A Fine Balance

This is an extraordinary second novel (shortlisted for the Booker). Although Mistry has his tics (he loves to throw in a big, unusual word every now and then, among other things), those tics are—I suspect—the bad habit of a young writer searching for his voice. I will be reading his other books soon, I hope, and will be interested to see how his writing evolves. But the book, you ask? In a nutshell, it follows a central core of characters from very different backgrounds thrown together by chance. We learn their individual histories and then follow them in Bombay (unnamed, but clear) during the Emergency, a truly dismal period in the mid/late 1970s. Indira Gandhi, desperate to remain in power, chose to break the law and invoke show more extraordinary and unlawful powers to run the country as she saw fit, regardless of consequences. This book is about those consequences. Contrived situations are few and Mistry has drawn indelible, human characters, complete with flaws as well as virtues. Some of the circumstances Mistry portrays are brutal and even painful. Yet the book contains a great deal of satisfying and even funny episodes. Mistry takes his epigraph from Balzac—a master whose writing this book resembles in many ways; from Le Père Goriot: “But rest assured: This tragedy is not a fiction. All is True.” Very highly recommended. show less

A moving portrayal of the lives of four people who were caught up in the brutal, sweeping policies of 1970s India during the State of Emergency rule of Indira Gandhi.

Dina, a 40-ish widow, is determined to be an independent woman in a society where women cannot and do not have a say; Ishvar and his nephew Om are from the untouchables but, through immense courage and determination on the part of his father/grandfather, have managed to escape the bondage of caste and become tailors in the city; Maneck is a sensitive boy from a well-to-do family in a mountain town who needed to train for a career because the family business was declining. They are brought together when Dina decides to hire the tailors, and to let a room in order to support show more herself financially. They are first suspicious of and then eventually adjust to each other, become friends and even live together convivially. There is a brief respite from the despair each has previously known, life is still a daily struggle but it is less difficult, and happiness seems to be within reach.

The chaos of political events unleashed by the State of Emergency reach them and their lives start moving beyond their control quickly and insanely. Rampant corruption, harassment and violence, fear and terror started to rule, sparing nobody. The government imposes drastic, brutal policies in the name of political stability and economic development, policies such as forced eviction which left thousands homeless, forced labor in big infrastructure projects, and forced sterilization. Our friends go from bad to worse, and from then it was just from one misfortune to another. There were points along the story where I just wished Ishvar and Om to die – that would have been kinder to them. Yet they survive. And I think, indeed, why should I, the reader, be spared the inconvenient truth that in real life, many of the poor and destitute had actually gone through and survived the viciousness of that period in their history? Mistry pushes us, relentlessly, beyond our comfort zones.

I call this novel a story with a heart. The author writes with sympathy, without being sentimental. We recognize the characters -- they dream, they despair, they laugh, they hope, they feel pain, they get angry, they get jealous, they find change difficult but eventually accept their fates, they don't trust politicians. Mistry writes of big, serious themes and of small, ordinary lives. The novel raises sensitive issues of class conflict, ethnic conflict, gender, dispossession, and political repression, and how invariably the first ones to get sucked up in the vortex are the weak, the small, the powerless, the defenseless, the disenfranchised. He describes with vivid and realistic imagery the cruel and hard life of the untouchables in rural India, the squalid poverty of the shantytowns and the homeless in the streets of the city, the pervading cultural myopia, and the brutality of an oppressive regime.

The story is tragic, monumentally tragic even. Adversities came in waves, and while circumstances could have easily crushed or corrupted them, these four friends were never pathetic, were never wretched in their souls. The balance between hope and despair is very fine indeed. A big novel that at another time (and another place) might have been banned for tackling potentially inflammatory issues.

Highly recommended. show less

[A Fine Balance] is a sweeping drama of four people who unexpectedly end up living together during a tumultuous year, 1975, in India. Dina is a middle-aged widow desperately trying to hang on to her independence, despite her brother's efforts to get her to re-marry. Maneck is a young man in the city to attend college, who left his beautiful mountain town at his parents' behest to try to better his life. The student hostel is so disgusting that he ends up renting a room from Dina, who is a distant family friend. And then there are Ishvar and Omprakash, who are tailors that end up working for Dina out of her apartment. They were also living in a rural town where their family had been on the rise out of their lower caste. But misfortunes show more keep arising to keep them down. The four will spend a year together during a State of Emergency declared by the Prime Minister that upends life for the lower classes in some truly horrifying and gruesome ways.

