Rohinton Mistry's A Fine Balance - Savita Kalhan

I don’t generally read books twice, but there are a few that I come back to time and time again.

Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance is one of them. Radio 4 has dramatised the book in one hour segments over three weeks, which is an amazing feat considering it is 614 pages long. It’s on Sunday afternoons at 3pm. Today the last part will be aired, but you can still listen to podcasts of the first two parts.

I’ve listened to the first two episodes and enjoyed them. But it’s very much like when you watch the film version of a book you love – it will never be quite the same and rarely can it be better than the book. I have to almost totally separate the two entities in my mind in order to be able to watch the film.

But the Radio 4 dramatisation is nevertheless very good. The pivotal scenes from the book are present even if much of the background is not.

In A Fine Balance Mistry explores the inherent inequalities of the caste system, extreme poverty, high level corruption, and life during the turmoil of Indira Gandhi's Emergency, and the sterilization programme, and the 'Beautification' policies, which led to the forced removal of street-dwellers into indentured labour. His characters are drawn from many Indian communities including the Parsi, Hindu, and Muslim communities. The cast of characters include Untouchables to beggars, thieves and even Indira Ghandi; but there are four central characters of different backgrounds and histories, and it is from their perspective, and through their hearts and minds, that the story is told.

The four characters are a Parsi woman, Dina, two tailors and a student from the north. Tragedy exists at the heart of each of their stories, it permeates each page, yet the resilience of their spirit sits right next to it, tempering it. 'You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair' - and quite simply, that is exactly what Rohinton Mistry does.

'... his sentences poured out like perfect seams, holding the garment of his story together without drawing attention to the stitches' - this is a line spoken by one of Mistry's characters, and perhaps best describes the mastery and craft of Rohinton Mistry himself.

His work speaks to me as an Indian, but it is universal in scope and in its depiction of humanity. He is, above all, a writer who plunges you, heart and mind, deep into his stories, where you remain submerged until the final page has been turned and you come up, gasping for air. It’s a work of genius.

Listening to the dramatisation has made me want to pick up the book again. It’s inspiring, and it inspires me to write.
Is there a book that inspires you?


Radio 4 - A Fine Balance

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Why were the royals weeping? by T. M. Alexander

Despair at the lack of spontaneity, creativity and inspiration in education thanks to the straitjacket it's forced to wear had no place last Thursday at the Deer Park Hotel (the only place I've ever encountered men in breeches that were neither hunting nor scrambling up a crag).

Deer Park Country Hotel

For the fifth year I was the judge of a children's short story competition run by the Honiton Writers Group. For the fifth year I was blown away by the inventiveness and enthusiasm of young minds, the eloquence and courage. The event is so happy and feel-good that it's not just the kids that go away beaming - everyone from the hotel staff to the grandparents have only praise for the initiative that has grown every year. And me, I bask in the positivity of it all.

This year there were 400 entires, from 5 to 15 years. The youngest winner was 6. Can a 6-year old write a story worth reading? Yes. Loretta's idea was about the Mona Lisa coming to life, leaning out of the frame and finding she had no bottom. I hope you're laughing. In the younger age groups humour is common, whereas by 12 the submissions are mostly bleak. (Think back to your teenage poetry - or was that just me?) Bucking the trend was Sarah, who wrote a touching story of a hat waiting to be bought. The hat's joy at finally leaving the shop was brilliantly conveyed. The desolation when the wearer returned it, unbearable. (Don't worry, she came back for it.)

My favourite line was by Harriet, aged 8, who started her story with 'why are the royals weeping?' That became my mantra for the evening, and I tweeted it. A close second was 'there was a large sign saying "Bowels"' - a perfectly appropriate statement given that Sophie's story was called 'Lost in the Body.' Harrison wrote an edge-of-the-seat drama that seemed bound to end in carnage but he was fooling with the reader as I found out when the terrifying event turned out to be a death slide at the local pool. He was also a winner in 2011 and hadn't looked back since, completely changing his attitude to putting pen to paper in all subjects. As we all know, a little encouragement can go a long way. While we tucked into the buffet, several of the children came to tell me their ideas for next year. I'm looking forward to reading about Lady Lalum already.

Winners in the 5-8 age group

I asked the winners for permission to use snippets of their work in this blog. 'Come and find me afterwards if you don't want me to,' I said. This lot in the photo waited until after the buffet to come up behind me en masse and shout 'we don't want you to!' I nearly fell for it.

