A Good Read

A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry 
"You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair." He paused, considering what he had just said. "Yes" he repeated. "in the end, it's all a question of balance".
This magnificent heart wrenching novel revolves around four main characters. Dina Dalal, a spirited widow who struggles to maintain her independence after her husband tragically died; tailors Ishwar and his nephew Om, who have fled the caste violence of their native village; and Maneck a young man who has enjoyed an idyllic life in a Himalayan hill station helping in his father’s store, but must now move to the city college to gain qualifications in order to earn him a life of repute. They all survive sharing Dina’s cramped one bedroom flat and a balcony. Bit by bit Mistry beautifully weaves each of these lives together as they move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love.
The time is 1975. Indira Gandhi’s government declared a State of Emergency which allowed her to rule by decree, elections to be suspended and civil liberties to be curbed. Ostensibly it was meant to curb ‘internal disturbances’ and to smooth out the threatening, revolutionary waves prevalent throughout the country. In reality the fine balance that maintained the already precarious social and cultural equilibrium was thrown into turmoil. It was 21 months of injustice, unbelievable cruelty, violence and corruption. Endless misery and worse impoverishment was heaped upon the already poorest of the poor. Human rights were suppressed, mass sterilisation was enforced, the slums were destroyed, and the jails were full of Gandhi’s opponents.
How this emergency affects our group of four as well as a number of secondary characters is testament to the dignity and resilience of the human spirit. Their lives are bleak. It is a sad and at times grim story, punctuated with moments of happiness and optimism. It made me laugh and cry and it made me angry, because although it's fiction it is based on fact, fact about how those who hold the power become evil and greedy.
It’s a long read, (641 pages) but not once did it flag, it's an addictive read. I became friends with the characters, had images of them and their home in my mind, shared their joys and sorrows and desperately wanted their misfortunes to morph into a happy ending. But the ending made me cry, real sobbing crying, I didn’t see it coming and wondered why Mistry would choose such a bleak ending, but thinking about the character I think I understood why. This little family will stay with me for a very long time.

~Happy Reading ~

Polly x