Book Review: Such a Long Journey, Rohinton Mistry

It always amazes me how despite my dislike for tragic novels, I end up reading Rohinton Mistry's works again and again. Thus you can imagine how interesting his work must be. This time I came across the book called 'Such a Long Journey' when I was browsing the books at Crossword, Ahmedabad. I would describe the book as slow but fluid, sad but with traces of happiness round the corner and above all, displaying Mistry's typical style of weaving a story with historical background.

Like 'Fine Balance', this book is also set in the backdrop of early 1970s when India was gripped in the war with Pakistan and the emergency times. The story revolves around a family, their friends, and neighbors living in a Parsi colony in Mumbai. As always, Mistry gives us glimpses of Parsi family customs, their language, their interactions with each other and their place in the Indian history.

I call this novel 'A collection of mini-biographies of various characters'. He depicts individuals in such color and variety! He never fails to draw a picture of a personality with the most complete details. And therefore, parts of the book concerning individual characters look like their own biographies. The characters in this book are by far the most interesting of his novels. A middle class Parsi family fighting various household problems surrounding their children, A retired major working for RAW (Intelligence wing of Indian Armed Forces) and tangled in a national level conspiracy, a superstitious woman who performs black magic, a mentally challenged begger, a street worker who earns his bread by drawing all deities on footpath and wall and so on.

Like his other novels, this novel also has a steady background which plays historical events, dimly interacting with the characters in the frames. In Fine Balance, the background was the Emergency time in India under Indira Gandhi's rule. In this book, the background is the war years with Pakistan and creation of Bangladesh. Through indirect references, Mistry conveys a lot about powerful and shrewd personality of Ms. Gandhi. And such historical references make this book very interesting to read.

If you can't tolerate tragedy, don't read this book. If you want a novel which ties all the loose ends at the end and finishes with a climax, look somewhere else. This book is for those who enjoy immersing into the characters' lives. It is for those who live the lives of characters while reading. If you are such a reader, don't miss this book.

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