Reflections on Non-fiction and Fiction, and the beauty of Rohinton Mistry’s books)
In the early eighties, during a visit to Mumbai, an erudite cousin -a budding journalist at that time, on my insistence took me to the Strand bookshop (sadly closed down in 2018) and gifted me a volume of Shakespeare’s complete works in paperback along with Jawaharlal Nehru’s Glimpses of world history, a series of letters Nehru wrote to educate his daughter and to keep himself intellectually occupied while in prison. In fact, I had requested my cousin only for Nehru’s book. I had just finished reading Nehru’s Discovery of India, a book that I didn’t understand very much then, but it had kindled an interest in history and the next book in line by Nehru was the Glimpses of world history. Shakespeare was a bonus from my cousin. On the way back home in the famous double-decker bus of Bombay(yes, it was Bombay then), I made a comment. I said, looking at the size of Nehru’s book ‘how difficult it must have been to write so many letters that could swell up to a book of this size, compared to this, Shakespeare only wrote stories. Nehru must be more intelligent than Shakespeare”. My cousin smiled with understanding and replied “In my opinion, writing imaginative stories is much difficult than writing a book on history. Nehru knew many facts, and all he did was to assemble it well, but Shakespeare had nothing but his imagination assisted by some facts here and there”. I was puzzled by this answer but did not know to articulate it. It would take my years of reading fiction and non-fiction to understand what my cousin flippantly mentioned during the bus ride.
Nearly forty years after that conversation, if anyone were to ask me now: which genre is difficult to write? Without batting an eyelid, I will say — fiction. And I have many reasons for it. But the principal one is that the raw material to write non-fiction is readily available. All it takes is the effort to collate the data, synthesize the insights, and present fresh perspectives on the subject. But for a writer attempting original fictional literature, except for a germinal idea for a potential story, nothing is readily available; an entire universe has to be conjured afresh. The inspiration for fiction could have come from an event, an emotion, a moving circumstance, a casual conversation, deep pain, or love; whatever it is, once that spark of inspiration takes root, it needs tremendous creative imagination to execute it. External facts can only scaffold the story, gives the tale the realism it needs, but the essence of the work lies in the way the author decides to imagine the story, convey the sense of its rhythm, and establish an appropriate literary structure and effect. Character in the story must be imbued with life appropriate to the form and milieu; every gesture, clothing, mannerism, and manner of speech must be minutely conceived in the writer’s mind, before truthfully translated to paper. Every description must be vivid, palpable, and sometimes invented afresh, and above all — the reader should be able to visualize and recreate this fictional world within themselves. The words should be the conduit for such a creative exchange. Furthermore, a work of fiction is an immersive act of imagination, and it attempts to convey the private universe of a writer with all his personal proclivities and idiosyncrasies to a wider public. Therefore, it is not enough an author of fiction just writes well, he must write well enough to transfer his world to another without any emotional and intellectual distortion and hope the reader will interpret and further embellish the story in their terms. That is a big ask.
The above paragraphs are meant to a preamble to the book I wish to showcase in the post. The Indian born Canadian Writer Rohinton Mistry has written four books in a career of two decades, and each one of them a gem, and represents the highest form of fiction. In particular, I love his third novel “Family matters” — a story set in Shiv Sena-ruled Mumbai and traces the life of a Parsi family, who deal with vagaries of a middle-class existence, and the presence of an ailing father with a controversial and sensitive history. What sets Mistry’s writing apart is the simplicity of his language, and the wonderful evocation of a universe that is intimately familiar to Indians, and at the same strikes a universal tone about human nature and relationships. All his novels are set in India, and predominantly Parsi family-based, except “A fine balance” which explores themes from the Emergency period of 1975, the effects of casteism, and the problems of immigrants from villages to the towns. In family matters, Mistry is at his best. A rich tapestry of emotions, characters, and subplots lead the reader into the deepest levels of the human psyche, unraveling every emotional nuance in fine detail. The hall-mark of Mistry’s writing is in the dialogues. Not many Indian writers In English — except for RK Narayanan, Vikram Seth, and Jhumpa Lahiri and few others — have captured the tone and structure of how educated Indian families speak to each other in their daily lives as Mistry does. It is a sheer delight to read his characters speak in region-specific slang, using peculiar phrasing of sentences, their habit of posing questions as answers, and the repeated use of certain words to emphasize an emotion that is difficult to articulate in an alien language.
The other striking feature of Mistry’s writing is his simplicity. After reading a few pages of “Family matters”, a reader will begin to wonder why he cannot write a novel himself. After all, Mistry makes it look so easy. The lush prose — clear and clean — carries the story with effortless ease. The skeleton of the tale can be condensed in a few sentences, but the manner in which Mistry fills in the flesh and blood is matchless. We rarely have to consult the dictionary while reading a Mistry book, and even if we encounter words that are not common, the very context in which they are used reveals its meaning. That is a trait of a great writer.
It is unfortunate that Mistry’s books have faced political opposition in India, especially from the Hindutva driven Shiva Sena. Mistry openly caricatured them in his stories and paid a heavy price for it. His second novel “Such a long journey” was forcibly removed from the university curriculum because it offended the sentiments of a group of people. Mistry refused to apologize or edit the passages to neutralize the discontent. Despite the ban and the opposition, Mistry has had a good and continued readership in India and across the world. He was nominated twice for the prestigious Booker prize but lost out to other writers. Mistry stopped publishing after 2003.
I strongly recommend Mistry’s books for a summer read. They are well written, soothing, deep, and has the power to transport us to a different world — which is the essential purpose of literary fiction. In that fictional world, we meet new people, learn new sensibilities, and understand human nature from different angles and perhaps expand our own sense of the self. In all his books, Mistry spends a lot of time sketching out his characters and getting into the skin of who they are. We learn about them as we read long, soon those intimate descriptions take us very close to the protagonists and by the end of the book, we begin to feel we know them really well. Some characters continue to linger in our thoughts for a long time after we have read the book.
Rohinton Mistry may not write another novel, at least we do not know if he will. It doesn’t matter. His three novels and one collection of short stories are enough testimony to the richness of his talent. They are literary fiction at its best. If you haven’t yet read a Mistry novel, this may be the time to try one. I am certain you will crave for more.
