A Fine Balance Read online

  Sure.

  Maneck took in the shabby furnishings around him: the battered sofa, two chairs with fraying seats, a scratched teapoy, a dining table with a cracked and faded rexine tablecloth. She mustn’t live here, he decided, this was probably a family business, a boarding house. The walls were badly in need of paint. He played with the discoloured plaster blotches, the way he did with clouds, imagining animals and landscapes. Dog shaking hands. Hawk diving sharply. Man with walking-stick climbing mountain.

  On the verandah, Dina Dalai ran a hand over her black hair, as yet uninvaded by grey, and turned her attention to the tailors. At forty-two, her forehead was still smooth, and sixteen years spent fending for herself had not hardened the looks which, a long time ago, used to make her brother’s friends vie to impress her.

  She asked for names and tailoring experience. The tailors claimed to know everything about women’s clothes. “We can even take measurements straight from the customer’s body and make any fashion you like,” said Ishvar confidently, doing all the talking while Omprakash nodded away.

  “For this job, there will be no customers to measure,” she explained. “The sewing will be straight from paper patterns. Each week you have to make two dozen, three dozen, whatever the company wants, in the same style.”

  “Child’s play,” said Ishvar. “But we’ll do it.”

  “What about you?” she addressed Omprakash, whose look was disdainful. “You have not said a word.”

  “My nephew speaks only when he disagrees,” said Ishvar. “His silence is a good sign.”

  She liked Ishvar’s face, the type that put people at ease and encouraged conversation. But there was the other tight-lipped fellow, who frightened away the words. His chin was too small for his features, though when he smiled everything seemed in proportion.

  She stated the terms of employment: they would have to bring their own sewing-machines; all sewing would be piecework. “The more dresses you make, the more you earn,” she said, and Ishvar agreed that that was fair. Rates would be fixed according to the complexity of each pattern. The hours were from eight a.m. to six p.m. – less than that would not do, though they were welcome to work longer. And there would be no smoking or paan-chewing on the job.

  “Paan we don’t chew only,” said Ishvar. “But sometimes we like to smoke a beedi.”

  “You will have to smoke it outside.”

  The conditions were acceptable. “What is the address of your shop?” asked Ishvar. “Where do we bring the sewing-machines?”

  “Right here. When you come next week, I will show you where to put them, in the back room.”

  “Okayji, thank you, we will definitely come on Monday.” They waved to Maneck as they left. “We will see you again soon, hanh.”

  “Sure,” said Maneck, waving back. Noticing Dina Dalai’s silent inquiry, he explained about their meeting on the train.

  “You must be careful who you talk to,” she said. “Never know what kind of crooks you might run into. This is not your little hamlet in the mountains.”

  “They seemed very nice.”

  “Hmm, yes,” she said, reserving judgement. Then she apologized again for assuming he was a tailor. “I could not see you properly because you were standing behind them, my eyes are weak.” How silly of me, she thought, mistaking this lovely boy for a bowlegged tailor. And so sturdy too. Must be the famous mountain air they talk about, the healthy food and water.

  She peered a little closer, tilting her head to one side. “It has been over twenty years, but I can recognize your mummy in your face. You know Aban and I were in school together.”

  “Yes,” he said, uncomfortable under her intense scrutiny. “Mummy told me in her letter. She also wanted to let you know I’ll move in from next month, and she’ll mail you the rent cheque.”

  “Yes, yes, that’s all right,” she said, dismissing his concern about the details and drifting again into the past. “Real little terrors we used to be in our school-days. And a third girl, Zenobia. When we three were together, it was trouble with a capital t, the teachers would say.” The memory brought a wistful smile to her face. “Anyway, let me show you my house, and your room.”

  “You live here as well?”

  “Where else?” As she led him through the dingy little flat, she asked what he was taking at college.

  “Refrigeration and air-conditioning.”

  “I hope you will do something about this hot weather then, make my home more comfortable.”

  He smiled feebly, saddened by the place in which she resided. Not much better than the college hostel, he thought. And yet, he was looking forward to it. Anything would do, after what had happened there. He shuddered and tried to think of something else.

  “This one will be your room.”

  “It’s very nice. Thank you, Mrs. Dalai.”

  There was a cupboard in one corner with a scratched, misshapen suitcase on top. A small desk stood beside the cupboard. Here, as in the front room, the ceiling was dark and flaking, the walls discoloured, missing chunks of plaster in several places. Other stark patches, recently cemented, stood out like freshly healed wounds. Two single beds lay at right angles along the walls. He wondered if she would sleep in the same room.

