than him.’ He thought again of Daddy’s strange letter. I’m sorry. Be better than me. Was that apology connected in some way to this boy?”

Remy discovers Cyloo’s picture and questions Shirin about it; she responds that it was better for Remy to hate her rather than Cyrus. Remy begins to piece together clues from his past, seeing that perhaps neither Cyrus nor Shirin were the people they appeared to be all his life.

“She looked up at Cyrus, tears in her eyes. ‘He’s beautiful,’ she said, and noticed him flinch. It was to punish him for the flinch that she named her son Cyrus. The namesake of the man who had referred to their son as it.”

Shirin sees Cyrus flinch at their firstborn son and names their baby after Cyrus out of spite. This stands in sharp contrast to how Remy’s name is picked out: Cyrus names Remy after a man he and Shirin met while on honeymoon in France, as a reminder of a happier time. Albeit inadvertently, Cyloo and Remy’s lives each unfold in the same manner that they were named: Cyloo’s existence introduces bitterness into the Wadia household by way of Cyrus’s rejection and Shirin’s subsequent resentment; Remy eventually reconciles his family’s ugly past by understanding, accepting, and forgiving his parents for their wrongs.

“Shirin remembered something the nuns at her school used to say: You go where there is need. Remy would have everything that he wanted, the world opening up like a treasure chest to a handsome, intelligent, able-bodied boy.”

Shirin reflects on how Remy, with all the advantages he is born with, will have a far easier life than Cyloo. This informs her decision to cater more to Cyloo’s needs than Remy’s. Shirin’s emotional awareness is reflected in Remy as well; he is constantly aware of the privilege he is born into and does whatever good he can with it.

“For the first time since Cyloo’s birth, Shirin felt despair. ‘Why, God?’ she said out loud. ‘What did I ever do to you? Why did you give me this challenge?’ But even as she asked the questions, she knew that the challenge was not her disabled son. The real challenge was her husband, from whom she had to keep secrets.”

Shirin feels despondent when she finds Cyloo hurting Remy. Shirin’s secrecy is motivated not by her own shame but Cyrus’s; her actions are misaligned with her beliefs and values, causing her a great deal of conflict and frustration. This passage highlights emphatically that ableism is the problem, not disability. It hence constructs Cyrus as an antagonistic figure.

“The sins of the father must never land on his son’s beautiful, slender shoulders. Raise your own son as an American boy, raise him without all this history. […] Remy, my golden boy, listen to your father one last time. Don’t look back. Because the only way to destroy the museum of failures is to burn every shameful secret that it has ever held.”

Remy imagines Cyrus speaking to him after Remy has discovered the truth about Cyloo; Cyrus begs Remy to leave his family’s past and everything he has learned behind him when he returns to the US. Cyrus staunchly supported Remy in his American dream, and Remy now understands better where his father’s motivations sprung from: Cyrus was afraid of confronting and dealing with the past and passed on his avoidance to his son. Remy, however, learns important lessons from his parents’ stories and accepts his past rather than burning it down. He does not leave the “museum of failures” behind; rather, he heals his relationship with it and resolves to keep returning.

“I just couldn’t give the letter to you after Cyrus died, even though I’d promised him I would. What use? You’d had so much stolen from you—your older brother, your mother’s attention. I thought, Let him hold on to the one thing that got him through his childhood—his steady, beating love for his father.”

Shirin reveals why she never gave Remy Cyrus’s letter or an explanation about it after his death. Despite the deepening estrangement between mother and son that even cost Shirin her physical health and her voice, she chose to protect Cyrus’s secret for Remy’s sake. These confessions are significant for Shirin’s characterization since they underline how deeply Shirin truly loved Remy.

“I steeled my heart to your always-hungry face, how you used to run up and hug me the moment I softened toward you. Try as I might, I couldn’t help but compare your easy life to your brother’s life. I knew it was unfair of me, but I couldn’t help it.”

Shirin explains her rejecting behavior toward Remy as he was growing up. Being prevented from loving and caring for the son who needed her the most, she found herself shying away from tending to the needs of the son still in her life. Shirin explicitly voices Remy’s privilege throughout the text, which highlights this disenfranchisement of both her (as a woman) and her son (because of his disability). In retrospect, Shirin is able to understand and explain her behavior better and even take responsibility for it and offer up remorse.

“Here’s what I want to say to you: Do not waste your life hating your father. Forgive him. If possible, forgive your old mother, too. Not for her sake, but for yours. I know only too well the price one pays for bitterness.”

Shirin advises Remy not to be bitter about Cyrus; her life is a testament to the kind of harm that bitterness and resentment can cause. Not only is Remy able to forgive Shirin, but he is able to forgive Cyrus as well. Remy makes a conscious decision to live his life differently than his parents did. The “high price” to which Shirin refers highlights The Harmful Effects of Secrecy and Shame.

“You don’t know that. You don’t know how anyone is going to react. But if you don’t tell your parents, you’re depriving them of something. Don’t you see? You’re depriving them of a chance to rise to the occasion. To transcend their own limitations.”

Remy advises Monaz to tell her parents the truth about her pregnancy. Especially following the revelations about Cyloo and Cyrus, Remy sees clearly The Harmful Effects of Secrecy and Shame. His urgings to choose honesty over all else do get rewarded, ultimately: Monaz’s parents are surprisingly willing to accept their daughter’s child and decide to raise him as their own.

“Is this what had happened to Daddy? Remy wondered as he walked toward the sea. The more successful he got, the more important being successful became? Until everything that stood in the way of his ambition, including his disabled child, had to be removed? What if, God forbid, Monaz’s baby was born disabled? How would Remy react?”

Remy reflects on how his own ambition took off after he first tasted financial success in America, and he uses this experience to empathize with Cyrus. Although Remy is characterized as a sensitive and intelligent man, Umrigar also traces the interiority of a privileged man unpacking discriminatory learnings about disability, suggesting how deeply harmful cultural narratives run.

“He had witnessed the luminescent blue of other oceans and knew that this sea was a poor cousin to those bodies of water. And yet he felt a rare peace. Almost everything else about this city left him bewildered and lost, but the sea was his true inheritance as a Bombayite.”

Remy watches the ocean and feels at peace in Bombay. Remy’s reflections about the ocean are symbolic of his journey reconciling The Disparate Strands of the Immigrant Experience. He recognizes that the sea here, like his home country, can be considered lackluster in comparison to others of its kind. However, he feels more at peace with this part of his identity, just like he does with the sea itself, recognizing both as a “true inheritance” as someone belonging to this city, country, and culture.