Published by Speaking Tiger, 2022, 403 pages.
Review by Rishad Patell and Suroor Alikhan

The following is a combination of Rishad’s and Suroor’s reviews of The Education of Yuri, differentiated by typeface.  

This delightful coming-of-age story by Jerry Pinto is a must-read for anyone who grew up in Bombay or has any relation to the city in the 1980s. The story follows the life of Yuri Fonseca, a Christian orphan brought up by his priest/uncle, Tio Julio, in the midtown area of Mahim, during his years through college and beyond.

Fifteen-year-old Yuri is on the threshold of a big change: he is going to be leaving school to start junior college. He is a shy, slightly awkward boy who has not managed to make any friends in school. Every year he tells himself he will make friends, but every year he sees “the same bunch of boys milling around, already secure in their cliques and teams and groups”. He just does not fit in. “He had never thought about it but the feeling of not being in the right place, not being the right shape, not being the right anything, had followed him all his life.”

Tio Julio lives a life of “quiet asceticism”. Yuri grows up without television and not much popular culture. He, like his uncle, dresses in khadi and carries a jhola (a cotton tote bag). Although these were some of the things that set him apart in school, they do not seem to present an insurmountable barrier when he starts college.

Elphinstone College is a very different place from Yuri’s school, “as far away from his universe in Mahim as one could get without falling into the Arabian Sea”. To his surprise, he makes a friend—Muzammil, a boy from a wealthy family. The two hit it off straightaway, and their constant banter feels real—the kind of banter you indulged in at that age: clever and silly all at once. Soon there is a group around them, including Bhavna—a bright, feisty young woman—with whom Yuri falls in love and has an affair.

The book follows Yuri for the next five years as he grows up and starts to figure out his place in the world. He gets involved—briefly—with a communist group, volunteers at a refugee shelter, explores his sexuality, and starts to write poetry.

Jerry Pinto captures what it is like to be a teenager: the working out of your identity, the intense friendships, and the excitement of being on the cusp of adulthood. This novel is a love letter to Bombay of the 1980s and to Elphinstone.

This is a book that hit close to home for me and allowed me to be absorbed in another world for a while. What The Education of Yuri really did for me was to take me to Bombay circa 1985. Even though I am not from the city, I felt a sense of nostalgia, a sense of the madness of the city at the time. That’s what Jerry Pinto does best—connect you with the city of Bombay—and I always enjoy that brief sense of belonging you get for that short period of time. I felt connected to the life Yuri lived, the places he went to, the streets he walked on—even his own feelings of desire and longing, his loneliness and his yearning for friendship, his confusion with sexuality—all of it struck a chord.

The story of Yuri is also a poignantly told tale—his relationship with his uncle is beautifully written and played out. You feel a sense of disconnected warmth with his character and you wish you could know more about him in the book. Yuri himself is a character I grew to love very quickly. You feel sorry for him, you want to help him and hold his hand and tell him things will work out, you want him to meet someone and fall in love, you think about him as yourself and what you would do in that situation. In fact, you care deeply for him when you read this wonderful book and you don’t want his story to end. 

Pinto’s greatest strength is writing about people and their relationships, and it is this that makes his books a pleasure to read.

For me this was classic Jerry Pinto. So readable, so relatable and so wonderful. 

Note: For those of you who don’t speak Hindi, Pinto does use it in some of the dialogue, but it should not hinder your understanding of the plot.

Read the Talking About Books interview with Jerry Pinto.