Redemption

Tonight, I’m thinking about the Hindu tailors Ishvar and Om, the scholar Maneck and the beautiful Mrs. Dina Dalal—the characters that people Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance. Ever since I put the book down several weeks ago, I knew why I thought the book was 713-pages worth of wasted time. What I did not understand was the wonderful reviews about it. I agree that the story is told in fine prose, but the plot it unravels is a terrible progression towards conflicts that are never untangled nor resolved.

“A Fine Balance” tells the story of these four characters. Theirs is a wonderful connection of unparallel lives, each of which has been riddled with tragedies that mold their persons. The book was a wonderful read until the last few pages, when I realized there weren’t enough pages left for the denouement I believed the characters deserved. In the end, all the tragedies in each of their lives amounted to nothing. The free-spirited Maneck jumped in front of a train; the indomitable Dina Dalal surrendered to the humdrum of domestic life she so detested; and the Untouchables-turned-tailors Ishvar and Om became a tandem of beggars—Ishvar, legless on a wheeled platform steered by an overweight eunuch that had been the zesty Om.

The conclusions of their struggles are a mockery to the fights they fought. By not rewarding them even a semblance of redemption in the end, the storyteller has invalidated his own tale. What is the sense of detailing tragedy after tragedy, if not for the redemption that is saved in the end? What is the sense of a struggle if not for the respite when one can say “This tiny moment is worth everything”?

I rebel against Rohinton Mistry’s conclusion. Yes, there is reason to believe that life does not owe us a happy ending. But redemption? Life owes us that at least. Otherwise, I fear that like Ishvar and Om’s tragedies, Maneck’s suffering and Dina Dalal’s struggles, our own stories would be nothing but long meaningless tales spun with silvery time-threads, that were never ours in the first place.