A Fine Balance, Mistry’s second novel, chronicles the sufferings of out-casts and
innocents trying to survive in the state of Internal Emergency of the 1970s. The four
protagonists are Dina Dalal, poor a Parsi woman, widowed after only three years of
marriage. Maneck, the son of an old school friend of Dina, and two tailors, Ishvar and his
rephew Om, members of the untouchable caste. As Dharan comments: “In his portrayal
of the mosaic urban community life, he also focuses on the interaction of the Parsis with
other communities. Read as fiction, Mistry’s books are illustrations of the fine art of
story-telling” (104).
Rohinton Mistry thus records in his fiction the ethnic atrophy, identity crises and
cross-cultural problems that have
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Om and Ishwar, Shankar and Rajaram by their flamboyant actions knit and knot
the lecture of the novel. Mistry’s A Fine Balance records this dark and shameful episode
with unrelenting honesty. In an interview soon after the publication of this novel, Mistry
says: It seemed to me that 1975, the year of the Emergency would be the next important
year, it one was preparing a list of important dates in Indian History. And so it was 1975
(Gokhale, October 27, 1996. qtd. in Dangwal 72).
The four main characters of this novel suffer from a sense of rootlessness.
Oppressive caste violence has driven Ishvar and Omprakash from their traditional
occupation (working with leather) to learn the skills of tailoring and from a rural
background to overcrowded Bombay. Similarly Maneck moves from the invigorating
atmosphere of his home in the hills to Bombay for higher education. Dina has grown up
in Bombay but her sense of independence after her husband’s accidental death keeps her
away from her family. So in a sense all the four main characters are lonely and struggling
for identity and survival.
The author implies that at various levels of existence, there is a see-saw