Such a Long Journey

From the book Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry

“Believe me,” said Dinshawji, “she [Indira Gandhi] is a shrewd woman, these are vote-getting tactics. Showing the poor she is on their side. Saali always up to some mischief. Remember when her pappy was Prime Minister and he made her president of Congress Party? At once she began encouraging the demands for a separate Maharashtra. How much bloodshed, how much rioting she caused. And today we have that bloody Shiv Sena, wanting to make the rest of us into second-class citizens. Don’t forget, she started it all by supporting the racist buggers.’’

What kind of life was Sohrab going to look forward to? No future for minorities, with all these fascist Shiv Sena politics and Marathi language nonsense. It was going to be like the black people in America— twice as good as the white man to get half as much.

Probably some rubbish that had been foisted on the poor fellow, he assumed, remembering the time the Shiv Sena had recruited him to distribute racist pamphlets aimed against minorities in Bombay. They had promised him a Kwality Choc-O-Bar.

Of course, in the newsreels [of the 1971 war], no mention was ever made of dutiful Shiv Sena patrols and motley fascists who roamed city streets with stones at the ready, patriotically shattering windows that they deemed inadequately blacked-out.

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