قال إيشفار: كيف يمكن للوقت أن يكون طويلا أم قصيرًا ؟
لا طول و لا عرض للوقت تكمن المسألة في الأحداث التي جرت خلال مروره و ما حدث هو أن حياة كل منا إنضمت إلى حياة الآخر

الرواية تتفق تمام مع معايير الفيلم الهندي الطويل الدرامي مع خليط من الأحداث اللا متوقعة
و لكن الفرق شاسع. فمتعة قراءة الرواية تتجسد في الإشارات الوجودية فيها التي تضفي عليها رونق إنسانيًا.

هذه الرواية تصف حالة الهند في السبعينات من خلال حياة أربعة شخصيات مركزية جمعت بينهم الظروف:

1/ دنيا دلال: ارملة تعيش بمفردها في شقة لإيجار بعد عجزها عن سداد الإيجار بمفردها تقترح عليها صديقتها المقربة "زنوبيا " إيجار غرفة من منزلها و توظيف "خياطين"للعمل بقطعة".
نعيش حكاية "دلال " منذ طفولتها المدللة مع والدها الطبيب ثم وفاته و انقلاب موازين عالمها لتعيش تحت سلطة اخوها و كيف تتحايل كي تخبئ القليل من مال لحضور الحفلات الموسيقية أين ستتعرف على زوجها و بعد 3 سنوات من زواج ينقلب عالمها مرة اخرى
و تبدأ رحلة كفاحها و إصرارها على استقلاليتها من خلال عمل بالخياطة و التغيير الذي سيطرأ على طريقة عيشها بعد إلتقائها الخياطين و"مانيك".
2/ الشخصية الثانية : "مانيك" الطفل الوحيد الذي عاش في منطقة جبلية يسافر للمدينة لحصول على شهادة و يعيش في سكن مع صديق "أفبتاش" لكن بعد تعرضه لحادث يكره سكن جامعي و يقرر كتابة رسالة لوالديه كي يسمحوا له بعودة للمنزل فيفاجئ بهم يقترحون عليه الايجار غرفة.
فيذهب للسكن مع خالة" دنيا " مُكرهًا فتُغير فيه و يُغير فيها.
3/ الشخصية الثالثة: "إيشفار " العم من الطبقة الدنيا في المجتمع الهندوسي: طبقة الدباغين نسبة لعملهم صناعة الجلود يُعتبر والده من الذين تمردوا على قوانين المجتمع الهندوسي بتعليم ولديه الخياطة، بعد فاجعة عائلية كعقاب لهم من طبقة العليا لتمردهم على القوانين.
يصبح وصي على إبن أخيه" اوم" و يقرارن السفر للمدينة للعمل و حصول على مال ثم عودة للقرية لتزويج "اوم " و فتح مشغل و بعد جهد في البحث يجدان عمل عند سيدة "دنيا".

4/ الشخصية الاخيرة "أوم" : شاب يحلم بالعدالة ضمن المجتمع الهندوسي يعامله كالحيوان.
فيرحل للمدينة مع عمه إثر فاجعة عائلته.

بعد قراءة الرواية إ كتشفت المجتمع الهندوسي و كيفية تنظيمه . هذا إقتباس منها يفسر قوانين الصارمة لهذا المجتمع.
《 أقر الباندي لالورام : تعلم هناك أربع مجموعات في مجتمعنا "البرهمية،الكشاترية،القايشية و الشودرية".

و كل منا ينتمي إلى إحدى هذه المجموعات و لا يمكنها إختلاط فيما بينها》.

إشمززت في احيان كثيرة من العقابات المسلطة على الطبقة الدنيا بسبب زلات تفاهة في نظري.
و بحكم عرفهم و ديانتهم جرم فادح مثل :

إجبار أحد أفراد الطبقة الدنيا "شامرى " أكل غائط سيده لأنه تجر أ على قرب من البئر المخصص لهم.
أو طريقة كسبهم للقوتهم و كيف تعرضت جدة "اوم" لحادث لا ينسى في حياة اي امراة و رد فعل زوجها
لا تُنسى هي أخرى
و المحزن أن هذا التنظيم الجائر سائر في المدينة ايضا :

《 قال" إيشفار " ليس عليك أن تخبرنا عن البرهميين و رجال الدين فجشع هذه الطبقات العليا معروف جدا في قريتنا.
قال "راجارام" : هذا ما هو الحال عليه في كل مكان
مازلت أنتظر إلتقاء من يعاملني ك ندٍ له كالإنسان
هذا كل ما أريد ه لا أكثر 》.


من المشاهد التي ابكتني مشاهد معسكر "حد النسل" الذي فرضته رئيسة وزراء و كيف يقتاد الناس إلى الشاحنات يتم رميهم و ضربهم بالعصي ثم يجبرون على عمليات في ظروف مأسوية وسط ضحك و إستهزاء الشرطة.

