A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)

“God sometimes tells lies. We spread our hands out to these lies and live with them”[1]

In what seems to be a long long time(even though it was just three days). I have finally reached the end of A Fine Balance. What remains now is a profound sadness, but also a slight confusion, that I try to dispel as I write.

What I can say about the book is that it drips with life, or better, tries to replicate life itself: complete with its miseries, struggles, incomprehensibilities, meetings, joys, stagnancies, and of course, goodbyes.It begins with a meeting, which, while pulling the characters out of their immediate predicaments, ends up as a prelude to unforeseen but consequential events.Fate brings them together and need binds them, albeit with a cord so frayed it threatens to break at the slightest of innocent pressure.

Still, like the memories that refuse to be forgotten, the book keeps bringing up their pasts, which they uselessly try to put behind them. A curious group of misfits(a middle-aged widow trying to live without depending on her brother; a college going student who has weathered severe bullying and violent student unions; a kind-hearted man and his hot-headed nephew, who have dearly paid the casualties of being in the lower chamaar caste in their native village), the house where they live becomes a haven to them which they viciously protect.

From the beginning, Mistry makes us fall in love with the characters. It has been a while since I’ve empathized with the characters to the extent that I’m impatient to know where their lives will take them next; and yet increasingly reluctant as the end approached, maybe because I could sense the impending doom and recognize the subtle forebodings.

All people are but a product of their circumstances. They all have their own reasons, beliefs, stories, moral codes and breaking points, and Mistry does well to explore these to their darkest depths. The setting of the book (1970s – 1980s) when India was fraught with political uprisings, caste based riots and, above all, the consequences of the Emergency (forced sterilization camps, destruction of slums, and effectively, the withdrawal of all human rights for those without money or powerful backing) helped this generously, but was not half-heartedly done. Above everything else, Mistry shows India ruthlessly, glorifying in all its twisted sensibilities and heartlessness, but all the while preserving the kindness and love people inherently retain in their hearts, perhaps to prove their humanity to a society which will not give them their due.

The book does not have a happy ending, so to say. There is, after all, a limit to how far people can walk a tightrope while continuously glancing behind their backs. Their pasts inevitably catches up with them and smashes them back to where they began. Yet, that does not refute the short refuge they enjoyed when together with one another, making it one of the most beautiful time of their lives.

And what do I myself have to say about the time spent reading the book? Simply that, along with giving an interesting glimpse into the 1970s India, it taught me a lot of things I had no other way of knowing. I am a different person now from when I picked it up, and for that it deserves my respect and gratitude.

HEADS-UP: Look forward to plenty of unusual allegories and motifs, but not to a happy ending. Take your time savoring this book, it has a lot to offer(literally, it’s 614 pages, in fine print). It’s gonna get an easily accessible place on my shelf. And most importantly, do give it a shot, but remember, it is not for the weak-hearted.

QUOTES: A Fine Balance  is more of a paragraph-quotes book, if you know what I mean. Still, here are some of my favorite picks:

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 As always, feel free to discuss your opinions/suggestions.

[1] Kamisama ga uso o tsuku by Kaori Ozaki

Norwegian Wood (Haruki Murakami)

So, I finally got around to reading a Murakami book and for no particular reason, I ended up picking Norwegian wood. It was a pretty decent read, and quite different from my usual fantasy novels.

What I liked the most about this book was, well, the writing style. Murakami has this way of drawing you in. Of course I haven’t read any of his other books, I have them on my to-read list already, because he doesn’t seem to be a disappointing writer. The characters were another strong point of the book. I liked how the protagonist refrained from categorizing characters, since no person can be fairly tagged with a single adjective. Murakami himself didn’t indulge in explaining each and everything everyone in the book did and he left a fair portion of the people in the book a mystery to the reader, just like in real lives. More than anything else, he presented an amazing variety of characters, who I found a little weird in the beginning, but got used to very quickly(not to mention one of them closely resembled one of my friends). To put it simply, Murakami’s characters were strange. They were easy to fall in love with, and they felt real.

That being said, the plot didn’t seem a very huge aspect of the novel. It was fairly predictable, but that didn’t make the book any less appealing. The characters were constantly juggling with love, death and life(and sex). A lot of death and sex. Quite a few of them ended up killing themselves and almost all serious conversations ended up with sex. The suicides were off-putting for me. I’m a fairly optimistic person, and suicides never seem to be the right choice to me(I may be naive in thinking so, but that’s my take for now). Death is too extreme, and, well, it ends all other future options, and I can’t help but think that there has to be some other alternative. This was probably why I couldn’t like the book as much as I wanted to.

Anyways, it had many good quotes, and here are a few I liked…

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The main themes of the book: life and death.

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For all of us who love to experiment different book styles, here’s a legitimate reason.

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Harder than it sounds. If only the characters followed through with it…

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A unique way to put it. I’ll be using this for sure.

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That does it. No more am I gonna pity myself.

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Makes sense. It would be too easy in a perfect world to push ourselves beyond our abilities.

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The sad truth..

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It was really a heartbreaking story. Funny how they are always the most moving.

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A great self-description. I started liking Nagasawa after this, though it didn’t last for long.

And that’s it. Norwegian Wood is a story about different people, how they reconcile with their pasts, and decide on the path they want to follow. It has a sad tone to it, and it obviously is not a very good choice when you’re looking for a thriller. There were some parts of the book that I absolutely loved and others that I didn’t feel strongly about(and a few that I disliked) , but it definitely got me thinking about a lot of things. It’s a book that I’d like to discuss.

Rating: 4/5