some thoughts about Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance
and the prevalence of class disparity in globalised industrial culture
I enjoyed this even though I didn’t really enjoy it ~ and I enjoyed it less than I thought I would, but in ways I didn’t expect. I don’t know whether to feel ambivalent about it, or celebratory. It has received a lot of critical acclaim, I suppose because it operates well in a classical genre ~ a genre that’s just not really my thing. It’s straight-up realism, for one thing. It reminded me of Power Without Glory, an Australian historical novel by Frank Hardy, which I read during a fit of literary nationalism and enjoyed, though it was hard work to enjoy it. Published in the mid-90s, A Fine Balance is a novel of 1970s India by Rohinton Mistry, an Indian-born Canadian writer. It was hard work to enjoy because the realist style was quite dry, and because a lot of the suffering and caste-bigotry was hard to watch ~ I think that was the point, and that’s why I ended up enjoying it, despite my usual taste for more artful realism.
The novel follows the lives of four characters who are brought together in circumstances that seem unlikely but might be more common that we think in India: Omprakash and his uncle Ishvar find themselves living and working as tailors in the single-bedroom flat of Dina Dilal, along with Mareck who is renting Dina’s bedroom. Om and Ishvar were leatherworkers by tradition of their chamar caste, and they come to be like family for Dina and Mareck, despite their caste differences. Sounds lovely, except for the brutal misfortunes that fall upon the chamar family as a result of caste violence and government-level corruption.
The writing was plain without being especially beautiful or minimalist. Other writers like Raymond Carver have been more effective at depicting the brutal realities of class inequality, with far fewer words than this 600-page tome set in 11-point type on 11-point leading. This novel was dense! But somehow leavened by the occasional slight touch of (often-black) humour. And it was ‘easy-listening’, enjoyable without being too stimulating. Maybe this is one of its achievements ~ it depicts brutal realities of poverty and caste violence, without being so heavy that a reader turns away in despair. It’s certainly a weird thing to say, that it was easy-listening, especially considering the horrors depicted and the way Maneck ended things!
In this sense the book was very eye-opening (a term that also doesn’t seem to quite hit the mark): it raises awareness of barbaric practices that are still alive today in India, and of the atrocities that can be committed in the name of ignorant religious faith, and how the perpetrators must suffer as much as their victims because of their greed and hatred and fear. That last wasn’t explicitly depicted, but compassion helps us read this between the lines. I didn’t know India was such a brutal place! It has always seemed like a spiritual mecca for me, and perhaps in some places it meets that idealised image, but not in the village, city and stories of the four people entwined by A Fine Balance.
It makes me feel grateful to live in a place that might be culturally bankrupt but at least does not expect widows to burn themselves alive on the funeral pyres of their late husband! Yes we have some class issues, but at least they are not compounded by blind faith in religious beliefs used to justify flagrant injustice.
Oh wait, yes they are! Maybe not explicitly religious beliefs, but certainly out-dated ideologies are used to maintain a status quo that perpetuates … never mind, I didn’t come here to rant about that ~ just to say, now, that upon reflection I value this novel because it has reflected problems in my own culture. These issues are not isolated to subcontinental India, but this novel highlights them there to illuminate their existence in all industrial cultures around the world.
The suffering of the lower classes in Australia is real and the result of an unjust system, the same as in India. I am grateful though, because this novel highlights for me that things could be much worse here. At the same time as highlighting the plight of India, it brings a sense of perspective to the plight of the global underclass.
And I’m grateful, too, thought it seems like a side-note, that I am learning psychospiritual-training practices that treat the suffering of greed, hatred, fear and ignorance at the root. It is from the ancient scriptures of India that we gain the cosmological perspective of kali yuga (a period of cosmic time where the dharma is inaccessible, charalatans prevail and ignorance is king) and it is from Rohinton Mistry that we get a micro-cosmic view of how kali yuga plays out.
May we each find a way of being that confronts the suffering depicted in this novel with compassion and wisdom.
Kokoro 心 Heart 