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The Flying Man The title of The Flying Man, has been borrowed from a poem by Rabindranath Tagore, and is the story of a man who keeps flying away- from relationships, from responsibilities and even from life when it gets too comfortable and predictable. She takes us from the moment of his birth, he is the twin brother of a stillborn child, to his lonely last days in a seedy hotel. Born to a conventional, comfortably off family in Pakistan, Maquil is the favourite and beloved son who will carry the family name forward. However, Sonny (as he is called by his mother) rebels against the traditionalism that is inherent in his life and goes to study in New York, where he emerges with a new name, Mike. He next shows up in Egypt, as Mehmet Khan, marries a nice woman called Carine, deserts her and moves on, back to Pakistan. Here he falls hard for Samira — who is unconventionality personified, super chic and sleek but finally he abandons her too. He also takes up the avatars of Michel in France, Mikhail in Hong Kong and Miguel in Spain. Samira, incidentally, is a wonderful creation. She is an edgy woman, cigarette smoking, unmarried at 30, yet seeking and receiving attention and carelessly supporting her husband's gambling and racy lifestyle. Samira is so in love with the middle-aged, and now balding, Maquil. She knows, better than Maquil, that he will never be ready to take on the responsibility of a child, but he tricks her. They have a baby and, of course, he moves on! Forgery, wheeling and dealing, slipping away from tricky situations, is the hallmark of Maquil. And the defining feature keeps being told and retold as he reacts in a typical 'Maquil' way to different situations, personal social or business related. The thing about Maquil is that he's not admirable. Some characters inspire awe and respect by their sheer gall and guts or by their complete villainy. Not our Maqil, who lives for the moment and for whom perfection is himself, the appearance of a wrinkle or an open pore is a calamity and receding hairline challenges his very existence. He looks at his wife's chiselled posterior not with admiration but with jealousy, envying that which he does not possess. Samira once quotes Tagore to Maquil: "Land and sea had fallen to his power. All that was left was the sky." But in the end, Maquil can run no more and like the rest of humanity that lead regular lives of routine, is overtaken by that which we must all undergo: Old age and feebleness. Here is the irony of Maquil's itinerant life. One that Farooki brings out well, though with regret.
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A true moralist would detest the hero (he is as non-heroic as a hero can be). But a person who loves people that books create and replicate, can't help loving Maqil, the protagonist of The Flying Man. You can actually hear the author, Roopa Farooki chortle as she creates this character who the reader hates to love. And that's the strength of the book. Lighthearted, it may appear, but Farooki, who has modelled the hero on her own father, takes him rather seriously, spending a lot of time and attention on this character, whose rootlessness is his distinguishing feature. 