The book is grim and has moments of utter despair, pure bad luck, and unfairness. There are despicable characters, horrible deaths, and plenty of squalor. Usually I can't stomach a book like this. However, Mistry somehow balances this with some good, some lighthearted moments, and impressive writing. I was completely invested from the first chapter and just had to see where it was all going to end up. I don't think, in a book like this, it's a spoiler to say that things do not end well for all the characters. It's clear from the get go that a book this realistic will not have a fairy tale ending - though I did keep hoping for one. And I suppose that's where the title comes in. Life is "a fine balance" of hope and despair. In 1970s India, if Mistry's portrayal is at all accurate, this is all too true. show less

This was a reread. I first read it at about the time of its publication in 1995, and have always remembered it as one of my favorite books ever. I wanted to see if it still held up after all these years.

iI won't keep you in suspense: I still love this book, although on this reread I noticed more than a few blatant coincidences that should have bothered me, but didn't. It is an epic tale of India during the 1970's. It is set primarily in Mumbai during the so-called "Emergency" when Indira Ghandi's government imposed a series of harsh and repressive measures, and there was much unrest and violence. Along the way we experience many of the horrifying events in India: the Partition, the violence against Muslims, the violence against the show more untouchables, beggars, the massive slums, forced sterilization, con men, thugs, official corruption, and much, much more.

Two tailors, Ishvar and Om, uncle and nephew, of the untouchable caste, have come to Mumbai from their small village to make their fortune. Although Ishvar and his brother Narayan trained as tailors in order to escape their caste, they were still violently abused in their small village, which led to the death of Narayan. Ishvar brings Narayan's son Om to the city to overcome that past.

In the city, they obtain work producing garments with Dina, a widow desperately trying to maintain her independence. They also develop a friendship with Dina's young boarder, a student. Through these four marvelous characters we come to view the panorama of Indian life. Of vastly different backgrounds, and initially suspicious of each other, over time, the four form a family of sorts.

One of the things I remembered from my first read of this book was how Dickensian it was. One horror after another overtakes these characters, but they, especially Ishvar and Om, just keep coming up for air, and keep on keeping on. Despite the seemingly constant tragedies, there is much rejoicing in the book, and the book at several points references life as "a fine balance" between despair and hope. I will say, however, the has one of the most devastating endings I have ever read, though even then there is hope in what the characters make of it.

The book begins with the epitaph: "This story is not fiction. All is true."

I guess I would still put this book in the category of books I think everyone should read.

5 stars show less

Discovering this 1995 novel all these years later, it drew strong comparisons for me with "The Kite Runner" in its style and subject matter, and how it dispenses with all the needless magical realism of "Midnight's Children". This one is arguably braver than either of those novels for being utterly unflinching. The four central characters represent a swath of India's population on the social economic scale in the 1970s, and the course of their lives explores every corner of the worst things that period had to offer. Mistry never identifies Bombay/Mumbai by name, and 'the Prime Minister' never has her name stated. I thought this was strange distancing in a novel that refuses to shy away from harsh realities, but perhaps the lesson is show more that India's past should not be dismissed as having no bearing on its present.

At over 700 pages this novel might have been shorter, but it never feels long with its brisk pacing, its dramatic highs and lows. As other reviewers have noted, it is the man whom Maneck meets on the train who delivers the key line, "You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair." But another telling quote is, "They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things." The epilogue is earned and it is pitch perfect. show less

If you love Dickens you will love this book. While Dickens was telling stories of the downtrodden in England in the nineteenth century this book focuses on the downtrodden in India in the twentieth century. Time and place are different but the stories are similar. Mistry has carefully crafted this story. There are four main characters who we meet relatively early - Dina a woman widowed early, Ishwar and his nephew Om are tailors, and Maneck is a student boarding in Dina’s small flat. Mistry fills in the tapestry by giving us the backstory which has brought these four together. This is where we see the constant theme, good times are tenuous and at any moment they can suffer tragedy which at another moment they can be rescued from. We show more begin to see why this is titled “A Fine Balance”, life is a balance and can turn at any moment, regardless of the efforts of the participants.

These backstories introduce us to the religious, caste, and political forces rendering this society dysfunctional. We also begin to see how these downtrodden people are oppressed by landlords, big corporations, politicians, police and even religious and medical institutions and practitioners. Their stories reach back into times where the caste system relegated many to untouchable status, involuntary sterilizations were seen as a solution to a serious overpopulation problem, poverty was even more pervasive, and emergency declarations were used to introduce inhuman approaches to society’s ills. Government was not a solution and politicians were not to be trusted. Beggars are everywhere.

