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 A Fine Balance |
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Reading Maps bring together a myriad of information related to a book, information such as
A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Related Links: Canadian Literature and Culture: Rohintin Mistry-- an Overview ( literary criticism, author info, contextual materials, etc.)
Family Matters (2002)* Such a Long Journey (1991) Tales from Firozsha Baag (1989)
(*titles in Sherborn Library collection)
Desirable Daughters by Bharati Mukherjee* Death of Vishnu by Manil Suri* Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie* Rich Like Us by Nayantara Sahgal Sacred Games buy Vikram Chandra Unsettling Memories by Emma Tarlo
1995 Giller Prize 1996 Booker Prize for Fiction (shortlist): 1996 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book): 1997 Irish Times International Fiction Prize (shortlist):
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Novelist Reading Guide © 2007 EBSCO Publishing
While answers are provided, there is no presumption that you have been given the last word. Readers bring their own personalities to the books that they are examining. What is obvious and compelling to one reader may be invisible to the next. The questions that have been selected provide one reasonable access to the text; the answers are intended to give you examples of what a reflective reader might think. The variety of possible answers is one of the reasons we find book discussions such a rewarding activity.
What kinds of relationships are important in the story, both as sources of support and conflict?
The relationship between Dina and her brother is a difficult one. As the man of the family, Nusswan feels he has the right to control his sister's life. After their parents die, Nusswan expects to chart out her life, arrange her marriage, and compel her obedience if necessary. For her part, Dina resents his harshness. Nusswan expects her to work in the house as a servant instead of going to school and getting an education, and he even tells her how to wear her hair. When she rebels against his authority and eventually chooses a husband for herself, he gives in mainly because he is relieved that she is accepting the traditional Indian role for women: wife and mother. When her husband dies accidentally after only three years, Nusswan expects Dina to marry again or come back to his house. He is offended when she insists on keeping her own apartment and trying to support herself.
Of course, there is ample blame for her as well. Dina's actions suggest that she is self-indulgent, for however vigorously she rejects Nusswan's authority, she still accepts his help. The reader may want to consider episodes on pages 50-51, 362-64, 497, and 562-65 while discussing this issue. Even though their relationship is difficult, he always gives her money when she needs it, although it is neither easy for her to ask nor for him to give. When she is driven from her apartment after the owners find out that she has been running a home business, it is Nusswan who gives her a place to live.
In contrast to Dina and Nusswan, Ishvar and Om have a loving relationship. When Om's father is killed, the uncle takes the boy in and cares for him (pp. 143-45). In Indian culture, the finest thing a man can give his son is a bride from a good family to keep his house and to bear him children. Finding a good wife for Om is one of Ishvar's overriding concerns, and just one of many ways uncle and nephew demonstrate their devotion to each other in the story. Later this desire has tragic consequences for Ishvar and Om, leading to involuntary sterilization and nearly death as well.
The relationship between Maneck and his parents is perhaps typical of college-aged students and their parents. The father wants the boy to take over the family business, but the son wants to make his own way in the world and help his country progress. Maneck comes to believe that his parents do not really love him, because they keep insisting that he listen to them and obey them. He begins to feel increasingly isolated from both his parents and from his world. When Maneck meets Avinash at the college, he finds someone who has the same dreams and goals. Avinash teaches Maneck to play chess and initiates him into the world of the college with its political dangers. Maneck never followed up on Avinash's disappearance, and when he later learns his friend was killed, he is distraught. Later, as the tragedies mount up and more and more of his friends are destroyed, he despairs, which finally leads to his suicide. Maneck throws himself under a train, clutching one of Avinash's chessmen.
How are political events and social conditions important in the novel?
Although his most recent novel focuses more closely on family life and less on political affairs, there is no escaping politics in Balance. Readers should know that the prime minister of the novel is based on a real person and that the events of the novel are based on real ones.
Although she is not named in the novel, an important part of the story concerns the political upheavals and violence during Indira Gandhi's administration. Mrs. Gandhi was the daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru, the first prime minister of India and a hero in the separation of India from British rule in 1948. An only child, Indira was her father's constant companion and groomed by him for an important role in Indian politics. In 1964, Gandhi became the Minister of Information and Broadcasting, the fourth highest-ranking position in the Indian Cabinet. She used that position to implement the use of radio to teach a largely illiterate public. In 1967, Indira Gandhi was elected Prime Minister of India.
In 1971, her election slogan, "Abolish Poverty," made her very popular with the public, and she was re-elected, but she was later found guilty of violating election laws. The Indian Supreme Court overturned the conviction after changing the law, although the novel hints that the law was changed at her instigation. Another of the government programs that figures largely in the novel is mandatory family planning. To control population growth, Gandhi implemented a "voluntary" sterilization program; however, as the novel suggests, the sterilizations were only voluntary for the upper classes. The hypocrisy of this program is illustrated by Mistry in the story of Ishvar and Om.