  “I will move one bed into the other room for myself.”

  He looked through the door beyond and glimpsed a room tinier and in worse condition, crowded by a cupboard (also with a suitcase on top), a rickety table, two chairs, and three rusting trunks stacked on a trestle.

  “I am turning you out of your own room,” mumbled Maneck, the surroundings depressing him rapidly.

  “Don’t be silly.” Her tone was brisk. “I wanted a paying guest, and it is my great good luck to get a nice Parsi boy – the son of my school-friend.”

  “It’s very kind of you, Mrs. Dalai.”

  “And that’s another thing. You must call me Dina Aunty.”

  Maneck nodded.

  “You can bring your things here any time. If you are not happy with the hostel, this room is ready – we don’t have to wait for a special date next month.”

  “No, it’s all right, but thank you, Mrs. –”

  “Ahn, careful.”

  “I mean, Dina Aunty.” They smiled.

  When Maneck left her flat, she began pacing the room, suddenly restless, as though about to embark on a long voyage. No need now to visit her brother and beg for next month’s rent. She took a deep breath. Once again, her fragile independence was preserved.

  Tomorrow she would bring home the first batch of sewing from Au Revoir Exports.

  I

  City by the Sea

  DINA DALAI SELDOM INDULGED in looking back at her life with regret or bitterness, or questioning why things had turned out the way they had, cheating her of the bright future everyone had predicted for her when she was in school, when her name was still Dina Shroff. And if she did sink into one of these rare moods, she quickly swam out of it. What was the point of repeating the story over and over and over, she asked herself – it always ended the same way; whichever corridor she took, she wound up in the same room.

  Dina’s father had been a doctor, a GP with a modest practice who followed the Hippocratic oath somewhat more passionately than others of his profession. During the early years of Dr. Shroff’s career, his devotion to his work was diagnosed, by peers, family members, and senior physicians, as typical of youthful zeal and vigour. “How refreshing, this enthusiasm of the young,” they smiled, nodding sagely, confident that time would douse the fires of idealism with a healthy dose of cynicism and family responsibilities.

  But marriage, and the arrival of a son, followed eleven years later by a daughter, changed nothing for Dr. Shroff. Time only sharpened the imbalance between his fervour to ease suffering and his desire to earn a comfortable income.

  “How disappointing,” said friends and relatives, shaking their heads. “Such high hopes we had for him. And he keeps slaving like a clerk, like a fanatic, refusing
to enjoy life. Poor Mrs. Shroff. Never a vacation, never a party – no fun at all in her existence.”

  At fifty-one, when most GPS would have begun considering options like working half-time, hiring an inexpensive junior, or even selling the practice in favour of early retirement, Dr. Shroff had neither the bank balance nor the temperament to permit such indulgences. Instead, he volunteered to lead a campaign of medical graduates bound for districts in the interior. There, where typhoid and cholera, unchallenged by science or technology, were still reaping their routine harvest of villagers, Dr. Shroff would try to seize the deadly sickles or, at the very least, to blunt them.

  But Mrs. Shroff undertook a different sort of campaign: to dissuade her husband from going into what she felt were the jaws of certain death. She attempted to coach Dina with words to sway her father. After all, Dina, at twelve, was Daddy’s darling. Mrs. Shroff knew that her son, Nusswan, could be of no help in this enterprise. Enlisting him would have ruined any chance of changing her husband’s mind.

  The turning point in the father-and-son relationship had come seven years ago, on Nusswan’s sixteenth birthday. Uncles and aunts had been invited to dinner, and someone said, “Well, Nusswan, you will soon be studying to become a doctor, just like your father.”

  “I don’t want to be a doctor,” Nusswan answered. “I’ll be going into business – import and export.”

  Some of the uncles and aunts nodded approvingly. Others recoiled in mock horror, turning to Dr. Shroff. “Is this true? No father-son partnership?”

  “Of course it’s true,” he said. “My children are free to do whatever they please.”

  But five-year-old Dina had seen the hurt on her father’s face before he could hide it. She ran to him and clambered onto his lap. “Daddy, I want to be a doctor, just like you, when I grow up.”

  Everyone laughed and applauded, and said, Smart little girl, knows how to get what she wants. Later, they whispered that the son was obviously not made of the same solid stuff as the father – no ambition, wouldn’t amount to much.

