In the strange mathematics of Mumbai, places are far more than geographical locations. South Bombay is a cosseted island; stratospherically privileged and worlds apart from Yuri’s Mahim. Choosing Elphinstone College forces this 15-year-old protagonist of Jerry Pinto’s novel to find a foothold into a world he may never know nor belong. It is Yuri’s lot to traverse great distances: from khadi langots to dreams of “American” jeans, from state board to a world inhabited by ICSE and rock music, from lending libraries to book ownership, from friendlessness to the perfect wavelength to ride with Muzammil. And the reader tags along, breathless with discovery.
How does a person find himself if he is determined to be lost? How may any joy linger when intent on self-sabotage? How does the mind always know what it doesn’t want even as it has no clue what it does? For all his bumbling, Yuri lodges under the skin. We have all been here. We have been given an education along similar lines even as we sang that song from The Wall.
In nostalgia-drenched The Education of Yuri, Pinto turns trauma into sublime art by the alchemy of writing from the heart. Only he can write through humour and deep love of the fault lines of human experiences––of loving wrongly or right, of asinine desires to effect social change and of being swept away by both friendship and death. Building narrative superstructures through simplicity, anecdotes and descriptions is the author’s forte. At the heart of the book is the theme of loss. Nothing defines life like loss, and Yuri is shaped by absence more than presence.
Pinto’s characters are all heroic; they strive to overcome many forms of darkness, to be nobler through dialogue despite discontent. More importantly, these characters are carved with a lapidarist’s precision until they gleam embedded in the narrative, alive and unforgettable. And Yuri himself provides a vehicle by which the reader runs amok on the streets of 1980s’ Mumbai–– a vestigial moment before the striking mills shut down and real estate sharks moved in to change the city’s landscape forever. Nothing shouts Mumbai as much as Arif––street-smart, impervious to education and wholesome.
He is the perfect adjunct to Yuri’s refined doubts and hesitation. Yet it is Tio Julio who glows heroic, almost the soul spirit of the Mumbai encapsulated here. Julio’s words and actions are too pure to reconcile, but reminiscent of people from a time before we clutched our religious identities and sank into the fires of hate.
Fundamentally, this is a book about a slice in time when learning and books mattered, when poetry was spoken of and practised. Cerebral, funny and warm, Pinto returns us to a time when being young was celebrated and the loneliest found succour in the warm circle of odd friends. This is the finest bildungsroman out of India in recent years.
The Education of Yuri
By: Jerry Pinto
Publisher: Speaking Tiger
Pages: 408
Price: Rs 599