When he first comes to the city, Ishvar is forced to listen to a lecture about being sterilized when he applies for a ration card (p.178). Later, when Ishvar takes Om home to find a wife, they are captured in a raid in the marketplace, loaded onto buses and taken against their will to a "clinic" where they were sterilized to fill a quota. In this novel, the rushed doctors and nurses use dirty instruments, and Ishvar is crippled and nearly dies (pp. 522-27).
The reader learns about Ishvar's sterilization at the end of the novel, but political violence and oppression rear their ugly heads throughout the book. In fact, the reader is thrust into politics at the very start of the book: it opens during the emergency that Gandhi declared on June 26, 1975. The emergency was declared because of unrest, public resistance to her policies, and rioting. Civil rights were suspended and political opponents were jailed. Although Gandhi defended her actions, in 1977 she was voted out of office. She regained her position as Prime Minister in 1980, but was assassinated four years later by her Sikh bodyguards. Her assassination sparked massive riots and reprisals against Sikhs.
These events are important because of the larger point Mistry is
making. During a public reading in California, Mistry was criticized by
a reader who wanted a happy ending for the suffering characters, even
though the events of the novel are based on fact. Hence, as Mistry has
pointed out, "Given the parameters of my characters' lives, given who
they are, how can you expect them to have any more happiness than they
have found?"
(http://lubbockonline.com/news/062697/rohinton.htm).
The heroism of ordinary people does not come when life is easy, but when
loss and suffering are inevitable.
Although the political dimension of Balance is perhaps unfamiliar to many readers, it illustrates a central point of Mistry's fiction, the capacity of human beings to endure hardship, even if only for a while. Readers may well want to discuss whether Mistry does an effective job in explaining the particular events that cause Om, Ishvar, Dina, and Maneck such troubles.
Describe the situation Maneck finds himself in when he comes to college for his first year. How is it different from the situation of a typical first year student in a college or university?
Maneck originally comes to the student hostel expecting to have room, board and a place to call home during his time at school. This is what many students expect to find. But instead he finds a dirty, insect-filled room. His first friendship comes about when a boy in the next room hears him killing roaches during his first night at the student hostel (p. 234). Avinash comes in and shows Maneck how to stand his bed in water-filled dishes and to spray it thoroughly with insecticide to kill the roaches and bedbugs. Avinash is his first friend and teaches Maneck how to survive at the college, as well as how to play chess.
Conditions in the student hostel are squalid. The water in the bathrooms doesn't work, and students believe the unidentifiable bits in their "vegetarian" meals at the cafeteria are actually meat. In the ensuing "cafeteria riots," Avinash becomes aware of the possibilities of using unrest and rioting as a means of political change. Maneck tries to convince Avinash to return to peaceful evenings over the chessboard, but Avinash has become politicized. When the prime minister declares an "emergency," Avinash fears the worst: censorship of newspapers and retroactive revisions to the election laws that change the Prime Minister's "guilt into innocence" (p. 243).
When Avinash joins a new group, Students for Democracy, he discovers that not everyone believes in democracy. There are "goon squads" of students who take away professors who denounce the prime minister's actions. Since the emergency allows imprisonment without trial, the other professors dare not interfere. It becomes obvious that the college community is falling apart. The campus newspaper is attacked and classes are cancelled; flag-raising ceremonies become mandatory and professors are forced publicly to support the prime minister and her programs.
Maneck is sickened by the whole situation and is distraught when Avinash disappears, although he hopes that Avinash is "hiding in his parent's flat in the mill tenements" (p. 246). The final straw for Maneck comes when a mob chases him one night and shuts him in a freezer (p. 248). Dazed and ashamed because he soils himself, he escapes and tells his parents that he cannot stay in this horrible place and wants to come home. He only returns to college when his parents allow him to move from the hostel and take a room in the apartment of a high school friend of his mother, Dina Dalal.
What major conflicts confront Dina Dalal and Maneck Kolah?
Almost everyone in the novel faces an uphill struggle for survival. Dina Dalal finds that being a woman in India means fighting for even the most elementary freedoms. After her parents die, her brother is able to cut short her education because he wants her to help his wife with their children. Dina is only able to find a life for herself by sneaking away during the day and saving a little money from each grocery trip. When Dina marries, she finds happiness for a while, but her husband's early death means either returning to servitude in her brother's home or eking out a precarious existence by herself. Dina finds a means of supporting herself by sewing. For years she lives a contented though not exciting life, until her worsening eyesight forces her to depend on others to fulfill a contract for a dress factory. Dina is able to maintain her independence as a businesswoman for a number of years, but ultimately the difficulties she faces will prove insurmountable.
