This month’s book was A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. It’s a historical novel about India that won a Booker Award and was an Oprah book. The preface says it all -
Holding this book in your hand, sinking back in your soft armchair, you will say to yourself: perhaps it will amuse me. And after you have read this story of great misfortunes, you will no doubt dine well, blaming the author for you own insensitive, accusing him of wild exaggeration and flights of fancy. But rest assured: this tragedy is not a fiction. All is true
Honore de Balzac, Le Pere Goriot.
Borrowing unashamedly from the summary on Wikipedia - The book exposes the changes in Indian society from independence in 1947 to the Emergency called by Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. Mistry is generally critical of P. M. Gandhi in the book. Interestingly, however, Gandhi is never referred to by name by any of the characters, and is instead called simply "the prime minister". The characters, from diverse backgrounds, are all brought together by economic forces changing India.
The main characters, again descriptions from Wikipedia –
• Ishvar and Omprakash - part of the Chamaar caste, who traditionally cured leather and were considered untouchable. In an attempt to break away from the restrictive caste system, Ishvar's father apprentices his sons Ishvar and Narayan to a Muslim tailor in a nearby village, and so they became tailors. As a result of their skills, which are also passed on to Ishvar's brother's son Omprakash (Om), Ishvar and Om move to Mumbai to get work, by then unavailable in the town near their village because a pre-made clothing shop has opened.
• Maneck, from a small mountain village in northern India, moves to the city to acquire a college certificate "as a back-up" in case his father's soft drink business is no longer able to compete after the building of a highway near their village.
• Dina, from a traditionally wealthy family, maintains tenuous independence from her brother by living in the flat of her deceased husband, who was a chemist.
These characters, plus a number of others encounter one another through random events, and live through the partition of India and the beginnings of its democracy. The stories of Dina and Maneck are sad and tragic, but do not compare with the bitter experience of Ishvar and Omprakash.
None of us finished the book. It wasn’t because it was an exceptionally long or a poorly written. The story was sad and shocking. The lower caste characters that appear to be escaping their destiny by taking up a better profession are oppressed, exploited and abused at every turn that might offer them escape from their poverty. The father is tortured and brutally murdered for trying to cast his own vote. His brother and son, the tailors are kidnaped and involuntarily sterilized by the authorities. One is castrated. I quit reading at that point!
Despite the horror of the book we had an excellent discussion. India is not the yoga-filled peaceful place that many of us might think. In this account Muslims kill Hindus, Hindus kill Muslims, and Hindus kill Hindus. We said to ourselves – this would never happen in America. But then we reconsidered. What about the events in the South in the 1950s and 60s - Americans killing and torturing fellow Americans based on their race? Do people in India look at our history and think their own isn't so bad?
Over the years I've worked with a number of people from India. They rarely talk about the social situation in India. They love their families. It's not unusual for people to save their vacation and take several year's worth on a month-long trip to visit family. They love their homeland just as I love mine.
To quote from a lawyer the tailors encounter begging in a train station – 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.
As we talked about the book and the things that happened to the characters and drew comparisons to things that happen in the U.S. we came to see the story in a different light. It didn’t make the horrors that the characters suffered any less awful, but it made the story and events more universal. This wasn’t some that could only happen in India, it’s happened, on different scales here.
We left the book club thinking that we would go home, and finish the story.