هناك العديد من محطات الأخرى على غرار حياة الفقراء في الأكواخ و إقتياد" إيشفار" و "أوم" إلى معسكر تجميل المدينة


على إمتداد 628 صفحة نعيش الواقع اللا إنساني
و المأسوي في الهند تحت قمع السلطة و التسول و القتل و التشرد.

لكن كما يقول أحد رواة في الرواية :

ما الذي يمكنه فعله في هذه الظروف؟
تقبل الامر و الإستمرار في الحياة. رجاءً تذكر
أن سر البقاء يكمن في تقبل التغيير بسرور و التكيف معه.
كل الامور تسقط و تبنى مجددا و أولئك الذين يبنونها مجددا يكونون مبتهجين.

رواية الإنسانية بالامتياز و الرواية واقعية مؤلمة.
لأول مرة أعطي الالم و المأساة خمس نجوم الإبداع الكاتب.

16 Mars 18

In case I needed more of a reason NOT to ever read Oprah books again (after Fall on Your Knees), this is it. It is a terribly depressing book about people living in India when Indira Gandhi was in charge. I thought it had potential as historical fiction -- and indeed, the gruesome depictions of abusive mass sterilization campaigns were enlightening -- but I found it impossible to get past the depressing story. I came away from this book with a heavy feeling that things can keep getting worse, even when they have been bad for so long that you're sure they're bound to get better. Too depressing!

“Or was it permitted to take the body home for prayers? Probably depended on the state of decomposition, and how long it would keep at room temperature. In the unrefrigerated world. Where everything ended badly.”

As we look back on the Great Villains of the 20th century, along with the obvious ones that spring to mind - Hitler, Stalin, Pol Pot, the Dominican Republic’s Trujillo and Chile’s Pinochet (to name a few)- let us not forget Indira Gandhi, who, with her cruelty and egregious self-serving, greasy handed World Bankedness, destroyed hundreds of millions of lives in a beautiful ancient country.

When found guilty of corruption in 1975 she simply retroactively changed the laws, the courts - well, everything - establishing a State of Emergency - she hoarded power until she died, making herself a dictator to the standing ovation of the growing Neolibs in the West who were ecstatic to cement over the flimsy homes, and destroy the lands of the poor and call it Progress.

“But the day soon came when the mountains began to leave them….Roads, wide and heavy-duty, to replace scenic mountain paths too narrow for the broad vision of nation-builders and World Bank officials.”

This fantastic book is set then. Four Indians: two Parsi, two Hindu, whose lives collide to make a formed family of sorts, a family more real than most because of its astoundingly tactile authenticity.

There are so many different ways I found myself thinking about this book. Here are a few:

Corruption

I’m looking from way over here - so what right do I have to ask, but here I go:
If the dominant religion in a society is crafted on inequity at birth, how can it imagine an equitable political system? And now the BJP, the Hindu Nationalist Party, is making human division even more stark. The religion is the government is the religion.
Isn’t corruption ecclesiastically established in a religion with castes? Isn’t that what castes are? I am born superior to you. Twice born. Thus, what is yours is mine. You have no right to anything: respect, privacy, love, space, education, or safety if you are born Dalit, Chamaar, “untouchable”.

How quickly the USA, a mere infant as far as nations go, hardened into its ‘castes’ and degenerated into disgusting corruption. Those who inherit untaxed wealth and property own the corporations that control the subservient government who does their bidding. Compare them to the US (Dalit?) majority: the wage slaves whose taxes are removed from their paychecks before they see the money, most living in an endless cycle of debt.


The Necessity of Shrinking Your Life (and your Love) to Fit Your Caste

Is the oppression of a middle class Parsi woman (Dina) who doesn’t want to live under the thumb of her creepy, sexist big brother less oppressive than that of the frigging miserable life of a Chamaar Dalit? Or even the evolved oppression, the incredible disappointment with life, of a well-off, educated young man with an expected inheritance who came to love these three as family?
You’ll need to read this book to decide.

But maybe, in this world, learning to limit your love is just what you need to do. To protect yourself, you need to love small. Anything bigger might crack you into pieces. In fact that might be what happens.
The one who hadn’t learned from birth to shrink his dreams, his love; to only love the very smallest thing: a cookpot, or maybe a new sari. That one.
Loving too much, too many, hoping too grandly for some glorious tomorrow that will not happen? It’s going to break you.


1975

I was there. In India that year. I had the opportunity to work in a hospital in Tamil Nadu that had been established to do reconstructive surgery on people with leprosy. It was my first trip to India, and I was traveling alone. I was oblivious to national politics, being completely absorbed in the day to day, and constantly amazed at how very many people there were, always, everywhere. And how closely they stood next to me. An important lesson in Personal Space.

Then India had a population of 623 million. Now there’s over 1.4 billion. I went back, traveled around northern India, just when they went over one billion.

