In the novel A Fine Balance, author Rohinton Mistry chronicles the lives of four protagonists, underdogs that struggle to rise up the social ladder in the brutal contest of "survival of the fittest" during the turbulent Emergency period of India. The Emergency, one of the most violent and volatile intervals in the history of modern India that lasted from 1975 to 1977, was a time where "fundamental rights were suspended, most of the opposition was under arrest, and union leaders were in jail" all
Response to Reading Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance I chose to read Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance, a story about four very different people living in India during a period of great civil unrest known as The State of Emergency. I found this book incredibly easy to get into because of the way Mistry writes. He seems to create the story around you, placing you in the setting as a viewer, involving you in the lives of the characters. Mistry clearly outlines the political and economic situation
Behind the Beauties: Politics Explored and Exploded in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance When politics is a practice of power that rules lives with a cluster of perceptions and practices, Mistry’s A Fine Balance is a novel that acts as a great force fearlessly displaying life’s rich variousness and barren viciousness, proving that power is abused and the strong grind the weak as Frank Norris remarks in The Responsibilities of Novelists. Aware of India’s social and political life, and closely linked
Rohinton Mistry with his novels like Such a Long Journey (1992) and A Fine Balance (1996) showed to the literary world that he is a novelist who believes in depicting life as it really is. Both the novels exhibit his excellent understanding of Indian social life. A veracious portrayal of the Indian middle class is the high point in Mistry’s narratives. His bitterness and disappointment with the government’s hostile attitude towards the poor is evident in his novels. Such a Long Journey (1991) is
Rohinton Mistry’s “Such A Long Journey” is the story of turbulent life of Gustad Noble and his family, who lives in Khodadad Building north of Bombay. The story portrays the series of events such as his son Sohrab’s refusal to attend Indian Institution of Technology, hardships faced by his friends and family, political turmoil and chaos caused by the war between India and Pakistan. Gustad transforms from a stubborn, materialistic and awful person to an open-minded and more adaptive to circumstantial
The Fiction of MG Vassanji, Neil Bisoondath, and Rohinton Mistry.Toronto:TSAR Publication.2007. The book provides short summaries of Rohinton Mistry's other works and a little bit of background about his life and inspirations. It also includes the author's own interpretation of Mistry's A Fine Balance and his expert use of metaphors and symbolism that make the story seem so rich and authentic. This book will allow readers to relate to Mistry more, understand his point of view and the
The novel, Such a Long Journey by Rohinton Mistry is set in the city of Mumbai, India, during the year 1971. The book explores the journey of a Parsi man named Gustad Noble and his relationships with others as he goes through the difficult times in his life. The book is not just about Gustad’s personal life journey but it also explores the political background during that time. The battle between India and West Pakistan during the Bangladeshi Liberation War that helped East Pakistan form their own
Religion is one of the reasons why Parsis are a minority in Bombay, India. They believe in Zoroastrianism while most Bombayites are Hindus. The other religions that are minorities are Christianity, and Islam. One of Gustard's friend, Malcom, said to Gustard, "we are the minorities in a nation of Hindus" (Such a Long Journey, pg. 23). Malcom was a Christian and they used to fight about their different religions and who's religion came first. Gustard told Malcom "Our prophet Zarathustra lived more
Rohinton Mistry is a writer of Indian Diaspora who possesses a double identity. By birth, he is an Indian and settled down in Canada, despite everything, he expounds his country through his anecdotal works and discusses the agony of immigrants. He throws light on discrimination, brutality, and injuries confronted by the Dalits in rural India. This paper mainly concentrates on how Rohinton Mistry's second novel, A Fine Balance mirrors the truth of India, the political issues of debasement, discrimination
Richness`` and Rohinton Mistry ``Lend Me Your Light`` are two essays written to explore cultural identity. Moses was born in Austria; however grew up and was educated in Canada. Rohinton was born in India; went to school in India and then immigrated to Canada when he was 27. Milstein and Mistry both explore cultural identity through the different experiences that they had throughout childhood. Both essays explore the why cultural identity is important in how we grow up. Milstein and Mistry essays are
lowest points in life, Zoroastrianism is the ever-present sun guiding him uphill towards better times. His firm belief ultimately led to the Noble family’s happy ending. Works Cited Mistry, Rohinton. Such a Long Journey Toronto: McClelland & Stewart, 2001. Print. Sadhath, Anvar. "The Agony of a Cultural Outsider: Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey."The Criteron 12 (2013): 1-8. Print. Srinivas, Sunitha.C. Funtionalism and Indian English Fiction. New Delhi: Atlantic Publishers, 2010, 147. Print.
