A Fine Balance by rohinton mistry

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

5 stars

(completely forgot to review this; too busy trying to un-depress myself).

If you were following along with some of my updates for Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance, you might've detected a bit of my cynicism poking through toward the end of this 600 page behmoth novel of India's woes. I was starting to reach a breaking point: how much calcuated heartache could ~~Misery~~ (*ahem*) Mistry throw at the reader and not expect an emotional backlash?

Yeah (Lobstergirl), this is probably one of the most depressing novels I've ever read, but the corollary to this supposition is: for a novel to be truly depressing, it must include characters you care about. And, excavating through the miasma of wretched mid-'70s Bombay/Mumbai/"The City by the Sea" (a torrent of filth, poverty, crooked politics and unrelenting caste policies), several extraordinary, unforgettable characters emerge from the effluvia. How can you not be moved by the plight of tailors. Omprakash and Ishvar, desperately trying to stay afloat and ply a trade outside of their fetid leather-making caste; or their employer "Aunty" Dina, ever-constantly harangued by her landlord and his goons for running a sewing business out of her flat after her husband tragically dies; or Dina's roommate Maneck, the relatively privileged young man from the Himalayas to attend school, only to be persecuted ceaselessly by fellow residents at a khat-soaked, roach- and vermin-infested youth hostel. (?)

It's these four characters (with their backstories, and attendant minor characters: Beggarmaster, Monkey Man, Shankar the beggar with no legs or fingers, the hair fetishist, among dozens of others) that patch together a quilt so heart-rending, I'm not likely to ever forget it anytime soon.

I know this might annoy a few people who railed on Katherine Boo's Behind the Beautiful Forevers but I think both that non-fiction account of the garbage slums in Mumbai and Mistry's novel A Fine Balance are worthy shelf-mates. I was haunted by them both. There are lessons to be learned in each (with global implications) if only we'd take the time to wallow through the muck to glean them.

It probably goes without saying, but Highly Recommended.

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POKOLOV

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

My all time favourite book, without doubt! Magnificent, Educational, Interesting, Very Sad.....The setting is India in 1975-76, when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi, defying a court order calling for her resignation, declares a state of emergency and imprisons the parliamentary opposition as well as thousands of students, teachers, trade unionists and journalists. These events, along with the government's forced sterilization campaign, serve as backdrop for an intricate tale of four ordinary people struggling to survive. This book is amazing and unputdownable!

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Bruterake

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Everything has its own web of consequences. Like strings that put a puppet into motion, the outcomes of our decisions decide the path our life takes. It might be a decision as small as picking up a book. As I ventured into the pages of this tome, I was exposed to several decisions that had their own consequential paths.

n "If time were a bolt of cloth, I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily."n

The story is set in 1975; the place is India, in an unnamed Indian city by the sea, four people are thrown together, their lives increasingly integrated as political unrest leads to restricted freedoms in the form of the Emergency. We have a middle-aged widow desperately trying to preserve her fragile independence; two tailors, uncle and nephew, who have come to the city in flight from the cruel caste violence in their native village; and a young student from the northern mountains, bewildered by the end of his idyllic childhood. In these precarious circumstances, these four characters form an unlikely alliance.

The book’s progression can only be described as endearing. The easy language almost encourages you to read on and is almost unputdownable as the story proceeds. It is a brilliantly crafted story that depicts its protagonists with dignity and the environments with authenticity, filled with subjects of brutality like caste violence, rape, and police brutality, that threaten to push you over the edge into the realm of callousness and cynicism.

But even between such turmoil, a fine balance is maintained. A fine balance between hope and despair.

I loved the way this book is written, in quite an impactful and elegant manner. I found the writing to be contagious. Imagine driftwood on a stream, just floating with the flow, calm and serene. That’s how I’d describe the writing.

The book doesn’t end on a high note though. It didn’t have to. It breaks the clichéd 'they lived happily ever after' sequence. ‘Happiness’ was a subject of time and morality, and ‘even after’ never happened.

It left me with some very difficult questions. Questions about faith and betrayal! Questions about injustice and bereavement! Heavy in its subject, it did leave a residue of deep thought in its wake. It might make you think outside your comfort zone.

