A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry

"Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall."
                                                                                                 - Confucius

    I  read "Family Matters" by this author and shortly after I picked this book up to read. Now it is wrong of me to expect to take away a similar experience from reading  both these books. "Family Matters" is a book about families, the idiosyncrasies of family members and the unmitigable love among them .But "A Fine Balance"  like looking at the world without our rose tinted glasses.  Rohinton Mistry weaves a tale of hope in the time of despair.

 

   The crux of the story is the travails of the four main characters, Ishvar, Omprakash, Maneck and Dina. Life isn't easy for them but when there is hope in the face of despair the will to beat the odds will never cease. The four protagonists are, metaphorically speaking, drowning yet they make unflinching efforts to hold one's head above the water.

   The book is very depressing and the author does not spare any gory details when describing the agony experienced by  the characters. Set in the time of the Emergency posed by the then ruling Indian government, the ground realities described in the book are a stark contrast to the distilled information I have read in my school textbooks.  No book has left me feeling so much pain and denial, and this is why I rate this book as the best book I have read but not call it my favourite.