John's Great Big Read - 100 classic books in 156 weeks...

Wednesday, December 22, 2010

A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

This was recommended by Louise Anne, Ian, Judith, and Sharon. This is the second time I've read this book. I loved it the first, and possibly loved it even more the second time round. I was a little disturbed by how little of the actual story I remembered from my first reading which made me think why do I persevere with this list when I could just re-read the same the book afresh each time. What I do recall from the first reading was a sense of defeat at the lives of our wee tailors. Every time things were looking up, BAM! something would come along and crush them back down again. It was just one bad thing after another. Each time it looked like things were getting better for the tailors something awful would happen that would just leave me feeling despairing for them. It was as if the dye (sorry about the pun) was well and truly cast (oops, sorry). I was left with the sense that the caste system and corruption in India is so entrenched that there really is very little space for hope. Every time in the story when things were going well I was waiting for the next bad thing to happen. But this second time through it didn't seem nearly as grim a story. Even though the world around Dina, the tailors and Maneck is always threatening to destroy them, inside the padlocked safety of Dina's small crumbling flat they find a way to break free of the old world rules and prejudices and briefly experience joy, kindness and generosity with each other. Ultimately their flat is no fortress against these destructive forces and each are brutally dealt with for daring to want something different, and even though it’s terrible what happens to them, there is something about these characters which stopped me being so bound up in the despair. This time around I wasn't so caught by the despair and hopelessness. The “fine balance” was a little easier to see. Initially was difficult for me to think of the tailors lives as hopeful, and thought this was just a too Pollyanna-ish and perverse view of the horror of what they were living through. It's hard to imagine more tragic circumstance for the poor old tailors, and even Dina suffers the crushing defeat of having to return to the protection of her brother. Is hope the capacity to keep going in the face of despair? Sometimes its easier to recognise hope when it looks more like longing or desire, but I wonder if there is another aspect to hope that is harder to recognise. Is it this aspect of hope that carries us through the even darkest moments of our lives - how we just keep going in spite of whatever is happening? Is hope the quiet, unspoken, and unrecognized knowing that gets us through the troughs of our lives? In this sense hope is more closer aligned to just life itself. Interestingly, it is Maneck, who has by far more opportunities and resources, and who actually gets out of India, who finally succumbs to despair and kills himself. This is the fine balance – hope and despair, death and life.