The Return of Rohinton

I have multiple copies of Rohinton Mistry's books, just because. He's the sort of writer whose words you never want to be without. Just the other day as I finished re-reading A Fine Balance I wondered when we would read something new from him. But this week's New Yorker (All links below) brought a surprise. 'Empire Records', a single page essay by Mistry, is set in 1975, the year he left Bombay for Toronto, and speaks of his complicated feelings about leaving India, through the lending and loss of a treasured LP to a close friend. The essay is full with the rich detail and familiar sense of home that I love so much about his work. Read this, for example:

'The electric Garrard gramophone that spun these records was my father's proudest possession. Everything he did--dusting the rosewood cabinet, cleaning the tonearm and needle, selecting a record, switching on the turntable--had an air of ritual homage, as though in a temple. I liked to sit close to the gramophone, where I could watch the record spinning, because the grooves in the shiny shellac appeared to create an endless spiral that almost induced a trance, making visible the passage of time. Suddenly, eternity was not an idea that evaded grasping but music that played forever.'

I only have to read a few lines of Mistry's work to be transported to Bombay, to feel that sense of exasperation and delight that embodies my relationship with the city, a city that despite all its faults I love dearly and still consider myself a part of. Wherever I may live, I will always consider myself a Bombay girl.

Which is why it saddened and disgusted me to read, also this morning, that Aditya Thackeray, the 20-year-old son of Uddhav Thackeray, the son of the man who reduced a great city to the dust bowl that it is today, succeeded in arm-twisting Mumbai University into withdrawing A Fine Balance from its curriculum. The book, according to Thackeray, 'contains extremely foul language and objectionable references to the Shiv Sena.'

There's really very little for me to say on the matter. The Shiv Sena, despite not having been in power for years, continues to control what is said, seen, done and read in Bombay because it has on its side not intelligence or integrity, but because it has none. Because it has none of these qualities, it has nothing to lose. And because it has nothing to lose, it continues to terrorize the public with the meanness of its ways and the smallness of its mind, promising not to cease and desist until, like them, we too become small and mean, with closed hearts and shuttered minds. Mistry left Bombay for a reason. People leave Bombay for a reason. But the behaviour of a twenty year old brat with no desire to open his mind to the great beauty of the world around him, should be no encouragement for us to lose heart. Mistry's works should be celebrated precisely because he offends, because he startles us, because he shakes us up and makes us think hard about the kind of people we are and the things we do to one another. Let's celebrate this great writer by re-reading his books. And if you know someone who hasn't been introduced to Mistry, this is as good a time as any for you to go ahead and do so. 

New Yorker Aditya Thackeray Such a Long Journey A Fine Balance Family Matters Swimming Lessons 

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