Dina is Farsi. She had been the beloved daughter of an idealistic physician who succumbed to the disease he had gone off to fight. Her older brother steps in but he is the opposite of his father. Dina rebels and eventually follows her heart to marry someone her brother would never approve of. On their third anniversary her husband dies and she has to rely on her brother who begins insisting she should remarry while she’s still young and beautiful. Over several years her rent keeps increasing and she struggles to maintain her independence. She decides to take in a boarder and to start a small business managing tailors to produce garments for an exporter. Her distraction is to constantly add scraps to a quilt she works on most evenings.

Ishwar and his nephew Om are the tailors she hires. They are Hindi but from the untouchable class who normally are restricted to be cobblers or leather workers who toil in unhealthy and degrading conditions. Ishwar and his brother had been attempting to move up by apprenticing themselves to learn tailoring, working with cloth rather than leather. Ishwar has taken responsibility for his nephew since his brother and most of his family had been killed by upper class for perceived offenses. We begin to learn of unwarranted deaths which will reoccur often.

Maneck is the boarder. He is Hindi. His mother had been a high school friend of Dina but she has gone off to the countryside to marry a prosperous merchant who successfully maintains a general store. He has sent Maneck to boarding school and eventually to college in the city where his father hopes he will learn skills and come back to manage the general store. Tension arises between Maneck and his father whenever Maneck suggests changes to modernize the store.

With each of these backstories we learn about other characters who come in and out of the main plot. But this does not stop with the four getting together. Mistry takes us through what happens next. Dina’s major problem is her landlord who is looking for any excuse to evict her. She listens to others who advise her not to trust the tailors and to manage them closely. The landlord even send in thugs to throw her out. She turns to the master of the beggars who takes care of her problem with the landlord and his thugs but exacts protection money. She eventually realizes she is lonely and appreciates her tailors and boarder but it takes several years with them going through hell together to establish the bond.

Ishwar is the eternal optimist. He is always seeing how what they can get through whatever their fate throws at them. The nephew, Om, is the eternal pessimist. No matter what relief they get he is convinced it is all going to end badly. What they go through includes being dragooned into being a fake audience for the Prime Minister, having the shack they slept in bulldozed away so the Prime Minister can claim they are dealing with the poverty problem. They are both involuntarily sterilized in the Prime Minister Emergency program to deal with the over population problem. Because Om has spoken back to the wrong person he is castrated ruining Ishwar’s attempt to get Om married. Ishwar’s sterilization fester and his legs are eventually amputated. They are reduced to begging.

Maneck tries to help Dina and lets his studies slip. He befriends OM who is about the same age as he is. He is constantly trying to deal with the problems around him. His hopes to continue his education are dashed when his poor grades prevent him from getting an advanced degree. He is unable to convince his father to modernize the general store and instead goes off to work in the Gulf for eight years to earn some money. He returns when his father dies but in the interim Dina’s protector was killed and she is evicted going back to live with her brother’s family. Maneck sees that Ishwar and Om have been reduced to begging. He can not deal with any of this.

The ending surprised me. I did not expect it to end that way. It definitely is not how Dickens would have ended it. The book is definitely worth your time but be prepared it presents a very ugly picture. According to IMDB people have been trying to adapt it to both the big screen and a television series but my guess is the odds are against either happening. I hope I’m wrong. show less

In India in 1975, four individuals' lives intersect and intertwine in ways that none of them expected. Dina Dalal is a widow just barely keeping poverty away by taking on a paying guest and starting a small sewing business. Maneck is a student desperate to escape the awful living conditions in the student housing, who ends up staying with Dina, a school friend of his mother. Ishvar and Omprakash are an uncle and nephew who have come from their small village to earn their fortune in the city working as tailors. As these four people begin to form relationships they also begin to recognize the harsh realities that each of them face and the possibilities for hope in their lives.

This is one of those novels that will linger long after you show more read the final page. Mistry creates four central characters who feel unbelievably real and places them in a world that is often devastating in its realities. The novel is also one that causes the reader to reflect on their own thoughts and behaviours. How much sympathy do we really give those who are less fortunate than us? Are we ever capable of looking beyond our own problems and issues to recognize those of the others in close proximity to us? Yet in the midst of raising these questions, the writing never feels like anything more than beautiful, if occasionally painful, storytelling. Mistry's novel is an immersive experience that alters you after it ends. show less