I find Animal to be the perfect existential character in that he is authentic and makes his own meaning. Undoubtedly he suffers for this, but his triumph could not come about any other way. His conception of what it is to be beautiful and human, has excluded himself, and understandably so. He imagines a heaven where he does not become upright but is loved as he is. Though he is a free-being, it would seem the blame is on the rest of society. His true freedom will come about through himself however, as individual choice is the crux of any existential philosophy. Eventually through a cathartic rebirth experience, he undergoes his greatest transformation ("what am I but a complete miniature universe stumbling around inside this larger one") And later, through profound self and world affirming acceptance, creates his previously imagined paradise on earth.
Sinha's message, in part, is certainly the subjectivity in life and the extent to which we understand ourselves as sovereign beings. When Animal rejects all the religious and political ideologies that seem false(207), he sneaks in one of his own, as he debates plurality of religious doctrine: he says "suppose people talked of beauty in the same way, how foolish...". Yet, notions of beauty are no less unified than notions of God-he is victim to his conception of this, in which he excludes himself. Over and over again, he cynically rejects any words from friends about inner beauty, finding love etc. I think this is Sinha's brilliance, in shaping a trajectory of autonomy and transformation, and transcending suffering that had excluded him from full responsibility or in Sartre's view, possibility. In this, Sinha addresses the animal natures of all of us.
Interestingly, there is no locus for hell in the novel. Its very subjectivity, as Zafar says it is in us, Farouq says non-existent, the man-made hell of the explosion and lack of justice, also point to our freedom of will within creation. And all this against a backdrop of natural order, the tao in the universe, expressed as "sa" the "eternal and changeless" music "bent and twisted by this world" that anyone "can sing" or in this case, choose to harmonize with.
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I agree with you that Animal represents the perfect existential character. He sees himself caught in a world that seems absurd, not just because of the way it is structured, but especially because of the way it has structured him. At first Animal can not find the meaning in a life that is lived based on survival, as this is all that is left to him as an "animal." Therefore, the term existentialism is taken further in his case in that he not only denies God but also the possibility of meaning in any sense. However, we find that he develops meaning whether he realizes it or not through his attachment to other people, and his existence does not seem so absurd, because there are people he loves who exist and who love him in return and it is in these relationships that this existentialist finds a reason to live.
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