The Long Road Ahead

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I have been meaning to do a little post about A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry. I finished the book more than a week ago but I haven't gotten around to writing about it. Its a heart wrenching book mostly because Mistry is so good at getting you to invest in his characters. The arbitrary violence of everyday existence during the Emergency - how power was wielded, how the powerful used it to their advantage, how the upper middle class was complicit in it when it suited them and how is dis-empowered the powerless in the name of efficiency and discipline - gave me the shudders. It takes so many political under-currents and tries to illustrate how they come together to form a vortex.

Anyways this post is not supposed to be a book review - I don't think I'm qualified enough to critique someone as masterful as Mistry. I only offer one of my favorite quotes from the book:

"...People keep saying God is great, God is just, but I'm not sure"

"God is dead" said Maneck. "That's what a German philosopher wrote."

She was shocked. "Trust the Germans to say such things," she frowned. "And do you believe it?"

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"I used to. But now I prefer to think that God is a giant quiltmaker. With an infinite variety of designs. And the quilt is grown so big and confusing, the pattern is impossible to see, the squares and diamonds and triangles don't fit well together anymore, it's al become meaningless. So He has abandoned it."

"What nonsense you talk sometimes, Maneck."

All attempts at defining 'God' take me back to the definition that made the first strong impression on me. It was John Milton's (played by Al Pacino) monologue in the movie The Devil's Advocate:

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Let me give you a little inside information about God. God likes to watch. He's a prankster. Think about it. He gives man instincts. He gives you this extraordinary gift, and then what does He do, I swear for His own amusement, his own private, cosmic gag reel, He sets the rules in opposition. It's the goof of all time. Look but don't touch. Touch, but don't taste. Taste, don't swallow. Ahaha. And while you're jumpin' from one foot to the next, what is he doing? He's laughin' His sick, fuckin' ass off! He's a tight-ass! He's a SADIST! He's an absentee landlord! Worship that? NEVER! 

I remember being mesmerized  by it and I remember questioning my belief in God - not that I had a particularly staunch belief to begin with. I've seen a dozen Christian Apocalypse movies since - where the lambs are led astray and then they come back to the fold - but nothing ever came close to this masterpiece. 

Anyways let's not go off on a tangent about the half-hearted depiction of Satan in Hollywood movies and get back to philosophies of Life, Religion, God, etc. While my own feelings about God are closer to Maneck's, someday I'd like to achieve a stoic outlook closer to Pavel's and live in an ethical manner just for the sake it - without hoping to build up a pile of good Karma or what have you. Problem is I'm a bit of a vengeful sadistic bitch and I think of Cosmos as a bitch out there, conspiring to annoy me. So one can see quite a long road needs to be traversed before one reaches nihilistic zen.

P.S. I need to thank my roomie for goading me to pick up the book. Here are her own reflections on the book.