Wednesday
I’ve finished reading Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and–hoo boy!–what an epic ride it has been. The cover excerpt from a Wall Street Journal review describes it as “a rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter,” but I must say the moments of laughter are few and far between. The title refers to the fine balance between hope and despair, and given what happens to the main characters, “balance” seems overly optimistic. Time and again the action tilts into despair.
A professional man who has had many jobs and experienced multiple reversals explains the balance concept to college-student Maneck:
“Please always remember, the secret of survival is to embrace change, and to adapt. To quote: “All things fall and are built again, and those that build them again are gay.’”
“Yeats?” guessed Maneck.
The proofreader nodded. “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.” He paused, considering what he had said. “Yes,” he repeated. “In the end, it’s all a question of balance.”
Set in the years leading up to 1975, the year of Indira Gandhi’s emergency measures and sterilization program, Fine Balance follows Maneck, a widow from a wealthy Parsi family, and two Hindu untouchables drawn. Despite their widely varying backgrounds, the four are drawn together as chaos swirls around them. Dina is determined to make it on her own and hires Ishvar and Om, two men fleeing from unimaginable Brahmin brutality in their small town, to do piece work for a clothing company. Maneck, meanwhile, rents a room from her.
Throughout the novel we watch class and ethnic differences divide India, sometimes directed against untouchables, sometimes against Muslims, sometimes against Sikhs. The challenges of a woman seeking provides its own drama. Yet despite it all, the four rise above prejudice and find comfort in each other—or at least do so for a brief moment, after which all is shattered by the nation’s ugly political realities.
In the end (spoiler alert), the untouchables have been forcibly sterilized—the younger man is also castrated by the brahmin honcho who has lynched his father and burned his family alive—and are reduced to begging. Meanwhile Dina, without her tailors, loses her business and is forced to return home, essentially becoming a maid in her brother’s household.
In the epilogue we see Maneck, back from Dubai eight years later, shattered by what has happened to his friends. He is also distraught by how a college friend has been tortured and killed by the government, leading his friend’s three sisters to commit collective suicide. Although, unlike his three friends, Maneck has money—he has earned enough in Dubai to start a business—he instead throws himself in front of a train. He has not learned the secret of survival.
The little remaining hope is the ongoing friendship, once deemed impossible, between Dina, Om, and a now legless Ishvar, who must be pulled around on a cart. They can only meet when her brother is absent but, despite their fallen state, they’re still capable of enjoying small moments. The novel ends with one of these moments.
She opened the door again for them. “Don’t forget the umbrella.” She tucked it under Om’s arm.
“It was very useful last night,” he said. “I hit a thief who tried to grab our coins. He raised the rope and hauled. Ishvar made a clacking-clucking sound with his tongue against the teeth, imitating a bullock-cart driver. His nephew pawed the ground and tossed his head.
“Stop it,” she scolded. “If you behave that way on the pavement, no one will give you a single paisa.”
“Come on my faithful,” said Ishvar. “Lift your hoofs or I’ll feed you a dose of opium.” Chuckling, Om trotted away plumply. They quit clowning when they emerged into the street.
Dina shut the door, shaking her head. Those two made her laugh every day. Like Maneck used to, once. She washed the two plates, returning them to the sideboard for Nusswan and Ruby to dine off at night. Then she dried her hands and decided to take a nap before starting the evening meal.
So yes, there is some laughter. At the same time, we are reminded of Maneck, the once accomplished tailors return to begging, and a formerly proud and upbeat business woman returns to household drudgery.
I was discussing the novel with an Indian scientist and two cousins (one of them his wife), and KK gave us special insight into the novel. As he did so, I was reminded of the importance of having a diverse professoriate: not only has America been the beneficiary of a brilliant mind from abroad but KK could share things about the novel that eluded the rest of us. Many of my deepest insights into literature have come from colleagues of different ethnicities, especially from my African American colleagues Lucille Clifton and Jeffrey Coleman.
KK said that he identified with Maleck, whose family protects him from India’s ugly realities but who, as a result, is less able to handle life’s horrors. If Dina and the untouchables can keep going, it’s because all three are well acquainted with reversals of fortune and life’s unfairness. Applying their mindset to ourselves, my cousins and I noted the difference between our response to DJT’s assaults on voting and the rule of law and those of certain African American friends. We are only learning what they have known for years: that democracy’s guardrails are flimsier than we thought.
But because African Americans have this perspective, they have provided the Democratic Party with its bedrock. They can see Martin Luther King’s long arc better than many of their white counterparts, who fall more quickly into despair.
India in 1975 and 1984 is not the contemporary United States–nor is it 2026 India, for that matter—so one must be careful about drawing parallels. Nevertheless, our book group was unsettled by the similarities. Think how many of the following scenarios from the book we see playing out in DJT’s America:
–there is little to no accountability for the police and other enforcers, who perpetrate violence on vulnerable citizens, often rounding up street people in mass sweeps;
–rampant corruption means that anyone with money has the law on his side. Landlords think nothing of sending in thugs to evict tenants so that they can repurpose their property;
–while technically a judicial system is in place, attempting to use it to fight abuses comes with steep costs and insuperable difficulties;
–age-old animosities are revived so that, rather than joining to oppose the government and its wealthy friends, different ethnic populations turn against each;
–the state claims that it has the right to dictate what happens to your body (although in 1975 India’s case the issue was forced sterility rather than forced birth).
As I read Fine Balance, I continually wanted to exclaim, “That couldn’t happen here,” only to think of occasions where it has indeed happened and is continuing to happen. Along with DJT’s naked corruption, his abuse of the Department of Justice, the assault on reproductive rights, and the demonization and round-up of immigrants, I think of how, in the 1960s, so-called urban renewal in American cities saw poor but vibrant neighborhoods swept aside and cut up by highways. Meanwhile we now see tech bros imposing their AI centers on small communities, sucking up water resources and pushing up power bills in the process. For their part, DJT and his buddies plan mining projects for national parks, protected Native American lands, and wilderness areas.
So how about hope? At the moment, of course, liberal and progressives are hoping for a blue tsunami come November 4, making the election “too big to rig.” That’s more hope than any of the characters have in Fine Balance. But if nothing else, Mistry’s novel reminds us, in this vale of tears, to treasure the small moments.