The world we inhabit is grossly unreasonable and only a privileged few have all the advantages in life. We take so many things in our lives for granted, but this book is a vivid reminder of how quickly and how easily everything can be turned upside down.

n
“You cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failure as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair. In the end, it's all a question of balance"n

I’d definitely recommend it to people who have not read the book before. Those who live in the Indian subcontinent, or know well, its socio-cultural fabric and those who are aware of the politics of post-independent India, may feel a tie-in. Pick it up for its gorgeous, powerful prose and to help you restore your faith that there are good people out there, and everyone has a story just as complex as yours. Once you read it, you are not about to forget this book.

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Banisoup

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

Rohinton Mistry has written three whopping novels set in India, Such a Long Journey, A Fine Balance, and Family Matters, and they're all brilliant. He doesn't have pyrotechnic prose like the DeLillos and Pynchons, he's the tortoise to their hares, he plods on with his careful beautiful pictures of the details of people's lives, the complexities and the horrors and the unnoticed pools of affection, where the money comes from and where it goes, how they get through the day and how they don't - his camera never lies. I recommend all of these three novels without any ifs or buts. You may be weeping at the end of them, because life is sad, but you won't mind that.

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applide

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

I have nothing but praise for this book. This is the book that makes me a reader. No matter how busy I am, I will always be a reader if the book that I have is similar to this. Take away my Facebook account. Take away the online games (Clash of Clans, Angry Bird, Plants Vs Zombies). Take away the television (The Voice Kids, Nathaniel, Pangako sa Yo). But give me this kind of book and I will be a happy camper. I can read all day and night in a corner and will not bother you even in a single minute.

It is a long novel but the storytelling is straightforward. It is as grand as Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children (5 stars) but bereft of big words and technical literary pizzazz. Rohinton Mistry (born 1952) seems to be telling us that he can write sad and bleak novel about Indian in a plain simple way so that ordinary readers (like me) can appreciate how rich India is in terms of its culture, politics and complex human dilemma.

This is the story of four Indian nationals that happened to be living in the same house: Dina the widow who decides to live in her own by hiring two tailors; Ishvar and Om who are untouchables. On their way to Dina's place, they met Maneck who Dina is accepting as a boarder to augment in the rental of her place. The lives of the four become interwined as they live together and transcends from the cycle of love, hate and love again. As Mistry puts it "life is a fine balance between hope and despair."

It is easy to relate to this kind of story for me because I am also living in a third world country that shares the same situations like that of India. We also had Martial Law for a long time during the reign of the deposed Ferdinand Marcos. We don't have the caste system but we have a wide gap between rich and poor people. We also have the assassinations and killing due to politics and religious fanatics. Lastly, majority of our people live below poverty line that they are having a hard time eating 3 times a day or for those with jobs, still find difficulty in trying to make ends meet.

Good writing. Simple language (no need to open your dictionary). Familiar characters and situations. Heartfelt if not heart-wrenching scenes. Almost made me cry (only if not because I was sleepy from working too much).

A must read! Believe me, you MUST read this.

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_corridors

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

It is nice to meet an author who never lets you down. Rohinton Mistry is one of those authors whose fluid style, engaging characters and epic scope has never failed to impress me and so I've returned to his books again and again. In fact I think I may have now reached the end of his literary output and am now sadly reduced to sitting around, twiddling my opposable monkey thumbs and waiting for his next offering to be published.

Spanning nearly ten years, this epic tale of friendship set against the backdrop of "The Emergency", has an amazing depth and richness that far shorter novels sometimes fail to achieve. Despite boasting over thirty principle characters and a walk-on walk-off cast of hundreds, not once did I feel lost, or forget who each individual was. Mistry is capable of painting such vivid characters that each one is instantly recognisable for their quirks and foibles. They may be loveable (Monkey man), they may be deplorable (assorted goondas) but they are all undoubtedly very human and believable.

For those of you yet to experience the delightful pantheon of characters that inhabit the pages of a Mistry novel, then this is an excellent place to start. Be warned though, despite the liveliness and buoyancy of his stories, Mistry is not one to provide a happy ending just to satisfy the reader.

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Blackstealth

★ ★ ★ ★ ★

April 17,2025

The Indian Independence Act of 1947 ushered in a period of hope that all the country’s injustices would be eradicated. In the years that followed, the belief that politics would solve the problem weakened with 1975 marking the passing of a state of emergency which represented the death of any dreams of a better world from above. It was the shattering of an ideal. ‘A Fine Balance’ takes place in that period of despair and focuses on four people who come from different regions, religions, and classes, and who, despite early trust issues, find an understanding and togetherness that rekindles a little hope. It’s a story of brutality, and of torture, but also a story of tenderness, and one that is told with considerable gentle humor. Loved it.

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