1975 was also just about the time when neoliberalization really took off. The IMF and the World Bank began their push to destroy the autonomy of the global south. Their demands, their forced ‘adjustments’ - such as the frequent demand that countries buy imported food if they wanted a loan (ever wonder why Sierra Leone needs Ukraine’s wheat?) - essentially causing these countries (or their corrupt leaders who pocketed much of the $) to move away from the local food sources that had sustained people for centuries, to become dependent on multinational megacorporations and to push them to use GMO seeds (Monsanto). 1975, the birth of the disastrous “green revolution”.

Indira Gandhi saw this and went with it wholeheartedly - Anything you boys want she said - and the deal was made.

Dina’s brother:
“People sleeping on pavements gives industry a bad name. My friend was saying last week - he’s the director of a multinational, mind you, not some small, two-paisa business - he was saying that at least two-hundred million people are surplus to requirements, they should be eliminated.”
…
“The important thing…is to consider the concrete achievements of the Emergency…My friend says production has improved tremendously. And who benefits from all this? The workers. The common people. Even the World Bank and the IMF approve of the changes. Now they are offering more loans.”

1975, geez, it could have gone a different way.


Minor Characters

There are a whole cast of these amazing types: The Hair Guy, The Rent Collector, The Monkeyman, The Beggarmaster - and they all do brutal, unconscionable things. But aren’t they all incredibly creative? Didn’t they all work very hard, absolutely diligently at their ‘jobs’?

I found myself thinking: You can hardly expect someone to simply stand in one place, motionless, until they starve to death, can you?
Desperate people will do desperate things. Born into a world, holding a completely empty bag, how do any of us know what we would be driven to do?

What if these remarkable Creative Problem Solvers had been born with a few tools in their bags? What art might they have given to the world? What books might they have written? What wrongs might they have righted? They all had whims, wiles, muses - I would have loved to have been their teacher when they were seven.
And unarmed.

What a book. And India: such a place.

“Elsewhere, during the religious procession of Mata Ki Sawari, someone had entered a trance and identified a Bhil woman as the witch causing the community’s woes. She was beaten to death, and the village was expecting better times; unfortunately, a year later they were still waiting.”

“We begin to live when we have conceived life as a tragedy.”
WB Yeats

I’ve read tragedies, dark books, sad books, two-box-of-tissue books, and books where the dog dies at the end. But I have never read anything as devastating as A Fine Balance.

It’s about India in 1975, during the time of the Emergency. Tragedy is everywhere. It’s the story of a specific place and time in history, but one that obviously has broader lessons.

“But what else to expect, when judgement has fled to brutish beasts, and the country’s leaders have exchanged wisdom and good governance for cowardice and self-aggrandizement? Our society is decaying from the top downwards.”

Rohinton Mistry takes us through this decaying of society, by way of a unique and unforgettable group of characters:

Longsuffering Dina Dalal;
brooding Omprakesh Darji;
sweet but struggling Maneck Kohlah;
and my favorite, Ishvar Darji, who wants more than anything to do the right thing

And I could fill this page with a list of the extraordinary individuals Mistry has woven into the group’s lives. I’ll just mention one, the Monkey-Man. Like so many characters, you empathize with his plight, yet you don’t trust him. He lives by begging and entertaining crowds, using his monkeys, his dog, and later his sister’s children. He commits a dreadful act, and is in receipt of a deadly prophecy—so watch out. His metaphoric performance is shown on the cover picture:

“The children were lifted high above the ground. Their faces disappeared into the night, beyond the reach of the kitchen lights. The audience gasped. He raised the pole higher, gave it a little toss, and caught the end upon his palm. His stringy arm muscles quivered. He moved the pole to and fro, making the top end sway like a treetop in a breeze. Then another little toss, and the pole was balanced on his thumb.”

I’m full of sensitivities after this read. (I’m certain the term “Family Planning” will forever make me shudder.) It has given me acute awareness of how precarious the framework is on which we build our lives. But instead of wanting to escape, it’s actually made me want to dive in deeper. Perhaps that’s part of the writer’s genius.

This is a masterpiece of plot as well as characterization. It is full of satisfying connections, digressions and completions. It contains the full spectrum: joy and sorrow, warmth and cruelty, sunshine and storms, the young and the old, sickness and health, the city and the countryside, rich and poor, powerful and powerless. It is an epic journey—a supremely difficult journey, but one you do not want to miss.

Like most Americans, I remember clearly the date September 11, 2001. I recall where I was standing when I first heard about the attack on the Twin Towers. My first child, a son, was almost eight months old at the time. My first reaction was fear; later, sorrow and grief set in. In my mind ran the thought that life as I knew it would never be the same again. My son would grow up in a world dominated by the unknown and the constant threat of danger. How could I possibly protect him from such uncertainties? Then I paused to reflect further and feelings of intense guilt erupted. The bubble of security I had been living in was burst. It struck me that the fear I was experiencing was one that millions of others across the globe are forced to live with on a daily basis. How lucky had I been? How presumptuous to assume that my family should be exempt from the horrors and injustices of the world? Well, admittedly and quite thankfully, we remain in a state of relative bliss, but a greater awareness has grown. I know that at any time, I could find myself standing in the shoes of another much less fortunate. I will not take for granted my rights and protections.

