Of course I’m reading Such A Long Journey. Wouldn’t you be? When a book is in the news, it more than doubles its sales, and I’m sure Rohinton Mistry is having a gay old time with the sales of his books rising and rising. If you’re unaware of what I’m talking about, then maybe the news of what’s going on in Mumbai hasn’t filtered down to the rest of the country. (Mumbai is a city of such self importance, that it believes that it is the whole wide world.) Anyway, so Aditya Thackeray, grandson or heir or something to the Thackeray family, had Such A Long Journey as one of his college texts. It’s been a college text for a while, and the book’s been in print for 20 years. This book contains, among other things, references to the bad behaviour of the Shiv Sena. Thackeray Jr then calls for the book to be banned, the new Vice Chancellor (or something) of the college agrees, people are outraged and so on and so forth.
The funny thing is that there’s only one fleeting reference to the Shiv Sena, but the rest of the book mostly deals with either family crisis, the deaths of old friends and Indira Gandhi. If anything, Indira Gandhi’s family should be objecting, but I think they’ve realised that if you are a public figure then you are free to be scorned. (Hint, hint.)
Funnily enough, this is my least favourite of all of Mistry’s books. I love his writing, as always, and this is a good book, but I wasn’t really feeling it, you know? Usually I am completely connected to his characters and his (usually sad) subplots, but this book I read only on the surface and it hasn’t changed upon re-reading. I thought his portrayal of the Emergency in Fine Balance was much better done.
Oh, but it gets better, as I read my Google News alerts. Now the dabbawallas of Mumbai are joining the Shiv Sena in protesting the book, because, erm, a dabbawallah in the book drips sweat on one of the characters. Oh, for heaven’s sake. It’s a book. This is fiction. If everyone went around taking everything so personally, we’d have no books at all. It’s true.
Should you read Such A Long Journey? Certainly. Mistry is a fine, brilliant writer, and his gentle storylines of Parsi families always absorb you completely. You should also read it to see what people are making all the fuss about. It’s only a book, a pretty good one, but still just a book. And if things keep getting banned like this, soon we’ll have nothing left to read. People are far too sensitive.
The columnist is an author