44 pages • 1 hour read
A Fine Balance
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Chapters 6-7Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 6 Summary: “Day at the Circus, Night in the Slum”
Ishvar and Om are preparing to leave for work when they notice 20 buses parked beside the shantytown. They’re ordered to get on board to attend a political rally for the prime minister. If they attend, they will get free tea and snacks, plus five rupees. Rajaram advises them all to go—the first time is great fun.
After several hours of political harangues about the benefits of the Emergency, a state of martial law, they are shoved back onto the buses without their promised tea and snacks. They also receive four rupees instead of five because there is a one-rupee transportation charge.
The next morning, the two tailors are happy to see their friend Maneck again. Maneck goes with them to a nearby hotel for their tea break, leaving behind a resentful Dina. Eventually, Ishvar remains at his machine during breaks to deflect some of Dina’s anger, while Om and Maneck take their tea at the hotel and swap stories. Maneck even treats Om to a movie.
Dina approves of Ishvar but doesn’t trust his nephew. The next time she needs to make a delivery, instead of locking the tailors inside the apartment, she appoints Maneck to supervise their behavior. Om and Maneck riffle through Dina’s personal belongings as Ishvar continues to work, oblivious to the fact that the boys are getting into mischief. She returns just in time to see her supply of sanitary napkins scattered around the parlor.
When Dina drags Ishvar into the room to witness this outrage, he slaps his nephew and scolds Maneck. Maneck tries to apologize to Dina, but it takes days for her to forgive him. Dina tells Maneck that his new friend Om is unscrupulous and that he wants to cut her out of the dressmaking business. Maneck finds this cutthroat approach to life a depressing struggle: “The game was pitiless. The carnage upon the chessboard of life left wounded human beings in its wake […] Life seemed so hopeless, with nothing but misery for everyone” (269).
Chapter 7 Summary: “On the Move”
Ishvar and Om invite Maneck to come to their house for dinner. When he accepts, Dina is appalled—Maneck has no idea of the filthy conditions where the tailors live. The night before the planned dinner, Ishvar and Om see bulldozers destroying the shantytown as part of a government beautification project. Even though they’ve paid in advance to rent their shack, they receive no compensation. The two scramble to salvage their meager possessions before everything is demolished.
Ishvar and Om spend a sleepless night in a train station. The next day, they lug their heavy trunk to Dina’s. She won’t allow them to store it in her apartment, nor will she let them sleep on her verandah. She fears the landlord will accuse her of running a hostel and evict her.
The two tailors eventually find a place to sleep in the doorway of a pharmacist’s shop. Maneck helps them carry their trunk there one evening. Om wishes time were a bolt of cloth so that he could snip out all the bad parts, but Maneck thinks that this way of looking at things is too simplistic: “‘Some things are very complicated to separate with scissors […] Good and bad are joined like that,’ he laced his fingers tight together” (306). After a week of little sleep and sore muscles from lugging the trunk, the tailors make an increasing number of mistakes in their sewing. Dina finally takes pity and gives Om a liniment for his sore arm.
Their friend Rajaram visits them that evening to talk about his new job—as a Motivator for Family Planning; he is paid to convince people to be sterilized. Rajaram wants the two tailors to join him as motivators, but they decline. That same evening, Dina shares stories with Maneck about her husband. To her they are beautiful memories of a happy past, but for him, nostalgia of any kind is depressing:
Her eyes shone and Maneck was touched by the stories. But he couldn’t understand why listening to her was making him bend once again under the familiar weight of despair, while she was delighting in her memories (312).
Chapters 6-7 Analysis
This segment foregrounds two essential themes of the book—government corruption and family ties. The political rally Ishvar and Om are forced to attend illustrates the first theme. There, an unnamed prime minister— obviously Indira Gandhi—harangues them for hours, praising the Emergency she has declared for giving her the power to suppress dissent and revoke due process in the name of national stability. The tailors aren’t given the food or money they were promised for attending the rally and are forced to walk part of the way home.
Another instance of corruption and greed comes a few days later when the tailors return from work to find their shantytown demolished. In addition to the Family Planning and Emergency policies, the government has started yet another useless initiative called Beautification. The rent-collector for the slum is now supervising its demolition, pocketing money from both the government and his displaced tenants.
As bonds of affection begin to form among the inhabitants of Dina’s flat, the novel touches on the theme of family. Since they are the same age, Maneck and Om become fast friends, fraternally taking tea breaks at a nearby hotel. Like an empathetic partner, Ishvar senses that Dina feels left out, so he stays behind to keep her company. In return, Dina brews tea for him in the house. When the teens rummage through Dina’s things, Ishvar intervenes and disciplines them both. A family unit is beginning to take shape, although none of the participants seems aware of it yet.
The homelessness of the tailors is the catalyst for a change in their relationship with Dina. When Om strains his arm lugging their heavy chest of belongings around, Dina takes pity and rubs some liniment on his arm. Then, for no apparent reason, she begins sharing stories with Maneck of her happy married life. At least subliminally, she’s beginning to feel a family connection with her new flatmates.
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