So, I digress a bit. This book, A Fine Balance, has nothing to do with the terrorist attacks of 9/11. What this book accomplished, however, was similar to that which happened to me following that tragic event. I was once again placed figuratively in the shoes of another human being, actually in the shoes of several individuals that faced indignities, discrimination, and monstrous hardships on a regular basis. Rohinton Mistry spins a stunning and heartbreaking tale of four individuals whose lives intersect for one year during 1970s India, under the rule of Indira Gandhi. It was a time of great political upheaval resulting in ‘the Emergency’ of 1975. Human rights were suppressed, mass sterilization was enforced, the slums were destroyed, and the jails were full of Gandhi’s opponents. How this emergency affects these four as well as a number of secondary characters is nothing short of abominable.

Dina, a widow struggling to make ends meet independent of her domineering brother, has been struck with diminishing vision. She is in need of two assistants to help with her tailoring business if she is to succeed. Ishvar and his nephew Om, a pair with a sad background story of their own, are skilled in sewing and jump at the opportunity to work under Dina’s supervision. Maneck is a young college student that feels as if he has been cast aside by his parents and turned out from his relatively comfortable existence in his hometown by the mountains. Dina needs additional income and Maneck is distressed by the conditions at the youth hostel. A simple solution for both situations is found when Maneck moves into her home as a temporary boarder. We learn the stories of each, what their lives have been prior to their encounters with one another. Ishvar and Om are descendants of a lower caste. How this affects their relationship with both Dina and Maneck is one of the most touching portions of this novel. This is where I was able to grasp snatches of hope among the ruins of so much despair. A proofreader on a train ride has a chance meeting with Maneck and makes a statement that will continuously echo in this young student’s mind, as well as the reader’s, for the duration of the novel: "You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures 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." While reading of one tragedy heaped upon another, one more story of wretchedness and loss, you will start questioning this balance as Maneck often did. What is Mistry trying to tell us? Is it possible to always find this balance? Cannot the scales be tipped so much against some individuals that the balance can never be achieved? And yet, there are characters in this book that despite all adversity, continue to hold onto a dream of a better future. Some accept their lot and others refuse to do so, abandoning all faith. "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."

This is a difficult book to review in the sense that I cannot pinpoint any single emotion to convey. Yes, it was depressing at times. But sometimes, too, I laughed and held onto a very fine strand of hope. At one point I stopped and mulled over whether so much ‘bad’ could really exist in the life of any one person. Maybe the author was exaggerating; surely he has a trick up his sleeve. But then I considered the time, the place, the fact that this wasn’t happening in my little cocoon but elsewhere in the world. Maybe, just maybe, Mistry’s characters represent an entire body of people that were mistreated and victimized during a time when rights were stripped and awful injustices were the order of the day. I embraced it as a warning of what can happen when power is abused, when persons forget about the humanity in everyone, and when we fail to acknowledge our own role in helping to balance the scale.

If you haven’t already read this remarkable novel, I urge you to do so. It will surely leave a lasting impression. I also encourage you to pair it or follow it with a lighthearted read in order to soothe your spirit!

"People forget how vulnerable they are despite their shirts and shoes and briefcases, how this hungry and cruel world could strip them, put them in the same position as my beggars."

1975. India. The Great emergency. Martial Law. Murder-on-instinct; survival of the fittest. The old, disabled, the poor - fair game. Political mayhem. Family Planning Program going as insane as the population explosion. Riots, violence, families destroyed. Chaos. A Beautification Program chasing people with bulldozers like unwanted sewerage down the isles of perfection. Their lives worth less than the holy cows meandering the trash heaps and destitution of the destruction everywhere.

Despair in abundance. Hope in short supply. A fine balance as futuristic as the abolishment of the caste system.

Amidst it all, the two tailors Ishvar Darji, his nephew Omprakash, and the young widow, Dina Dalal, tried to survive and prosper. For an extra income she took in her friend's son, Maneck and together these four people became the axle around which numerous lives and events played themselves out.

A beautifully written story of hard-break and hardship on an unimaginable scale. A masterpiece in the historical fiction genre.

An excellent companion for this book is 'A Suitable Boy' by Vikram Seth to widen the perspective on what was, and still is, happening in India.

RECOMMENDED.

This is probably the most depressing book I have ever read in my entire life. Not only is its chronicling of four lives bleak and without the slightest hint of hope or redemption, but it does this with a comprehensive scope and an unforgiving manner. Even re-reading it, knowing what was going to happen, did not mitigate my sadness. If anything, it amplified my emotions, because for all of the good things that happen in this book, the moments of joy, I knew how it was all going to go wrong. And this is not some adventure story or a romance where things get bad for a few hundred pages before the protagonists rise in the face of adversity. No, in A Fine Balance, everything goes to hell. And it doesn't get better.

