TALES FROM FIROZSHA BAAG................. A REVIEW

A book which blends the essence of story telling with a clarity characteristic to novels ‘Tales from Firozsha Baag’ will remain etched into the creative recesses of my mind for its disarming simplicity and absorbing diction. Moreover, Rohinton Mistry brings to the narrative an unmistakable veneer of humane understanding and compassion - a welcome leitmotif throughout the book. It proved to be a book both provoking and nourishing to the mind famished of good literature in recent times.

The book is a collection of short stories which chronicles various facets of the lives of people living in a Parsi housing complex. The different blocks of Firozsha Baag and their tenants lend their lives to the lively paint-brush of Mistry who with his masterful strokes inspire awe with aplomb amongst his readers. From the fretting Rustomji who resents boys playing cricket within his earshot to the jovial raconteur that Nariman Hansotia is, from Najamai and Tehmina of C Block who share a grudging symbiosis to Jehangir Bulsara and his travails of adolescence, Mistry unearths all in his own soulful rendition of life in its truest form and honest colours. His portrayal of poverty and need in the Bulsara household is as true as his juvenile mischief while narrating the playful atrocities committed by Pesi padmaroo and his cohorts.

A colourful collage of inter-related short stories, ‘Tales from Firozsha Baag’ resonates with the troubles and tribulations, dreams and disillusionments, memories and monomania of an entire community marginalized over ages. My personal favourite was the story ‘Exercisers’ which in its blissful tactlessness described the pleasuring volatility of teenage love, its unformed edges stained with emotional outpour and the searing despair at the end of it all. After reading the story my heart went out to the unsuspecting naiveté of Jehangir and his tryst with the wondrous phenomenon of love. To me this was the swelling point of the book and then it just ebbed a bit like in a play with a mistimed catharsis. Still, I relished the book with gay abandon and would recommend it to all with the sincerity of an avid aficionado of short stories that I am.

A zillion “Thanks” to a dear friend who recommended Mistry to me..... And another zillion for the one who took the trouble to find this one for me from the literary labyrinths of BCL.

I loved it well.