Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy 2

"She loved Anna, but she enjoyed seeing that she too had her weaknesses."

What a sharp insight on human nature!

Anna Karenina: Leo Tolstoy 1

The connection between all the forces of nature is felt instinctively....

A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry 5

"It's not the buying, Omprakash - it's the applying I want you to remember."

A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry 4

Travelling made everything familiar vanish.

A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry 1

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

A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry 3

For some reason, I am reading this book with a sense of dread. It's like I am waiting for something horrible to happen... for human nature to fail in the light of what happens in the situations he's described.

I've always been a believer in the inherent goodness of human nature. That's why I am really hoping that it will shine through, despite the depths of despair that the situations bring. For whatever he has described are very real conditions of human living.

Mistry's built this sense of tension well. And I can't help but keep reading.

So here I go again to read, thinking, "que sera sera".

A Fine Balance: Rohinton Mistry 2

There was no such thing as perfect privacy, life was a perpetual concert-hall recital with a captive audience.