Table of Contents

A fine balanceĀ 

Table of Contents

Theoretical overview

A Fine Balance is the story of four people who meet, live and work in a large, overcrowded city and desperately struggle to survive in the face of intense hardships. After her father died when she was young, Dina Shroff was raised by her strict brother Nusswan. One night at the cinema, she met Rustom Dalal, and after a couple weeks, the two fell in love and got married. On their third anniversary, however, Rustom has a bicycle accident and is killed, leaving Dina alone. After Rustom’s aunt teaches Dina sewing, Dina pays her rent by being a tailor. However, her eyes begin to deteriorate, so she is forced to find another means of income. 

Originally from a family of cobblers, Ishvar and his brother, Narayan, are sent by their father to Ashraf Chacha to become apprentice tailors. Once they had finished their apprentiship, Narayan returns to his village, marries and starts up a successful tailoring business. His wife gives birth to a son, Omprakesh, and when he is of age, he is sent to Ashraf to also learn to be a tailor. During an election, Narayan, being of a lower caste, decides that he would like to have his own vote rather than having the upper caste members vote for him. For holding this opinion, he is tortured and killed, and his family burnt alive in their hut. Only Ishvar and Om survived because they were with Ashraf. they headed into the city to look for work and finally found work with Dina Dalal, who needed two tailors. On the way to her flat, they met Maneck Kolah, and they all three immediately became friends. 

Earlier, Maneck was sent to college to study refrigeration and air conditioning by his father. After experiencing abuse at the hands of some rowdy students at the college hostel, he told his father that he could not return to the school, so his mother found someone who needed a boarder, and so it was arranged that Maneck would live with Dina Dalal and attend college in the city.

Effects of emergency

Meanwhile, the political landscape was changing. After winning the election, the Prime Minister was accused, and found guilty of, electoral fraud. To avoid being thrown out of Parliament, she declared a state of emergency and threw her accusers in jail. The press was censored and laws were passed that gave uncontrollable power to the authorities. Compulsory sterilisation was put in place and beautification laws saw slums flattened and beggars taken off the streets.

Dina and the tailors’ business runs fairly \ for almost a year, but effects of the Emergency bother them often. The shantytown where the tailors live is knocked down in a government “beautification” program, and the residents are uncompensated and forced to move into the streets. Later Ishvar and Om are rounded up by a police beggar raid and are sold to a labor camp. Ishvar and Om return to their village to find a wife for Omprakash, who is now eighteen. Maneck returns home, finished with his first year in college (he has received a certificate but not a degree), but has stiff relations with his family. Omprakash and Ishvar return to their old town to find that Ashraf Chacha is an elderly man whose wife died and daughters were all married off. He gives them a place to stay while they search for marriage prospects for Om. While they walk around the village, they run into the upper-caste Thakur Dharamsi. Omprakash recognizes him and spits in his direction. Thakur in turn recognizes Om, and decides to somehow pay Om back for his disrespect of an upper caste member. When Ashraf Chacha, Ishvar, and Om are in the village, they run into herders from the Family Planning Centre. As the Centre in this city did not fill its quota, they take random people from the street and force them into a truck that drives them to the Family Planning Centre. All three are beaten into the truck and since Ashraf Chacha is so old, he is gravely injured and later dies on the street. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but the vasectomy takes place. As they lie in an outside tent recovering. Ishvar’s legs become infected due to the use of unsterilized surgical equipment used for the vasectomy and must be amputated. However, Ishvar and Om have nowhere to go now that Ashraf Chacha has died. His son-in-law sells his house and they are forced to leave town.

Eight years later, Maneck returns home for the second time from Dubai for his father’s funeral. Maneck is repulsed by the violence that follows after the emergency. Shocked and shaken, he decides to visit Dina in Bombay for better news. He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om ā€“ one disabled and the other castrated ā€“ have led as beggars after their village visit. As Maneck leaves, he encounters Om and Ishvar on the street. The two former tailors are nearly unrecognizable because of their filth, and don’t appear to recall him. They try to attract his attention, but he doesn’t know what to say and walks on.

Maneck goes to the train station, his world shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by letting the train run over him.

THEME

The novel reflects other themes also including caste system, ragging, problems and life of Parsi people. The novel is reflection of National Emergency during in 1975 and 1984. The plot of the novel describes the National Emergency between two years 1975 and 1977 that takes up most of the plot. It resulted in most of the downtrodden forced to enter unhygienic sterilisation camps and exhibitionist rallies, evicted from their abodes as a part of slum demolition program being bullied by the police and minsters. The horrors of Emergency caused on socio-economic perspectives.

 The second theme is related to the sensitive issue of caste and untouchability through the characters of Ishvar and Om. They belong from Schedule Caste particularly from cobbler community. These untouchables predominantly setup in the leather business and tanning animal hides. Isvharā€™s father, Dukhi, who he wanted to change their traditional business. But he had faced many challenges. It results in their destruction; villagers burnt their house more ever Dukhi and his family died in the attack except of Ishwar and his nephew Om. We see the upper caste supremacists carried out atrocities one after the other on the untouchables and their families.

The third theme deals with ragging which is mostly occurs in school and colleges. The novelist has focussed on current issues in the Indian Society like caste system, ragging etc. Maneckis a student and is tortured by his peers and seniors. At first, he faced ragging in boarding school and later in college in Mumbai where they make him naked in the cafeteria freezer mercilessly. The fourth important theme is related human trafficking for beggary. In these days most of the people wander as beggars particularly at public places consisting of bus stop, railway station. Ishwar and Om starved and wandered to beg at railway platform. Shankar worm who has no limbs but merely a torso that he wheels around on a slab of wood with wheels to procure alms from sympathisers. The novel consists of few minor themes throughout the book like Parsis and their customs, family, corruption, helplessness, providence, togetherness, and suicide. 

Points to remember

  • Main character of this play are Dina Dalal, Ishvar, OM Prakash, Maneck 
  • Dina Dalal is the widow who pays her rent by being a tailor.
  • Ishwar and Om are from cobbler family.
  •  Maneck was a student..
  • During an election, Narayan, being of a lower caste, decides that he would like to have his own vote rather than having the upper caste members vote for him. For holding this opinion, he is tortured and killed, and his family burnt alive in their hut. Only Ishvar and Om survived because they were with Ashraf.
  • Compulsory sterilisation was put in place and beautification laws saw slums flattened and beggars taken off the streets.
  • they take random people from the street and force them into a truck that drives them to the Family Planning Centre.
  • and since Ashraf Chacha is so old, he is gravely injured and later dies on the street. Ishvar and Omprakash beg to escape the forced sterilization, but the vasectomy takes place.
  • As they lie in an outside tent recovering. Ishvar’s legs become infected due to the use of unsterilized surgical equipment used for the vasectomy and must be amputated.
  • Eight years later, Maneck returns home , Maneck is repulsed by the violence that follows after the emergency.
  • He learns from Dina the horrific lives that Ishvar and Om ā€“ one disabled and the other castrated ā€“ have led as beggars after their village visit.
  • Maneck goes to the train station, his world shattered. He walks out on the tracks as an express train approaches the station and commits suicide by letting the train run over him.

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