Dahanu Road

It takes enormous talent, dare I say, even genius to transform a nondescript town whose best-known product is an unremarkable brown fruit into 300 pages of page-turning literary magic. Anosh Irani has worked painstakingly to unearth the many little secrets and the richly complex social fabric that Dahanu Road has hidden in her bosom for the last century. This is a story of a tiny community called the Iranis, who were hounded out of their native Iran and settled in Western India in the early 20th century. In a richly ironic twist, the author shows how, over the decades, the oppressed Iranis became wealthy landowners who sometimes, despite their best intentions, turned into oppressors. Their victims were the Warlis or the native tribe of Dahanu. But the most powerful element of Dahanu Road is its love story--a tragic commentary on how social standing (or the lack of it) and caste hold sway even in today's India. There is much that the author had sought to convey, and done so successfully, in this book. From bringing the town of Dahanu and its sole claim to fame the chickoo to life - to a frank, often irreverent look into the soul of his Irani community - to explaining the gentle and infinitely wise teachings of the prophet Zarathustra, the founder of the author's Zoroastrian faith. This work on many levels bears the hallmark of a deeply personal journey. Post Dahanu Road, Anosh Irani will most certainly be mentioned in the same breath as his illustrious Zoroastrian counterparts like Rohinton Mistry and Bapsi Sidhwa. Read it if you like big love stories, or if you enjoy a history lesson with a few spiritual homilies thrown in. But above all, read it if you want to read a really, really good book.

Dahanu Road is both moving and entertaining. Its epic scope took me on an incredible journey - one that I will never forget!