''A Fine Balance'', Rohinton Mistry

It's been a while... Since the last time I blogged I have flown 13 times, had 5 leaving parties, recorded an album, had my apartment packed into 25 cubic square metres of cardboard boxes, and eaten my first Boston crab cakes. So I hope you'll excuse me for not returning sooner. In fact, I would be tempted to skip the last few books and hurry on to First Impressions of Boston, were it not for the fact that in the past weeks I read a book which will definitely enter my all-time favourites list (if such a thing existed).

Another gem picked out of the Oberoi hotel shop (gosh that feels long ago now), I thought it would probably be rude not to read at least one book by an Indian author, about India. And what good luck I had. ''A Fine Balance'' is about four people living during the period of The Emergency in the 1970s, when Indira Gandhi introduced a series of draconian laws and suspended civil rights following her failure to win the national elections. I had never even heard of this, and the basic subject matter was pretty horrifying - in particular the crude attempts at population control, which involved mass forced sterilisation. However, what makes this book incredibly compelling is the characterisation, and in particular the way that Mistry makes you empathise so thoroughly with the characters, despite the fact your lives are at polar opposites. Having done this, he has you so involved that when tragic events unfold (as you suspect they are going to, from the first page) it's devastating - for wont of a better phrase, he puts a human face on tragedy. OK, I know this all sounds grim and unappealing, but it's so different from anything else I've ever read, that I urge you to go and read it.

Of course, there was another level of meaining for me, as I read this whilst in Calcutta. Sudder St, where my hotel was located (not the Oberoi, but the one with the group), is a hotspot for deformed beggars of all sorts - logical, given the bountiful source of western tourists. There's so many, that it's an obstacle course just to walk to the other end of the road. Practically, there's not much you can do other than try to blank everything out and get where you need to go. If you do want to help, it's clearly much better to contribute to Mother Theresa's mission, than attempt to ''evenly'' dole out money to the hundreds of poor. And if you were to actually engage in thinking about the lives of these people you'd never be able to leave the hotel. It sounds callous, but I can't imagine that anyone would be able to find an alternative way to deal with it. However, reading this novel really hits you if you've been there - humanising people who live like this; telling their back-stories and the often uncontrollable acts of fate which have brought them to this position. Of course it still doesn't provide you with any better alternative for how to deal with the day-to-day of being in Calcutta (or some equivalent place). But it does help you to put it into perspective and in particular understand the political and economic reasons that some people have ended up living on the streets.

I'm a million miles away from that world now, living on the 17th floor of the Sheraton in Boston. But I'm reading my next Mistry, ''Family Matters'' set among the Parsi community of Mumbai, providing me with a small reminder of those 3 weeks which feel months ago now.