Mistry’s FINE BALANCE

By now it must be evident that I am having an “all asian fest” in my literary world and the writer of the month is Rohinton Mistry. Have been hearing about him for a long time and finally decided to have a go at “A Fine Balance”.

The story revolves around the lives of a group of people during emergency times in India. This group is a mix of an old generation Parsi Lady, two contemporary tailors and a young ambitious lad. The story starts by bringing this group together and then visiting their life saga individually. I was intrigued with an insight in Parsi culture and at the same time how the caste division was still evident in India after all these years of independence. The young lad represents any of us having our own set of values (which coincidentally does not match with our previous generation each and every time), who is enthusiasts enough to carve a way of his own.

The writing style is gripping and the twists and turns make it a spellbound read, with various characters chipping in seamlessly playing their part and vanishing in an equally unobserving way. Then there comes the ending part which as per me is the most sad and ironical one. The ending of the story is like a series of catastrophe which takes the reader through various emotions and unfortunately all sad and gloomy. Overall a very interesting read but I feel the ending could have been more “balanced”, but as they say for this particular book probably “journey is the reward”.