I could spend several paragraphs discussing how this book is depressing. Suffice it to say, A Fine Balance is set in Mumbai, India. It covers over 30 years, from independence in 1947 to the Emergency of the 1970s. Rohinton Mistry follows four characters: two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash; the widow, Dina Dalal, who employs them in her apartment; and the college student, Maneck, rooming with the widow. These characters endure poverty, oppression, and abuse by those in power and those with power. The tailors, their relatives victims of caste violence in their village back home, arrive in Mumbai only to live in a slum that gets demolished, its slum-lord now in the pay of the government. But living on the streets is not an option, for during the Emergency police have broad discretion when it comes to "beautifying" the streets of the overcrowded, overpopulated city, and losing their residence is by far one of the lesser misfortunes that Ishvar and Om experience.

The Emergency happened before I was born, in a land far removed from me. It is nothing more than a name to me, a period in the recent history of a country related to mine by imperial ties and immigrant exchanges. So this book lacks the personal resonance it has for those who did live through this period, whether in India or abroad. And I haven't really ever experienced any of the hardships Mistry depicts here. Nevertheless, I can still appreciate A Fine Balance as a depiction of suffering during a time of turmoil and tyranny. And yeah, it is depressing, but I do not agree with those reviewers who find this a valid reason for panning the book. Mistry makes you feel sad for a reason.

While not perfect, Mistry's four protagonists are all good people. We learn this early in the book, for he recounts their past to us in a series of flashbacks so verbose as to transcend mere exposition and become true parts of the plot and narrative. Dina grows up under the thumb of her older brother, her dreams of becoming a doctor squashed by a patriarchal society. Instead she resorts to marriage as an escape, enjoys a happiness too rich to last long, and becomes a widow. For her, as with everyone, the question is how to make enough money to get by. Ishvar and Om come from a caste of tanners; their father made the defiant transition to tailoring and paid for the insolence with his life. They carry on in his tradition, but they have come to the city seeking work. Maneck has come to the city also looking for escape and edification; he is enrolled in a one-year college certification on air conditioners. He's not a very good student, but he is happy he has left his hometown, and with it his unsatisfying relationship with his father.

These are ordinary, everyday people. They do not invite the misfortune that befalls them. Why do bad things happen to good people? A Fine Balance is many things, but it is not theodicy. It is instead a look at the consequences of a certain zeitgeist present in India at the time of the emergency. We see it in the way that Ishvar, Om, Dina, and Maneck all become victims, yes, but this zeitgeist pervades the novel on every level. It is present in the attitudes of Mistry's minor characters, in the exclamations of approval from Mrs. Gupta and Nusswan regarding the Emergency and its effect on trade unions, in the derision of Beggarmaster and the guilty conscience of Sergeant Kesar. Just as ordinary people ignored the obvious injustices happening during the Holocaust, so too did ordinary people rationalize and justify the brutality and the injustices that occurred during the Emergency. Some, like Mrs. Gupta or Nusswan, do it for economic reasons, whether or not they believe such actions are truly justified—scarily enough, some do. Others, like Sergeant Kesar, care less about the political significance of their actions and more about the moral significance.

I like Sergeant Kesar. He is a very minor character, but he is an example of how Mistry manages to make the scope of his political themes so broad. There are plenty of stock characters in A Fine Balance, but for every goonda mindlessly enforcing the will of a landlord or minister, there is a Sergeant Kesar or an Ibrahim, an authority figure with a name and a face. These are antagonists or sometime-allies who, for one reason or another, are probably good people but have managed to end up in the wrong line of work at the wrong time. They struggle with their jobs, with the way they interact with people like Dina Dalal. This struggle is a poignant counterpoint to the innocent suffering of our four protagonists. The Emergency is not a monolithic movement of one group oppressing another. It is, Mistry shows us, a tumultuous period of conflict as one government tries to stay in power while elements subvert it for their own purposes.

That seems to fit with India, a country always in flux as a result of its vast population and rich history. Indira Gandhi's desecration of democracy destabilizes the country, but it is just another straw on the back of an already over-laden camel. From Ishvar and Om's backstory we learn of the deterioration of the caste system, and the resulting resistance from those, like the Thakur, who have power in the villages. From Maneck's childhood we see how urban development and expansion, commercialism and competition, are changing India's rural landscape and endangering some enterprises, like his father's general store. Dina's tale is more personal and more gendered, but it is also a story about family and independence. As she points out, independence is an illusion. We are all dependent on each other, especially in a city as big as Mumbai, and the culmination of the relationships of these four characters is an illustration of their interdependence. Ishvar and Om's detainment and disappearance profoundly affects Dina and Maneck, both personally and professionally; likewise, Dina's troubles with the landlord threaten Ishvar and Om's livelihood.

