A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

Flirting with madness was one thing; when madness started flirting back, it was time to call the whole thing off.

They are so rich in foreign countries, they can afford to fear all kinds of silly things.”

people hardly ever saw their children as they really were.

Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be re-created—not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

Vasantrao Valmik the proofreader would say it was all part of living, that the secret of survival was to balance hope and despair, to embrace change.

“So that’s the rule to remember, the whole quilt is much more important than any single square.”

The lives of the poor were rich in symbols,

As he spoke about his loss, it became clear why he had waited at the station platform every day to meet their train: he was matching his wits with time the great tormentor.

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 colour and your hair.” He sighed and smiled sadly. “But in the end, time is a noose around the neck, strangling slowly.”

Where humans were concerned, the only emotion that made sense was wonder, at their ability to endure; and sorrow, for the hopelessness of it all.

“From my seat here on the bench, there is much that I observe every day. And most of it makes me despair. But what else to expect, when judgement has fled to brutish beasts, and the country’s leaders have exchanged wisdom and good governance for cowardice and self-aggrandizement? Our society is decaying from the top downwards.”

When the highest court in the land turns the Prime Minister’s guilt into innocence, then all this”—he indicated the imposing stone edifice—“this becomes a museum of cheap tricks, rather than the living, breathing law that strengthens the sinews of society.”

“There is always hope—hope enough to balance our despair. Or we would be lost.”

“After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents—a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.”

Mr. Valmik depicted life as a sequence of accidents, there was nothing accidental about his expert narration. His sentences poured out like perfect seams, holding the garment of his story together without calling attention to the stitches. Was he aware of ordering the events for her? Perhaps not—perhaps the very act of telling created a natural design. Perhaps it was a knack that humans had, for cleaning up their untidy existences—a hidden survival weapon, like antibodies in the bloodstream.

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.”

“The real murderers will never be punished. For votes and power they play with human lives. Today it is Sikhs. Last year it was Muslims; before that, Harijans. One day, your sudra and kusti might not be enough to protect you.”