Common motifs depicted in the characters throughout Rohinton Mistry's "Such a long journey" include the contrast of many opposing forces. Good and bad, bitterness and forgiveness, saving and destruction, heaven and hell as just a few of the conflicting themes. Many secondary characters in the novel are important in the life of Gustad, and encourage these themes. In The Road to Salvation: Mythological and Theological Intertextuality in Rohinton Mistry's Such a Long Journey, Michel W. Pharand states:
Introduction A Fine Balance is the second novel by Rohinton Mistry. It is set in "an unidentified city" in India, initially in 1975 and later in 1984 in the course of the turmoil of The Emergency. The book worries four characters from varied backgrounds – Dina Dalal, Ishvar Darji, his nephew Omprakash Darji and the young pupil Maneck Kohlah – who come together and broaden a bond. A Fine Balance, is a long, complex paintings, with four protagonists and a variety of settings. Moreover, despite the
A Fine Balance, written by Rohinton Mistry’s, illustrates the path to wisdom and humility before a calamitous end. The novel, A Thousand Acres, by Jane Smiley parallels a lot of similar themes and ideas depicted in A Fine Balance. As the story develops, a connection forms between the improbable household in both books and they generate an unbelievably uneven dysfunctional family, to either protect or torment one another through the experiences they encounter. Both novels develop the themes of, concern
classical music, his romanticism, his welter of emotions, all come through very effectively. The Kolkata born, Vikram Seth deserves to be next on the list. The man of many languages and wise businessman penned outstanding works like "The Golden Gate", "A Suitable Boy", "An Equal Music", and "Two Lives". The first book written by him was in verse form and records the lives of young professionals in San Francisco. "A Suitable Boy", 1441 paged novel pushed him into the lime light. The book brimmed with
Response to A God Of Small Things One of the main themes in Arundhati Roy's A God Of Small Things is discrimination in the caste system. Roy tells the story of the hardships faced by the Untouchables, the lowest caste in the caste system. Technically, the Untouchables are not even in the caste system because to put them in the same system as the other four castes would be offensive to the rest of them. Another theme in this novel is forbidden love. These two themes, discrimination in the caste system
consciousness is rooted in its own socio- cultural, racial, class and gender identity. For the immigrant writers, the quest for identity has been a significant issue at the social, cultural, literary emotional and psychological levels. Writers like Rohinton Mistry, Anita Desai, UmaParameswaran and a host of other immigrant writers highlight this quest for national identity by defining, redefining, analyzing and exploring it from all possible angles. Uma Parameswaran’s works offer a special insight because
“THE CIVILIZATION IN AMITAV GHOSH’S NOVELS” INTRODUCTION English is a foreign language but since the British came to India the language has an impact on several fields in education, literary effort and as a medium of communication. Indian English Literature refers to that body of work by writers from India, who writes in the English language and whose native or co-native language could be one of the numerous regional and indigenous languages of India. English literature in India is also
CHAPTER-II Diasporic Consciousness and V. S. Naipaul Diasporic consciousness, as a dominant phenomenon in the world literature exposes the mental flight of people who constantly trying to reconstruct their present based on their past. Their past hunts them to a frozen and fractured consciousness that force them to search for locating their identity and this search for locating the identity became the starting point of diasporic literature. Their quest for the past and the assimilation into the
From the onset of the twentieth century there has been an ongoing debate on context and text. Literary theorists all over the world propounded many theories that either divorced the two or made their bond stronger. From the 1920s there came a wave of critical theories, the New Critics pleaded for critical monism. The New Criticism took the poem as a work of art, a structure having an independent existence. They completely divorced the work of art from the biographical, sociological context; removed