But I digress. In A Fine Balance, Mistry juxtaposes the turmoil of the Emergency with many other events occurring simultaneously to alter India's zeitgeist. The result is a snapshot of a country that has always fascinated me for its conflict and its contradictions. Mistry's descriptions of life in Mumbai, especially for the impoverished, are almost beyond my ability to grasp, so different are they from what I know. India is in that interesting zone between developing and developed nation (though I am aware such terminology is, as ever, controversial). Its economy is so huge, so rich, both real and with potential, yet its massive population faces problems of education, poverty, and health. It is a fascinating country with very real challenges, both now and in the 1970s when this novel takes place.

All this, of course, does not really address that central question: why so depressing? Why couldn't Mistry weave a thread of hope through his quilt of a story? In my opinion, Maneck's ultimate fate obviates any possible solace one might find in the tenuous equilibrium achieved by Dina, Ishvar, and Om. It is a grace note that manages to overpower the end of the book, cause shock and dismay, and colours anything that follows. I don't want to spoil it if you haven't read the book, but it is an action of such implicit nihilism that it is emblematic of the tone of A Fine Balance.

Simply put, if this book ended on a "happy" note, if Ishvar, Om, Dina, and Maneck emerged with little in way of complaint, then their suffering would have been meaningless. That is a major claim to make, I know. Other books involve characters who suffer greatly only to emerge triumphant and all the better for it, so what makes these ones different? It is both the nature and the degree of their suffering. Their experiences are so brutal, so dehumanizing, that any serious redemption would minimize them too much for the reader. In order to emerge from such experiences triumphantly, it would have to be through actions of their own doing, through some form of resistance that overcomes the adversity. This would contradict the sense of powerlessness that Mistry wants to communicate, the utter helplessness in the face of an implacable political climate created by corrupt politicians and police. Ishvar and Om are not, cannot be revolutionaries. Dina and Maneck cannot be subversives. So when they suffer and submit and then it is over … well, it cannot really be over, not until they are devastated. Mistry must administer a coup de grâce that finalizes the destruction he has plotted since page one.

This book is fiction, so it must have a beginning, middle, and end. But it is as close to being true as fiction can get, both in verisimilitude and in attitude. It is neither uplifting nor endearing but wearing. Even the most optimistic person would feel besieged by Mistry's careful and persistent erosion of everything good from the universe of A Fine Balance. And this holds up to repeated readings, because his depictions of characters both major and minor are just so vivid, so believable, so tortuously touching, that you cannot help but care about what happens to them, even when you know it will be nothing good.

And so, I am not sure what to say, except that this is one of my favourite books, and in my opinion, one of the best books ever written, period. There will always be those who disagree, who pick it up, trudge through fifty or a hundred or two hundred pages, and then declare it a waste, a wash, unimpressive or boring at best. I don't know how to respond to those people, or even if I should respond. All I can say is that few books have ever affected me so much as A Fine Balance. Many books have moved me; many have entertained me and charmed me and made me laugh and cry. But A Fine Balance has left an indelible mark upon me. It is a work of consummate skill. This book is fiction, so it must be false. But it is a sad, depressing book, because somewhere out there in the past and the present and, yes, the future, every single bit of it is, in some form, true.

n  n

I did enjoy this book very much, so I must give it four stars. How I determine the stars is that simple! Explaining why I feel as I do, that is the point of the review.

I came to care for people that are so very different from me. The author made their lives tangible to me. The author taught me about a time and place in such a way that it became MY world. You learn about life in Bombay during the 70s when Indira Gandhi implemented the "Emergency Rule", "Beautification" and enforced sterilization. How did these political decrees affect the lives of millions? THAT is what this book is about. I don't want to know the numbers and dry statistics; I want to feel what the people living through these times felt. And that is exactly what I got.

Now, realistically, this has to be a depressing tale. If you follow the plot-line, it is a depressing tale. I am not going to say otherwise, but there IS humor thrown in, lots of humor - satirical and sweet and laugh-ou-loud humor and sad humor too.... There are sections that will bring you to tears, but look, if you are moved to love someone you will cry with them and laugh with them too! I was moved by the plight of these people, but I also rejoiced with them when they cooked together and laughed in the kitchen or played with kittens or.... Tears and laughter go hand in hand, in real life and in this book too. I delayed reading this book because I was afraid that it would be just too depressing. It is depressing, but it drew accurately a time and place in history. At the same time it illustrated the small joys that we can draw from life.

I believe this book has a message. It is a novel that teaches what Buber teaches in I and Thou: people are not things, they are not objects and they should never be treated as such. There is value in every individual regardless of their station, status, origin, religion, appearance...

I recommend reading this book. No, no, no!!! I recommend listening to it narrated by John Lee! His narration is totally perfect, and he too brings humor to the lines that the author has written. His Indian dialect is so very perfect .... and funny. Just listening to the dialogs between the characters will make you smile. You need to smile when you read what happens to these characters, these people that become you close friends.

