A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

This time I broke all my previous records. I took over six months to finish Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. I would blame my busyness (this isn’t a word) for this. The only time I could give to reading was when I was traveling. It took me two journeys to my native place to finish the novel. I may blame bad air/rail/road connectivity for so many things but for reading, it was a boon. The over twenty-hour (one way) journey gave me a chance to read this masterpiece.

As far as busyness is concerned, it’s obvious. Career is moving fast and it’s taking its toll in terms of my time. I leave office building every evening but I am unable to leave ‘office’. It has come to my bedroom now and has left me with no choice to do anything else. Maybe this is what happens with everyone, right? So, no complaints here. Anyways, this is supposed to be A Fine Balance’s review, right? Let’s start. :)

The novel is all about lives of four characters i.e. Dina Dalal, a widow in mid-fifties, Maneck Kohlah, a young, under-graduate student, Ishwar Darji, a cobbler-turned-tailor, never-married, mid-fifties man and Omprakash Darji (or Om), a tailor and Ishwar’s nephew. Dina Dalal has been living in Bombay since her birth. Maneck comes to Bombay for higher studies. Ishwar and Om made Bombay a home in hope of good jobs and better livings. If I say anything more than this about the characters, I would end up revealing something that you would regret to know before reading the novel. Despite being entirely different from one another, they come close in very bizarre circumstances.

I find A Fine Balance as very close to Premchand’s Godan in terms of brutality of one’s fate, the society and the system. Just like Godan, in this novel, there seems to be no end to the problems of the common man. To me, A Fine Balance looks like a revisit to the world depicted in Godan by the great Premchand. Godan is a pre-independence novel and mainly shows the problems associated with the lives of villagers. Rohinton’s A Fine Balance too moves around the same problems but it extends further and shows the condition of common man in the more brutal Bombay. The novel proves that nothing has changed in the last 100 years. The country, the people and the problems, all are the same.

The novel covers a vast set of problems that persisted in India in 1970’s. The novel makes us go to the roots of well-known (and still persisting) problems like caste system, unemployment, poverty and corruption to specific problems of 70s like problems emerged because of Emergency called by Indira Gandhi. There are several examples in the novel that tell us how systems are made for betterment of things but end up ruining them. One such example set in novel is, the Gandhi government encouraged family planning for controlling the emerging population. But this didn’t do any good to the most, rather it ruined lives of many. Mostly young, unmarried or elderly people were forced to go for the nasbandi program.

Despite of the lengthy descriptions of the characters and events, Rohinton Mistry was able to keep me involved. Curiosity was always on extreme. Due to less but prominent characters, I was able to recall them without any confusion, even after an interval of three months. The only thing I regretted reading this novel was the kind of stress it gave me. Every event mentioned in the novel made me go deep into the situation, maybe because I have seen quite similar events in my own life or in lives of people around. Another positive point about this novel was its connection with Parsi culture (apart from Maneck Kohlah and Dina Dalal, there are several Parsi characters in the novel). Being a Parsi, Rohinton Mistry was able to beautifully describe the Parsi culture.

I give full marks to this highly tragic novel. A must read if you can bear all the stress it will give to you.