I have to admit I was daunted by the size of A Fine Balance. I like finishing the better part of a book in one sitting which could last up to six to eight hours and then return later to finish what it left. Tentatively, I started to read. I could not get past page three and was not even sure I wanted to return. Many months later, I borrowed it again and yet again failed to make it past the first few pages. Despite being a laborious read there was an unmistakable tone of authenticity about this book that made me persist. It was good thing because the third time proved lucky.
I made it past the ten page barrier with grim determination. Chapter two and beyond flowed effortlessly. My experience with reading this book reminds me of childbirth. It is a horrific struggle to bear just under nine dols of pain, you feel like your body can take no more and yet it is just a little bit more that leads to deliverance and joy of motherhood.
Despite the use of Bollywood-ish flourishes, this is a book I am glad I read. Mistry puts a human face to the grime, squalor, poverty and over-population that a lot of us either seek to escape or have indeed escaped. He tells his story with such brutal honesty that it will deeply trouble the conscience of any bourgeois Indian.
An expat desi friend and I were discussing what it means to return to India when you have cobbled together a life in a foreign country no matter how flawed and imperfect. We have both spent over a decade outside India and have kids who were born abroad and have spent very little time back home. Returning "home" is something a lot of new immigrants like L and myself think about. We want very much for that to be an option because a full assimilation into our country of domicile is likely never going to happen. L has visited India more often than I have and has a much better pulse on what's going on there. For me the strongest drag force working against my desire to return home is my experience of life as a woman in India. I neither want to live that suffocatingly sheltered existence myself nor subject J to it. The freedom, independence and safety I have had in here in suburban America was not even something I knew I could expect to have in India. I never knew what it felt t...
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So relieved to know I am not the only one with the ten page barrier. I haven't been able to read A Suitable Boy. You have inspired me to try again.
A Fine Balance was a very authentic story. I've read it years ago. I recall feeling very hopeless at the end of the book I was annoyed with Mistry and writers in general :-)..I recall wondering why authors are "scared" of a happy ending..he had to make life truly miserable for the central character. Perhaps they are scared of giving it a H/Bollywood ending..
-gg
sfg - Mr Rushdie is a very challenging author to read. I would highly recommend Haroun and the Sea of Stories. It is short and sweet and unlike anything else he has written. The Jaguar Smile is nice too. I have a whole list of books that I will never be able to finish and I don't even want to try. The 10 page limit is very realistic for most books.