**************

In Chapter Twelve:
The book is marvelous again. There are a group of people you come to care for. They are together again; their dialog is marvelous and sweet and funny. What about this line? The nephew is speaking of his crazy uncle: "Sometimes my uncle's screw gets a little loose!" Note, his head has only ONE screw!

There are kittens...... Picture four adults dithering over kittens.

The most amazing aspect of this novel is that the world of beggars and utter destitution becomes one you completely understand, inhabited by people similar to yourself. From the mouth of "Beggar-master" comes the wise words: "You'd be surprised, beggars are just ordinary human beings."

What about this funny line: "That's enough of your philosophy!" This sentence is about how when you logically look around you and judge how the world works, reality seems very depressing.

Another thing: I REALLY like how previous ideas you might have held are washed away. You see two people holding opposing views. Sometimes the two are friends. Sometimes they are enemies, but each propounds their own view. You can see the validity of both! I like this very much. It makes you re-evaluate much that you have previously taken as a given, as completely indisputable! You do one thing, you thought it was right, only to find that it was in fact wrong. This book shows you to look a little deeper, to not judge people too quickly. This book is growing on me.


******************

Through Chapter Nine:
I don't know yet what yet I think of this book.The themes covered are serious - the caste system and Indira Gandhi's "Emergency" and "Beautification", as it plays out in the lives of the poorest and most destitute living in Bombay in the 70s. There is humor. There is both cute humor and a lot of political satire. Maybe the latter appeals to you more than me? I get so furious I want to punch somebody. You also see how people who have nothing help others with even less; this balances the horrors. Sitting, listening to this on a long car ride for eight hours, as I did yesterday, was tough. I felt so upset by the plight of these people. It is one thing to read about destitute individuals without a face, it is completely another to experience what happens to a few individuals whom you relate to as friends. Mistry has made the characters into my friends. I have much left, about nine hours.

John Lee's narration could never be improved. His Indian dialect makes you smile, and you need to smile when you read this book! Don't read this book; listen to it!


***************

In Chapter One:
Oh, but there is humor in this book! Dina has just met Rustom. They both enjoy concerts. One night she arrives sopping wet. Her own hankie was just not adequate to dry off her hair, and Rustom offers his own large handkerchief, which he assures IS clean. Oh, but no, she cannot borrow that! Would that be proper?! What does he say? If she doesn't take the handkerchief he will remove his shirt, right there in the concert hall lobby, and towel down her hair with that. I thought this book was supposed to be super depressing! I don't mind books with dark themes as long as humor or hope or kind people are thrown in! I have come across two kind people already. I have a hunch that Maneck is kind too.

John Lee is the narrator. One cannot wish for a better narration. It is superb!

'Крехко равновесие' въплъщава това, което много харесвам в Индия - неуморимата жажда за живот, безкрайната изобретателност и несломима надежда, която могат да притежават само хората, които нямат какво да губят.
Има една много хубава дума, която описва индийската находчивост и способност да се справят във всяка ситуация - jugaad. В книгата има доста примери за това.
И макар романът да изобилства с истории за смърт, насилие и всякакви нещастия, в крайна сметка побеждава силата на духа, решимостта да се оцелееш и да продължиш напред, защото никога не знаеш дали бъдещето няма да ти поднесе някоя изненада и щастието да ти се усмихне.

Let me tell you a secret: there is no such thing as an uninteresting life.

Interesting doesn’t even begin to describe the eventful and painful year in the lives of four Mumbai residents, at the times of the Emergency – a period of civil unrest and government crackdown declared by the Prime Minister of India in 1975 as a final straw in her efforts to keep her political power in the face of vigorous opposition. While the politicians are playing their high stakes games, it is the simple people who suffer the consequences and must deal with widespread corruption, crippling poverty, sectarian violence, old social taboos that are deeply entrenched in the fabric of the country.

Interesting in the context of the story is to be read in the manner of the Chinese curse (“May you live in interesting times”) as the four characters try to make the best of the poor cards that have been dealt to them, yet misfortune visits them regularly, despite their best efforts and good intentions. Dina Dalal, affectionately called Aunty by her flatmates, is a widow from a relatively rich Parsi family in Mumbai, who lives in a much desired controlled rent apartment. Unable to make ends meet without asking for help from her obfuscating brother, she decides to start a small (an illegal) sewing business in the flat and to take a sub-renter in the spare room. This is how Dina Aunty comes to live together with the son of one of her old school friends, Maneck, and with two out-of-work tailors from a small village, Ishvar and nephew Omprakash. As we follow these four characters, the world around them is filled with stories: background stories for each of them and stories of the people they meet and interact with. As Omprakash talks with the small restaurant cook where they usually eat:

“You fellows are amazing. Everything happens to you only. Each time you come here, you have a new adventure story to entertain us.”
“It’s not us, it’s this city. A story factory, that’s what it is, a spinning mill.”

