A Novel

Meet Raj Kumar Reddy and his brother in life, Iqbal Ali Mohammad Khan. They are Gandhians. Peace-lovers. Truth-seekers. At least in intention if not yet 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 onion increases by hundreds of percents, they set about pursuing the truth. After all, an onion problem is never a small problem in India. Governments have fallen because of onion problem. Murders have been committed because of onion problem. And these are just the facts. The rumors are much, 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 terrorism 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.

ZUBIN J. SHROFF writes unique, entertaining, eclectic novels, many of which contain elements of satire, drama, and surrealism.