Alienation, Betrayal and the Struggle of Meaning in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

English

Rohinton Mistry is born in Bombay in a Parsi Family and lives in Canada since 1975. He has published so far, a collection of short stories, Tales from Firozsha Baag (1987), and three novels–Such a Long Journey (1991), A Fine Balance (1995), Family Matters (2002) all of which have been shortlisted for the Booker Prize and a novella The Scream (2006). His third novel A Fine Balance, a generic realist novel, is concerned with life worlds deprived of meaning explained in a more traditional way. The novel captures all the cruelty and corruption, dignity and heroism of India. Novel aspects are broader transcends the narrow confines of the Parsi community and features Parsis, Hindus, Muslims as well as Sikhs while in Mistry’s earlier novel the main concerned was with the Parsis of Bombay. Novel underlines the central importance of tolerance and solidarity, enacts transculturalism and intercultural understanding as ways of constructing an identity and as remedies against a reality that is felt to be deprived of meaning. Historical events of the recent past are presented from the points of view of characters of average standing in life. “Astonishing …A rich and varied spectacle, full of wisdom and laughter and the touches of the unexpectedly familiar through which literature illuminates life”….Wall Street Journal A Fine Balance is merely a family saga but it reflects the key elements of 20 th century Indian history from the perspective of Parsi as well as the Hindu and Chamaar community. This means that novel presents history from the margin. Mistry offers versions of historical events inflected by the community membership of its protagonists. Two events are crucial in this context: India’s Independence (1947) and the time of the Indian Emergency (1975-77), during which most of Mistry’s novel is set. The characters flow from distrust to friendship and then to love, the novel makes an enduring panorama of the human spirit in an inhuman state.

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