Tailors of Bombay
A Fine Balance, Rohinton Mistry, 1995
This novel by Bombay born Parsi Mistry won the Giller Prize, the Royal Society of Literature’s Winfried Holtby Prize, and the 1996 Los Angeles Times Award for fiction. Set in India during 1975-76 the time of Indira Gandhi’s massive corruption after she defied a court order to resign as prime minister by declaring a state of emergency. The daughter of Jawaharlal Nehru Indira Gandhi and her son Sanjay Gandhi led India into its worst period threatening the very roots of democracy.
In this novel two untouchables of a sub caste condemned to leather tanning learn tailoring to escape their fate. When the local village tailor is forced out of business by mass-produced clothing, the tailors an uncle and nephew travel to Bombay to seek employment. They are hired by a Parsi widow determined to maintain an independent life by subcontracting to a woman selling designer women’s dresses for export.
The tailors rent sewing machines and move into a shantytown. Thugs recruiting slave workers for a pit mine abduct them. They escape. Greedy developers working with corrupt politicians destroy their shantytown. They help a beggar who turns out to be the king of beggars and he offers to protect, in return for money, the Parsi widow from her greedy landlord, who is trying to evict her. The nephew saves for a bride but when he returns to his village to arrange a marriage, he is abducted and forcibly sterilized under a population limit program gone horribly out of control with financial incentives, bribery, and quotas.
Rohinton Mistry 
Overall a very sad book, perhaps the best novel depicting life for the powerless during this dark period of recent Indian history. Mistry, a marvelous storyteller, now lives in Canada. When he flies, he says he is always targeted for interrogation by security.