A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

With a compassionate realism and narrative sweep that recall the work of Charles Dickens, this magnificent novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism, of India.

The time is 1975. The place is an unnamed city by the sea. The government has just declared a State of Emergency, in whose upheavals four strangers--a spirited widow, a young student uprooted from his idyllic hill station, and two tailors who have fled the caste violence of their native village--will be thrust together, forced to share one cramped apartment and an uncertain future.

As the characters move from distrust to friendship and from friendship to love, A Fine Balance creates an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

My Thoughts:

This is one book that is bound to leave a lot of readers teary-eyed. Though Rohinton, the author claims this work to be fiction, I wonder if this story was made up. You can still see thousands and thousands of Ishvars and Oms in every nook and corner of India. The book has everything that is impending the nation's development. It speaks about the deep rooted caste system and class differences. It speaks about blind urbanization and the resulting loss of nature and it's resources. It speaks about corruption. It speaks about politics. It speaks about population expansion. It even speaks about feminism. In general, this book IS India for you!

The story is about four  people who are forced to live together in a major city due to various circumstances. Ishvar and Om are untouchable cobblers turned tailors who have come to the city in search of a living. Dina Dalal, a middle aged widow hires them to work for a major Export company. She also rents one of her rooms in her apartment to her friend's son, Maneck, who has come unwillingly to the city from his home in the hills to pursue his education. Thus begins the extraordinary story of the four people and how life takes them on a harsh journey spanning poverty, illness, hunger, injustice, cruelty, prejudice, depression and misfortunes.

The story is grim - there is no getting around that fact. There is no happy ending. But everything is real. I wonder why this book did not win the Booker prize though it was shortlisted. This book is a gem. More people need to read this book. It helps to understand the ground reality prevailing in the country and also opens their eyes against their prejudices. The author has a knack of making a 600 odd page book feel like a breeze while you read. The author does not frustrate the readers by indulging in unnecessary narration or description, nor does he use complex words that render a dictionary indispensable. Instead he relies on his sharp wit and to-the-point narration to create a vivid picture and keep the readers glued to the book.

A MUST-READ book for everyone!

Golden Quotes:

"The human face has limited space. If you fill it with laughter there will be no room for crying."

"But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated - not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain."

"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." 

About the Author:

Rohinton Mistry

Rohinton Mistry is considered to be one of the foremost authors of Indian heritage writing in English. Residing in Brampton, Ontario, Canada, Mistry belongs to the Parsi Zoroastrian religious minority.

Mistry’s first novel, Such a Long Journey (1991), brought him national and international recognition. Mistry’s subsequent novels have achieved the same level of recognition as his first. His second novel, A Fine Balance (1995), concerns four people from Bombay who struggle with family and work against the backdrop of the political unrest in India during the mid-1970s. The book won Canada’s Giller Prize, the Commonwealth Writers Award, and the Los Angeles Times Book Award. It was nominated for the IMPAC Dublin Literary Award and was a finalist for the Booker Prize.(Source: Goodreads)

The Rise of Social Media - Keyboard Warriors and the Online Activists

          Ever since the advent of social media, the lifestyle of common man has changed drastically. Each and every one of us has become a judge. We sit comfortably in our offices and pass judgments on people whom we have never even met. When every man has an outlet to express his feelings and opinion in the form of social media, it is more important that one chooses one's words wisely and in a more mature manner. With more and more people becoming keyboard warriors and online activists, I believe it is very important to distinguish between the true and the hoax.

          Online trolls and abusers use their keyboards as swords to kill any opposition for the cause that they might be preaching. People hiding behind the cloak of anonymity are beginning to wreak havoc everywhere. An actress who posts a picture of herself with his close friend is presumed to be a husband cheater and is abused. A sportsperson who posts a picture of himself having his dinner is lashed at for not donating to the poor. Each and every word a celebrity says is twisted and skewed, every sentence is construed to hate religious sentiments and people are getting offended easily. The laying bare of each and every individual's personal life on the online platform have lent an air of intolerance and insecurity among people.

         Men and women keep crying for 'Change' without actually doing anything substantial for the change to materialize. They don't worry if they come across as hypocritical, all they require is that they should register their opinion on almost anything and everything. A man sharing a spectacular video against Child Labour thinks he has done his bit for the society while he forgets the 11 year old boy mending shoes outside his office. There are numerous such instances where people have put up a fake face on the Internet.

          I'm not trying to say such online medium provides only threats to man as a whole. A lot of incidents have been witnessed where the social sites have been used in a productive manner. The December 1, 2015 Chennai Flood is a typical example where the Internet made sure that help reached people even in remote areas as soon as possible. The social media sites served as a platform where people in need posted their grievances and got immediate assistance and relief. That was one incident where humanity rose above the debris of inequality and social media played a crucial role in the overall scheme of things. However, such display of humanity is often marred by terrible incidents where people could have acted more judiciously. A few months back, a young girl was forced to commit suicide by online abusers who kept passing nasty comments on her online page.

