Books: “A Fine Balance” by Rohinton Mistry

India’s “Emergency” (1975-77) was a sorry period in the country’s history. Indira Gandhi, widely respected worldwide, became a dictator at home, canceling elections and suspending civil liberties—in the name of “internal and external threats to the Indian states.”

Innocent people were rounded up and imprisoned. Mrs. Gandhi’s son Sanjay promulgated an edict forcing men to having vasectomies in the name of “population control.”

This terrible episode is relived in “A Fine Balance” a novel by Rohinton Mistry. It focuses on four individuals who because of the crackdown wind up sheltering together in an unnamed big city: Dina, a middle-class seamstress who insists on her independence from her rich, overbearing brother; two villagers, Ishvar and his nephew Om who lift themselves up from “untouchable” caste to become tailors; and Manesh, a college student who is determined to make a name for himself in the big city.

While the tale is dire, the interplay between the main characters is always lively and often very funny. We’re also introduced to residents of the beggar world; a Muslim landlord who hates evicting tenants; and “goondahs,” the thugs who carry out government orders harshly and unthinkingly.

My ten days in India showed me a complex society that despite its 1.42 billion people and its imperfections, remains a democracy. Mistry’s novel is a grim reminder of what happens when obedience to a personality gets in the way of said democracy.

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