From the cool and clear air of the mountains where Maneck grew up in a loving family, to the ruthless discrimination against untouchables in their village that drove Ishvar and Om into exile, and killed their whole family when they dared to ask for social justice , we settle down in the ants nest of Mumbai, looking at derelict shantytowns, professional beggars, government thugs, forced sterilization in the name of population control, fake political gatherings singing praises to the Prime Minister’s policies, forced labour camps for the homeless. It’s a dismal picture yet such a vibrant, colourful one. Political militancy is deftly weaved by the author with deeply touching human interest stories, with dignity and generosity to be found in the most desolate places. Ishvar’s stoicism and earthy sense of humour is balanced by the younger Omprakash’s anger at the unjust system. Dina Dalal’s independent spirit and industrious habits meet Maneck’s innocence and idealism. When a door closes, sometimes a windows open, like the times when the apartment owner tries to evict the four, and they are rescued by a kingpin of the Mumbai underworld, a Beggarmaster that has his own tragic tale to live through. Yet, despite the urgings of a passing acquaintance in a train compartment to find a point of balance in life, the people are ultimately too small and the pressure too great for them to build their own sanctuary within a world that is going mad around them. In what is probably the most beautiful metaphor in the novel, Dina Aunty is making a quilt from the multi-coloured patches of fabric that are left over from her sewing business. It’s a work in progress, never finished, and done with materials that most people would throw away as useless, but put together it makes for a world, a world that may destroy you utterly as it pushes mindlessly forward, yet still hold such promise and beauty to take your breath away:

So that’s the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than any single square.


This tragic element is probably what struck me the strongest in this second novel by Mistry that I read. In the first one (“Tales from Firosza Baag”) I focused more on the comedy of manners and on the hopeful message of maintain traditions and diversity in a rapidly changing world. Here, as other reviewers noticed already, we can reference Shakespeare at his bleakest and Dickens at his most moving pleas for social reform. Mr. Vasantrao Valmik, the recurring witness character, is probably the most Dickensian of the lot, and oddball pen-lover and word-pusher that somehow maintains his equanimity and falls on his feet even as the others around him are pulled under. He is the one responsible for the title of the novel, in a repartee he has with Maneck :

You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.

I find this quote, after turning the last page of the novel with a heavy heart and a lot of anger at the cruelty of Fate  Maneck a suicide, Dina an unpaid servant in her brother’s house, Ishvar and Om beggars on the streets of the big city, one with his legs amputated, the other made an eunuch on the eve of his marriage , woefully inappropriate in its upbeat message to the dark major tonality of the novel. Valmik has another one, that may sound more cynical, but I believe reflects better the situation in India in 1975:

After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents – a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.

But what can you do? The show must go on, and we can’t all throw in the towel and give up. Hope is the one thing you cannot give up, no matter how far down you fall. Some sort of balance must still be found.

"Where humans are concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure; and sorrow for the hopelessness of it all"

Resounding quotes from a near perfect book! The book lives upto it's name balancing hope with despair, joy with horror and pegs it's characters as testimony to resilience. Set during the years of emergency imposed by Indira Gandhi, the book effortlessly takes on the human rights violations, corruption and the rise of bureaucrats by making it an integral setting for the characters.

Ishwar and Om, two tailors leave their villages in search of a job. We find in their past the horrors of caste system and religious violence. They are employed by Mrs.Dina Dayal, a parsi widow who is trying to find her independence while dealing with the scheming landlord. She takes on a paying guest, Manick, who is a student who has little to complain except his missing friend.

The story takes it's time to make the characters comfortable with each other, in the mean time filling pages with each of their own 'adventures' and creating unforgettable characters like Shankar, The Hair Collector, Beggar Master, Ashraf Chacha and Monkey Man. And each story strikes a chord except even when you don't know how it will end. The complete baddies like Thakur Dharamsingh or Facilitators standout as representatives of the oppressive system. And the prime minister is almost a character in this book!

What the book does best is not to fill the book with hopelessness though you always worry for the characters. There are moments of happiness, humour and normalcy that you cherish. Like when they have kittens in their house or when the adolescent boys make up sex stories. The quilt being made by Dina Dayal stands as a metaphor of life and the book when she explains it is like collection of memories which by themselves does't mean much.

I think this is one of the best books exploring normalcy of human beings dealing with the cards life deals them. It also told me a lot about the emergency and the schemes introduced by the PM which were grossly exploitative. When the book ends with two characters laughing their heart out after all that they have been through, you know the book is a triumph!

Brutal, awful book about India in the aftermath of partition and in the midst of the catastrophic State of Emergency declared by Indira Gandhi.

If I hadn't already read several firsthand accounts from this time, I might have questioned whether anyone could possibly suffer as many atrocities as the characters do in this book. Extreme poverty, inter-caste violence, forced sterilization, the obliteration of basic human rights... I knew about some of what went on during this time, but I don't think I ever really knew until this story took me inside what happened.

I have put this book off for years because of its 600+ pages, but it was a mistake. Between the fast-moving narrative and the well-drawn characters, I could hardly put it down.