44 pages • 1 hour read
A Fine Balance
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Chapters 2-3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 2 Summary: “For Dreams to Grow”
The owner of Au Revoir Exports gives Dina her first order for a trial run. If the work Dina produces is good enough, there will be bigger orders in the future. The tailors arrive promptly on Monday morning. The quality of their initial sewing is outstanding, and Dina feels that her financial worries are over. When she takes the finished dresses to Au Revoir, the owner is equally delighted.
Within a week, the tailors begin to slack off. They take breaks more frequently and show up later in the morning to start their day. Om, in particular, resents his lot and believes that he and his uncle are being exploited. If they could cut Dina out of the picture, they could work directly for the company and earn more money. Ishvar tells Om not to make trouble. Om challenges Ishvar’s indecisive attitude: “You want it both ways? First you said struggle, don’t give up. Now you are saying just accept it. Swaying from side to side, like a pot without an arse” (83).
When Dina delivers the next order to Au Revoir, she worries that Om might follow her to find out who the owner is, so she locks the tailors inside her house until she returns. Om and Ishvar take a smoking break while she’s gone but run and hide when someone pounds on the door because Dina isn’t supposed to be running a sewing business from her home. When no one answers the door, the landlord’s rent-collector, Ibrahim, slips a letter under the door for Dina, warning her that a home business violates the terms of the lease.
Ibrahim comes back the following day. Dina finally reads the warning letter, denies running a business, and slams the door in Ibrahim’s face. She decides to ignore the notice and continue with her sewing business as before. Dina takes the tailors into her confidence: If anyone asks, they should say she hired them to clean her house.
Chapter 3 Summary: “In a Village by a River”
This chapter is a flashback to Ishvar’s childhood. Dukhi Mochi lives in a small village by a river with his sons, Ishvar and Narayan. He is a member of the low, “untouchable caste,” relegated to tanning hides, cobbling shoes, and doing other tasks that higher castes find too disgusting to handle themselves.
When Ishvar is only 7, his father takes him to learn the tanning trade. They are supposed to dismember the carcass of a dead buffalo, but the animal isn’t quite dead, so the tip of its horn gashes Ishvar’s cheek. Dukhi tries to be optimistic about the injury, reading it as a sign of better things to come: “‘God wants my son to cry only half as much as other mortals.’ He preferred to overlook the fact that Ishvar’s smile, too, could only be smiled with half his face” (103).
Dukhi wants a better life for his sons, so he apprentices them to a Muslim tailor named Ashraf. The boys travel to a nearby town to live with Ashraf’s family and learn the trade, growing prosperous over time. Narayan moves back to his home village, gets married, and soon has two daughters and a son named Omprakash (or “Om” for short).
The higher castes in the village are resentful of Narayan because he is an untouchable who has gotten above his station in life. Matters come to a crisis during an election when Narayan, disgusted with political corruption, insists on filling out his own ballot rather than marking it with a fingerprint like the other untouchables do.
A wealthy landholder, Thakur Dharamsi, decides to teach Narayan and two other protesters a lesson. He has the men abducted, tortured, and hanged. Narayan’s body is dragged back to his house where his entire family is tied up and the hut burned.
Ishvar and Om only survive because they are living at the tailor shop in town. They continue to work there, but business dwindles soon after a ready-made clothing store opens. Ashraf sends Ishvar and Om to one of his friends in the big city to find tailoring work. This friend, Nawaz, grudgingly allows them to sleep outside on his porch. For six months, they struggle to find employment. Eventually, Nawaz is able to put them in touch with Dina. Ishvar and Om take jobs with her and find a shack to rent in a slum city on the outskirts of town.
Chapters 2-3 Analysis
These chapters focus heavily on the oscillation between hope and despair, as seen in the interplay between Ishvar and Om as well as in the backstory of their family. The two tailors are polar opposites both physically and in their worldviews. Ishvar looks well fed and maintains a positive attitude that relies on hope. Om is gaunt, always hungry, and generally dissatisfied, prone to lapsing into despair.
However, when they rein in one another’s excesses, they strike a balance. Ishvar kids Om about his “sour-lime face” and dark view of life. Om shakes Ishvar out of his myopic complacency. It’s an open question whether either one could function successfully without the other. As it is, they are able to weather some drastic changes in their fortunes precisely because they have one other as an anchor.
The chapter devoted to the tailors’ family backstory repeats the theme of swinging between extremes as the fortunes of the Darji family fluctuate between disaster and prosperity. The family’s status as untouchables dooms them to a life of misery, yet Ishvar and his brother escape by learning the tailoring trade. Ishvar’s brother Narayan reaches the pinnacle of prosperity with a nice home, a wife, and three children, but that good fortune is suddenly reversed when he defies tradition by insisting on his rights as a citizen. Ishvar and his nephew are spared their family’s horrible fate and expect a better life in the city. These expectations are quickly dashed as they scrape along for six months trying to survive in an indifferent world.
The tale of Ishvar’s facial injury is another symbol of the vacillation between hope and despair. After having his cheek gored by a buffalo, Ishvar can only laugh with half his face—but he can only cry with half as well.
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