          By the look of things, it seems like the Internet and social media are here to stay. As in every other case, the matchstick has been placed in man's hands. It's up to us to either light a candle or burn the house down.

The Namesake - Jhumpa Lahiri

‘The Namesake’ is the story of a boy brought up Indian in America.

'When her grandmother learned of Ashima's pregnancy, she was particularly thrilled at the prospect of naming the family's first sahib. And so Ashima and Ashoke have agreed to put off the decision of what to name the baby until a letter comes…'

For now, the label on his hospital cot reads simply BABY BOY GANGULI. But as time passes and still no letter arrives from India, American bureaucracy takes over and demands that 'baby boy Ganguli' be given a name. In a panic, his father decides to nickname him 'Gogol' – after his favourite writer.

Brought up as an Indian in suburban America, Gogol Ganguli soon finds himself itching to cast off his awkward name, just as he longs to leave behind the inherited values of his Bengali parents. And so he sets off on his own path through life, a path strewn with conflicting loyalties, love and loss…

Spanning three decades and crossing continents, Jhumpa Lahiri's much-anticipated first novel is a triumph of humane story-telling. Elegant, subtle and moving, ‘The Namesake’ is for everyone who loved the clarity, sympathy and grace of Lahiri's Pulitzer Prize-winning debut story collection, ‘Interpreter of Maladies’.

My Thoughts:

Jhumpa Lahiri

This is one book that every Indian living abroad can relate to. The Gangulis are a traditional Indian family who move to America just before Gogol is born. As Gogol grows up, he is caught between the cultures of his parents' country and the country he lives in now. While his parents embrace Indian culture and everything that reminds them of their home country, Gogol struggles to make sense of it all and India is just a distant nation that is as foreign to him as the moon. While his parents try to grow him as Indian as possible, he tries to put as much distance as possible between him and India.

In this book, the author beautifully portrays the difficulties of settling in a foreign country and the emotional havoc it can wreak on people who are caught in the crossroads of two nations with completely different people and culture. The book is a fantastic read for all Indians, especially the NRIs. The author shows complete command over language and proceeds with the plot in a breezy yet elegant style. At no point in the book did I feel bored or restless.

A few scenes stand out in the book, such as the one when Gogol's father dies and the subsequent consequences the incident causes on the lives of all the other Gangulis, and the scene where Maxine tries to understand Gogol's feelings and emotions but fails to do so. Gogol's mother, Ashima's worries about her children going wayward in a foreign land and Gogol's father, Ashoke's sheer determination to raise his children as intelligent and noble people speak volumes about Indian parents. It is also a great book for some insights into the present generation's mindset at large.

I feel every Indian who is planning on settling abroad should read this book. This book beautifully exposes the merits and limitations on such a move. Spanning three generations, this story is one of its kind.

Quotes

“That's the thing about books. They let you travel without moving your feet.”

“You are still young, free.. Do yourself a favor. Before it's too late, without thinking too much about it first, pack a pillow and a blanket and see as much of the world as you can. You will not regret it. One day it will be too late.” 

“Try to remember it always," he said once Gogol had reached him, leading him slowly back across the breakwater, to where his mother and Sonia stood waiting. "Remember that you and I made this journey together to a place where there was nowhere left to go.”  

About the Author - Jhumpa Lahiri:

Jhumpa Lahiri was born in London and brought up in South Kingstown, Rhode Island. Brought up in America by a mother who wanted to raise her children to be Indian, she learned about her Bengali heritage from an early age. 

Lahiri graduated from South Kingstown High School and later received her B.A. in English literature from Barnard College in 1989. She then received multiple degrees from Boston University: an M.A. in English, an M.A. in Creative Writing, an M.A. in Comparative Literature and a Ph.D. in Renaissance Studies. She took up a fellowship at Provincetown's Fine Arts Work Center, which lasted for the next two years (1997-1998).

In 2001, she married Alberto Vourvoulias-Bush, a journalist who was then Deputy Editor of TIME Latin America. Lahiri currently lives in Brooklyn with her husband and two children. She has been a Vice President of the PEN American Center since 2005.

Lahiri taught creative writing at Boston University and the Rhode Island School of Design. Much of her short fiction concerns the lives of Indian-Americans, particularly Bengalis.

She received the following awards, among others:

1999 - PEN/Hemingway Award (Best Fiction Debut of the Year) for "Interpreter of Maladies";

2000 - The New Yorker's Best Debut of the Year for "Interpreter of Maladies";

2000 - Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her debut Interpreter of Maladies