29 March, 2024

Hope, Despair in India: Find This Book and Read It! (Part 13)

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by | 14 October, 2012 | 0 comments

By Jim Tune

 

A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry
St. Louis: Turtleback, 2001

I have given copies of A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry to more of my reading friends than possibly any other book I have read. All the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism of India is startlingly captured and made real to the reader. Set in 1975 in an unnamed city by the sea in India, this eye-opening novel looks at the lives of four strangers who have fallen, almost instantly, from a middle-class lifestyle to the ranks of the poor due to sudden economic upheaval.

These four strangers””a single woman on her own, a college student, and an uncle and his nephew struggling with poverty in a big city””have little in common, except for a resilient ability to find hope and escape their lot in life. At times you will soar with exhilaration as you share the hopes and dreams of the protagonists, actually believing with them that escape to a better life is possible. But it is a fine balance between mercy and cruelty, hope and despair. I warn you in advance this book may cause your heart to break.

Does the author succeed in balancing hope and despair? I am not certain that was his goal. With its anything-but-sentimental ending, I found this line from one of the characters hit close to home: “Losing, and losing again, it is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.”

On the encouraging side, this book will remind you of the human ability to endure””even to act heroically””in the midst of cruel circumstances. Although it is bleak, I found it hopeful too. It left me unsettled, which is not entirely a bad thing for a book to do. A true work of genius by a storytelling master!

 

Jim Tune is senior minister of Churchill Meadows Christian Church in Toronto, Canada. He is founder and director of Impact Canada, a national church planting organization, and serves as a contributing editor for CHRISTIAN STANDARD.

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