Title : The Gandhian Adventures of Raj and Iqbal
Author : Zubin J. Shroff
“The Gandhian adventures of Raj and Iqbal”, sounds something like a detective-adventurous book, but it isn’t. This is the story of two brothers and their journey to pursuit truth, the truth as what could control the rise in the price of onions. Let’s sneak out what it has in its store for readers.
As the blurb of the book goes:
“Meet Raj Kumar Reddy and his brother in life,Iqbal Ali and Mohammad Khan. They are Gandhians. Peace-lovers. Truth-seekers. At least in intention if not in action.
Means what? As Iqbal puts it.” How can we say we are pursuing truth if we do nothing but drink tea and go to office and eat dinner and love our families? If we say pursuit, then we must pursue.”
And so, when the price of onions increases by hundreds of percent, they set about pursuing the truth. After all, an onion problem is not a small problem in India. Governments have fallen because of onion problem. And these are just the facts. The rumours are worse, much worse.
They say that the 1947 partition between India and Pakistan was thirty-five percent due to onion problem. Current border disputes with China are minimum eighty percent related to onion problem. After all, China is the number one producer of Onion and India is number two. Onion requires land for cultivation, and therefore any land dispute is almost definitely related to the desire to move ahead in the onion rankings!
Shamelessly trivializing everything from Indo-Pak relations and terrorisms to food-shortage and foreign-policy, The Gandhian Adventures of Raj and Iqbal is a quirky, desi satire about friendship and patriotism in the Indian subcontinent. ”
At first, I was not sure that this story would fall in my liking category. The protagonists of the story, Raj and Iqbal, the brothers of life, has already told in the beginning of the story what all they are going to do throughout. In beginning, I was confused as where it is heading, I mean does the story really have some significance, and my time spending on the book would be worth?
The only thing I was curious about is, how it would end, as in other story books I have the habit of predicting the next happenings, but this time I simply couldn’t. While reading the book, many a times a thought stuck my mind, how can one write a novel on increase in the price of onions.
About the narration fashion of the author, simple in nature, but superfluous description at some places can be avoided. Absence of ambiguity in the writing style makes it easy to go with the story, although the story at times seems complex (which is not true), because if a reader sees such a simple topic, his/her expectations rises , as there must be something unique attached to it, or the pinch of humour would be there for sure. Yes, author has poured humour into the story, but the storyline is nothing so captivating.
The first hundred pages is somewhat gathering attention, keeping this hope alive, that something different would pop up so, but in vain. The threshold of excitement gets on decreasing as the story proceeds ahead. The good side of the book, if not the complete story, but some chapters or some scenes are really humorous will make you feel enjoyed during the journey.
Rating : 3/5
Reviewer : Shweta Kesari