A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

A lifetime had to be crafted, just like anything else, she thought, it had to be moulded and beaten and burnished in order to get the most out of it.

Anything which seemed like a clutching at bygone days made her wary. The road towards self-reliance could not lie through the past.

Behind him, the slum smoke curled towards the sky, and the hellishness of the place was complete.

“No horoscopes! Why horoscopes? That is all brahminical nonsense, our community does not do that.”

“Every time there are elections, they talk of passing the same ones passed twenty years ago. Someone should remind them they need to apply the laws.”

Your gesture will be a bucket falling in a well deeper than centuries.

“But sometimes people have no choice. Sometimes the city grabs you, sinks its claws into you, and refuses to let go.”

foreigner drew a magic line on a map and called it the new border; it became a river of blood upon the earth.

Of course, the stories had all been heard before, many times over, yet there was always room for one more telling.

Filtered through his exhaustion, the city seemed to roll past the taxi window like the frames of a film reel.

Attendance was compulsory, enforced by Students Against Fascism.

“That’s no customer,” said the cashier. “That’s the goddess of protection. Her blessing is a business necessity. Compulsory puja.” “How do you mean?” “Her presence keeps my windows from being smashed and my shop from being burned. You follow?”

At the best of times, democracy is a seesaw between complete chaos and tolerable confusion. You see, to make a democratic omelette you have to break a few democratic eggs.

They were trusting her with bits of their past, she realized, and nothing could be as precious.

Birth and death—what could be more monstrous than that?

Independence came at a high price: a debt with a payment schedule of hurt and regret.

Time is without length or breadth. The question is, what happened during its passing.

Losing, and losing again, is the very basis of the life process, till all we are left with is the bare essence of human existence.”

He stared at the rails. How they glinted, like the promise of life itself, stretching endlessly in both directions, silver ribbons skimming over the gravel bed, knitting together the blackened, worn-out wood of the railway ties.