“What an unreliable thing is time–when I want it to fly, the hours stick to me like glue. And what a changeable thing, too. Time is the twine to tie our lives into parcels of years and months. Or a rubber band stretched to suit our fancy. Time can be the pretty ribbon in a little girl’s hair. Or the lines in your face, stealing your youthful color and your hair. …. But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”
ROHINTON MISTRY
He is a finely balanced writer. This was the first thought that erupted in my mind, the moment I finished this book. This book did not force me to undulate to the long amplitudes to two extreme ends, like a pendulum’s bob. Yes, the author definitely produced a ‘to and fro’ motion with his compelling storytelling, his story kept this reader hinged near to the center. My faculties were vibrating coherently near the center only, with a cheery smile, throughout. As the story could not overwhelm me to any of the extreme ends! The story could not impress me to that level, what I was expecting. But I would like to quickly swim out of this mood like that of Dina Dalal, a central character, whose past was bright but present was grim, and every time she thought about delving into her brighter past, she quickly changed her mood and brought her faculties back to her harsh and realistic present.
“If she did sink one of these rare moods she quickly swam out of it.”
A FINE BALANCE
The story begins with a train journey, where a young boy Maneck meets two tailors inside a bogey, Ishwar Darjee and his teenage nephew Om Prakash, who coincidentally turned out to be heading for the same address. Dina Dalal was the name whom they were going to visit. Two tailors were going there for employment and the Maneck was a student from a hill station and was a distant relative. Dina Dalal was a widow for more than twenty years and she had decided not to remarry.
Two tailors had come from an inland village and the city was the city by the sea, though you can easily guess which geography do these locations belong to, if you are aware of the Indian subcontinent, the author has kept them unnamed. The story moves from the past to the present, going to the village life, coming back to the city, going back to the village again and, from the border to the hill station and so on. These all characters found themselves entwined in interdependent situations in one cramped apartment. And here, exactly from here, I started noticing that exceptional storytelling that the author has manifested in weaving together the stories of four different and unrelated characters, in a remarkable manner. His authority and command over the prose and structure is something that made this book an un-put-down-able for me. Another thing is that he has made such an amazing concoction of politics, city life, village life, and individual aspirations in a great manner that this literary amalgamation made this book a top-hole reading.
During the 1975 emergency era of India’s political history, the intervention of government and pressure groups in the lives of ordinary people, the communal tensions, fight of human spirit, love, depression, comedy, you will find everything here. Apart from the main characters, there is a gamut of common community-based characters, who will present themselves for a short period in the plot but their presence and their dialogues will make you feel some sort of ‘a waggish reposte’, but you will feel depressing too. In such places, you will get the feel of a tragicomedy!
There was no melodrama, but I will consider this book a form of dramatic art for sure. For me, apart from all that I said above, the most prominent thing in this book was its immense sweep and a huge span in terms of individual lives, geographical extension, and political and societal attributes. I will highly recommend this book to all those who are willing to absorb too much of an art, in one go, in an extremely sophisticated manner!
BOOKBROODER 