Looking for a transformative novel in an exotic location? Consider reading A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. In this compelling and complex tale, characters Dina (Dinabai) Dalal, her college student renter Maneck Kohlah, and two tailors Ishvar Darji and Omprakash create a family of support for a year, to survive the brutality from the Emergency in an unnamed city by the sea in India.
This story directly confronts the lie of Indira Gandhi’s regime – revealing its extreme violence and oppression against those at the bottom of the entrenched caste system. The characters deal with the struggles inherent in daily living of those living in poverty world wide.
With its up close view of daily life, this book also challenges the lie that the poor are lazy, shiftless, or simply make bad choices. Class structures discriminate in obvious ways in this story. The reader is invited to see that similar discriminatory classicism flourishes the same way in U.S. laws and culture. Our increasing income disparity is a testament to this.
To survive at all while struggling with poverty requires flexibility, creativity and incredible hard work. Those of us in the middle class would not survive one day in their world.
A Fine Balance offers the truth that it is only in relationship with others – especially with those who are weak and marginalized – that we will become the best of who we are, find support and ultimately life.
You may also like Amazing Performance, School of Essential Ingredients and Hand Wash Cold: Care Instructions for an Ordinary Life.