I was on the M5 North when I heard the news that Nelson Mandela had died. Unlike Obama, protesting against anti-apartheid wasn't my first political act - I'd been to Greenham Common with my mum and sister carrying a WI-type basket of food including a Victoria sponge. It was however the cause that, thanks to my sister, was a big part of my coming of age. She became secretary of the Anti-apartheid group in Walthamstow and I went along whenever I could. We marched through a London estate where the pavements were full of National Front types and scary dogs, were there at the Free Mandela concert, learnt to sing the beautiful Nkosi Sikelel' iAfrica - Lord Bless Africa, which always makes me cry, sold T-shirts, mugs and tea towels at every fair that would have us, and celebrated when he was freed as though we knew him in person. Memories of those years came back clear and bright - Cry Freedom, Joe Slovo, Winnie Mandela, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, Trevor Huddlestone . . . as I drove, listening to Jacob Zuma on the World Service and then Radio 4's epitaph. 

I was pleased when I got home, red-eyed, to find my 16-year old still up and about. He was indignant at a post by one of his friends on Facebook, seconds after the news, dissing all the RIPs that would now appear. My son called him an unrepeatable word, which in the circumstances I approved of. The cynic took down his post shortly afterwards. The friends were reconciled, something 'Africa's greatest son' would have approved of.

www.tmalexander.com

For My Eyes Only

“I never travel without my diary. One should always have something sensational to read on the train.”  ― Oscar Wilde The Importance of Being Earnest

So I keep a diary. So what? Writers have done since writers first began writing, and there have been posts from Sassies in the past on this very subject. But the last time I visited a school and asked how many children did, only a smattering raised their hands, and this got me thinking.

Why is my diary as important to me today as it was when I was a child? Has its role in my life changed? And why does the diary form in fiction still hold a fascination for us if many of us are no longer keeping our own?

I could not survive without my diary. An inflated claim? I don't think so. I feel bereft if I forget to pack it on holiday: I have to rush out and buy a new notebook immediately – not for the Wildean reason quoted above, I should add. Ever since my teens, the diary has become less a record of things I have done and places I have visited, and more a place in itself; one of refuge, a sanctuary.

At its best it has kept me sane by allowing me to air thoughts and feelings I knew I could share with no one else. And of course it has meant that I can record happy times that are a joy to revisit – and are sometimes an inspiration for fictional writing. At its worst it has been a seething cauldron of secrets and emotions that were certainly much better kept between its covers than held up for public inspection. But even such supposedly negative material benefits from revisiting, if only to remind me that I have been here before, and all things shall pass.

I have no doubt that keeping a diary has also helped me hone the writing that I produce as a published author. Years ago, when my desire to Become A Writer was something that I kept a well-guarded secret, I would scribble away, feeling that this, at least, was writing of a sort. And it was – it was a rehearsal for the day when I would Become A Writer For Real.

We still love to read diaries. There is something irresistible about spying into the confessional. The first fictional diary that I loved, along with many children of the 80s, was The Secret Diary of Adrian Mole, aged 13 ¾. Since then I have devoured many more in this genre, from the hilarious Bridget Jones’s Diary to Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s more disturbing The Yellow Wallpaper. More recently I have roared with laughter at Jo Nadin’s Rachel Riley diaries. And I have been entertained and moved by celebrities giving readings from their real-life journals on “My Teenage Diary” on Radio 4.

So is the diary doomed other than in its fictional form? If so, what effect will the loss of the convention of journal-keeping have on future generations? I am not suggesting that anyone will want to read my diaries (indeed, I very much hope that they will not), but those of famous writers, politicians and commentators have given us much in terms of historical insight and human empathy. And then there is possibly the most famous diary of the 20^th century: that of a young girl who never lived to tell her story, so her diary had to do it for her. Otto Frank had to steel himself to read his daughter’s private words, as he knew that she had never wanted him to do so, and yet he recognized how important they were for the world to see, and thank God he did.

Will we have to rely on blogs for this in the future? And, assuming anyone will bother to trawl the ether for such material, will blogs really give us the same insight as that of diaries, originally not intended for public perusal?

For a while I wrote a personal blog, lampooning my life and my family. It was not the kindest thing to do, but at the time I found it cathartic and liked the way other people connected with it and commented on it. It was a vastly different exercise from writing a diary though. It was, essentially, an exercise in showing off.

A diary is by its very nature lacking in artifice. In a blog there has to be an element of putting on an act to the world, in the same way we do every time we step out of the front door. My diary is something for my eyes only; something kept hidden between those covers, sometimes even under lock and key.

I hope the convention is not dead. I hope that my children are secretly scribbling away by torchlight, under the duvet. And I hope they never get to read my diary, just as I am sure they would never want me to read theirs!


“For obvious reasons, I never told you about my notebook, with a cover as green as mansions long ago, which I use as a commonplace book, a phrase which here means 'place where I have collected passages from some of the most important books I have read.’”  ― Lemony Snicket, Lemony Snicket: The Unauthorized Autobiography