Through Dina, Mistry seems to critique the plight of women in traditional Indian life. Little training or schooling is available, the novel suggests, and there are always male chauvinists eager to control their female relatives. Even after she marries and is widowed, Dina still has to resist Nusswan's claims on her. This theme of control and resistance also informs the conflict between Maneck and his family.
Maneck's conflict is found in his ambivalent feelings toward his family. He loves them very much, but like many other young adults, he finds he can't live with them. His father is domineering in Maneck's opinion, and the boy tries to escape his father's will by going as far away as he can to college. Maneck expresses his independence by majoring not in business, as his father hoped, but in refrigeration and air conditioning. Since Maneck is the beloved only son in a wealthy family, he has been spoiled. While his father is domineering, his mother coddles him excessively. His mother arranges for him to rent a room at Dina's apartment and sends an anxious letter listing his favorite foods and how to treat her boy (p. 193). He has never had to face difficulties on his own, and as a result, has never learned how to deal with adversity. His experiences at college, though horrible, are probably not unlike those of other students, but Maneck's response is to run home to his family. Maneck is sensitive and that is a curse in the world of this novel. He wants very much for things to be the way he thinks they should be, and he is not able to survive when he finally encounters the cruelty and terror of religious, sectarian, and governmental violence. Finding out about Avinash's death (p. 489) and the destruction of Avinash's entire family (pp. 583-84), drive Maneck to suicide (p. 601).
How are religious differences a source of conflict in the novel?
Four instances of religious conflict are presented in Balance, an understanding of which might make the novel more comprehensible. These include the struggles between Hindus and Muslims, the oppression of the untouchables, the marginalization of Parsis, and the massacre of the Sikhs.
The late 1940s (the period when Mistry first introduces Ishvar and his brother Narayan as apprentice tailors) was a time of violent change in India. Hindus and Muslims had lived side-by-side through the centuries in relative harmony. Yet after freedom from Britain in 1948, riots broke out as Hindu and Muslim neighbors turned on one another in furious sectarian wars. The eventual result was the division of one country into three: India, Pakistan, and Bangladesh.
In the novel, Ishvar and Narayan are saved from their lives as untouchables by the kindness of a Muslim tailor who teaches the young men his own trade. There is not the slightest hint at this point that Muslims and Hindus cannot live together in harmony. Later, when political crises reach the village, gangs of Hindus start to attack the Muslim-owned shop where Ishvar and Narayan work (p.126). They hurriedly paint a new sign over the door of the shop to make it seem that the shop is Hindu. In response, the crowd disperses.
Readers may want to discuss whether the friendship between the tailor and the boys points to a hopeful future of coexistence between very different religious groups, or whether Mistry creates it only to sharpen the tragedy of his novel.
The second religious problem in the novel involves the caste system. As untouchables, the lives of Ishvar, Om, and Narayan are shaped by the responsibilities and prohibitions of their caste. Whatever their personal drives or interests, they are expected to conform. For instance, chamaar children were not sent to school, but were apprenticed in traditional trades. However, Ishvar and Narayan were so interested in education that they would sit outside the village school and try to imitate the sounds of the lessons. Once they entered the school secretly to look at and touch the slates that the other children used (pp.109-110). When the teacher found them, he beat them severely because their hands made the slates unclean. Eventually, they become apprentices to the Muslim tailor and briefly rise above their caste, taking up a trade which is forbidden to chamaars.
The third religious problem in the novel is another sort of oppression: that which is visited on religious minorities by the majority. In the case of this novel, it is the marginalization of the Parsis. Although discrimination against this group is less obvious than that against the untouchables (at least as presented in the novel), it is still noticeable especially in comments made throughout the novel (Cf. p. 38, 52). Dina and her family are members of the Parsi religion. They are descendents of Zoroastrians who fled from Persia (hence the name, Parsi) when Persia was converted to Islam in the 600s. Many Zoroastrians settled in India, where their descendents still live today.
Although many have adopted some of the customs of India's dominant Hindu culture, the Parsis have some very different religious practices and beliefs. For example, unlike the Hindus who cremate their dead and scatter the ashes in the Ganges, Parsis expose their dead. Another difference is that Hindus are generally vegetarians who revere animals, especially cattle, while Parsis eat meat. This awareness of some similarities in the midst of profound difference informs the novel.
The oppression of another religious minority is the fourth religious problem in the novel. The oppression of the Sikhs causes Maneck's personal crisis and suicide. In history, some of the most severe treatment of the Sikhs took place in the mid-to-late 1980s. In June 1984, faced with violence led by secessionist Sikh militants, Prime Minister Gandhi ordered a military operation -- "Operation Bluestar" -- aimed at capturing Jarnail Singh Bindranwale, the secessionist leader. The difficulty was that the leader had taken refuge in the Golden Temple at Amritsar, a Sikh shrine. Militarily, Operation Bluestar was successful since Bindranwale was killed and the terrorists were driven out of the Golden Temple. Politically, however, it was a disaster: the temple was damaged and Sikh believers felt horribly insulted. Later that same year, Gandhi was assassinated by two of her bodyguards, Sikhs seeking vengeance.
Balance fictionalizes the reprisals and violence against the Sikhs, including the torture and death of many. For instance, during Maneck's first day back in India after almost ten years of living and working in Saudi Arabia, he is confronted with the situation facing the Sikhs when his taxi driver advises him to cut his hair and shave his mustache so he won't be thought to be a Sikh and perhaps be arrested or worse (pp. 570-73).
What do you think was the turning point in the novel?
Very often, the turning point is the place at which all the strands of the story come together and the end becomes inevitable. The turning point in this novel occurs in Chapter XV: Family Planning, when Ishvar -- acting in place of Om's father -- insists on finding a bride for Om (pp. 503-33). Ishvar returns to his home village and is cruelly mistreated. He and Om are caught in one of the periodic governmental sterilization drives, and even though they insist that they do not want the operation, they are sterilized against their will. There will be no wife or family for Om, and there is almost no life at all for Ishvar, for his incision becomes septic and he ends up losing both legs.
Everyone's hopes are finally destroyed at this point: Dina had looked forward to staying in the apartment, to having another woman in the house and perhaps in time to listening to the sounds of a baby. Maneck had been happy for his friend Om, and planned a celebration for when the tailors return. But without his legs, Ishvar cannot operate the sewing machines; without his help, Dina cannot fill the contract she has with a dress factory; because she cannot supply the factory, she loses her home.
In this depressing atmosphere, Maneck fails most of his courses, and is unable to stay in college to go on for his degree. He returns home, but eventually flees India for a job in Saudi Arabia. When he returns almost ten years later, he finally pieces together the last bit of his own tragedy when he reads about the deaths of Avinash's sisters, and in his despair at what he sees as the meaninglessness of life, finally gives up.
How does the author blend tragedy and moments of comedy in the novel?
Unrelieved tragedy in Balance would make the novel unreadable. The moments of gallows humor support Mistry's premise about ordinary human heroism, but they also heighten the moments of tragedy. Readers can feel the despair more deeply because we know how brave the characters have been before. The novel contains many episodes of a grim gallows humor in relating the experiences of the characters, especially of Ishvar and Om. The moments of humor -- ranging from calm and gentle to grim and harsh -- serve to illustrate the heroism and humanity of the characters.
Although they suffer deeply, the characters are not embittered by what fate deals them. This sense of pluck particularly characterizes Ishvar and Dina, who seem always to be able to smile in the face of trouble. For example, although Ishvar and Om dodge police patrols and live life on the edge, they are still able to enjoy simple pleasures like taking breaks at the teashop around the corner. Or they enjoy cooking a meal and "playing family" with Dina and Maneck as they eat supper together. Even a small thing like smoking a cigarette provides a moment of pleasure for the two tailors (pp.393-4).
At other points, the events in the novel verge on the absurd. When Ishvar and Om have nothing to eat, they take a bus trip to hear a speech by the prime minister (pp. 256-67). The trip promises a few rupees and a free lunch. As catastrophes pile up, the situation quickly lurches into absurdity. There is no lunch or money, and everyone in the audience is ignoring the speech, playing cards or chatting; finally, the prime minister's 80-foot-tall posters fall onto the audience and injure many (p. 264).
Moments of humor help us sympathize with the characters of the novel more acutely. We respect their strength of character, especially when we are unsure if we would be able to endure the same troubles. Moreover, the moments of humor help us believe that better times may be just around the corner. In this way, we grow closer to and understand Maneck, in a way becoming just as sensitive and soft-hearted as he is. We understand when he thinks of their lives as a game of chess: "The game was pitiless. The carnage upon the chessboard of life left wounded human beings in its wake. Avinash's father with tuberculosis, his three sisters waiting for their dowries, Dina Aunty struggling to survive her misfortunes, Daddy crushed and brokenhearted, . . .Life seemed so hopeless, with nothing but misery for everyone . . ." (p. 269). The only way to keep playing the game is to keep smiling in the face of trouble.
In the final analysis, the moments of humor strengthen the tragedy. Because we grow close to the characters, we are pained all the more by their troubles and each successive tragedy hurts more. Finally, although the novel does not explicitly call for political or social action against injustices like these, it certainly should leave the reader awake to the need for constructive change. As Mistry points out, "there are thousands and thousands of Ishvars and Oms in India today"
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