  Dina had repeated her wish in the years to come, continuing to regard her father as some kind of god who gave people good health, who struggled against illness, and who, sometimes, succeeded in temporarily thwarting death. And Dr. Shroff was delighted with his bright child. On parents’ night at the convent school, the principal and teachers always had the highest praise for her. She would succeed if she wanted to, Dr. Shroff knew it for certain.

  Mrs. Shroff also knew, for certain, that her daughter was the one to recruit in the campaign against Dr. Shroff’s foolish philanthropic plan of working in remote, Godforsaken villages. But Dina refused to cooperate; she did not approve of devious means to keep her beloved father home.

  Then Mrs. Shroff resorted to other methods, using not money or his personal safety or his family to persuade him, for she knew these would fail hopelessly. Instead, she invoked his patients, claiming he was abandoning them, old and frail and helpless. “What will they do if you go so far away? They trust you and rely on you. How can you be so cruel? You have no idea how much you mean to them.”

  “No, that is not the point,” said Dr. Shroff. He was familiar with the anfractuous arguments that her love for him could prompt her to wield. Patiently he explained there were GPSgalore in the city who could take care of the assorted aches and pains – where he was going, the people had no one. He comforted her that it was only a temporary assignment, hugging and kissing her much more than was usual for him. “I promise to be back soon,” he said. “Before you even grow used to my absence.”

  But Dr. Shroff could not keep his promise. Three weeks into the medical campaign he was dead, not from typhoid or cholera, but from a cobra’s bite, far from the lifesaving reach of antivenins.

  Mrs. Shroff received the news calmly. People said it was because she was a doctor’s wife, more familiar with death than other mortals. They reasoned that Dr. Shroff must have often carried such tidings to her regarding his own patients, thus preparing her for the inevitable.

  When she took brisk charge of the funeral arrangements, managing everything with superb efficiency, people wondered if there was not something a little abnormal about her behaviour. Between disbursing funds from her handbag for the various expenses, she accepted condolences, comforted grieving relatives, tended the oil lamp at the head of Dr. Shroff’s bed, washed and ironed her white sari, and made sure there was a supply of incense and sandalwood in the house. She personally instructed the cook about the special vegetarian meal for the next day.

  After the full four days of death ceremonies, Dina was still crying. Mrs. Shroff, who was busy tallying the prayer-bungalow charges from the Towers of Silence, said briskly, “Come, my daughter, be sensible now. Daddy would not like this.” So Dina did her best to control herself.

  Then Mrs. Shroff continued absentmindedly, writing out the cheque. “You could have stopped him if you wanted. He would have listened to you,” she said.

  Dina’s sobs burst out with renewed intensity. In addition to the grief for her father, her tears now included anger towards her mother, even hatred. It would take her a few months to understand that there was no malice or accusation contained in what had been said, just a sad and simple statement of fact as seen by her mother.

  Six months after Dr. Shroff’s death, after being the pillar that everyone could lean on, Mrs. Shroff gradually began to crumble. Retreating from daily life, she took very little interest in the running of her household or in her own person.

  It made little difference to Nusswan, who was twenty-three and busy planning his own future. But Dina, at twelve, could have done with a parent for a few more years. She missed her father dreadfully. Her mother’s withdrawal made it much worse.

  Nusswan Shroff had earned his own living as a businessman for two years prior to his father’s death. He was still single, living at home, saving his money while searching for a suitable flat and a suitable wife. With his father’s passing and his mother’s reclusion, he realized that the pursuit of a flat was unnecessary, and a wife, urgent.

  He now assumed the role of head of the family, and legal guardian to Dina. All their relatives agreed this was as it should be. They praised his selfless decision, admitting they had been wrong about his capabilities. He also took over the family finances, promising that his mother and sister would want for nothing; he would look after them out of his own salary. But, even as he spoke, he knew there was no need for this. The money from the sale of Dr. Shroff’s dispensary was sufficient.

  Nusswan’s first decision as head of the family was to cut back on the hired help. The cook, who came for half the day and prepared the two main meals, was kept on; Lily, the live-in servant, was let go. “We cannot continue in the same luxury as before,” he declared. “I just can’t afford the wages.”

  Mrs. Shroff expressed some doubt about the change. “Who will do the cleaning? My hands and feet don’t work like before.”

  “Don’t worry, Mamma, we will all share it. You can do easy things, like dusting the furniture. We can wash our own cups and saucers, surely. And Dina is a young girl, full of energy. It will be good for her, teach her how to look after a home.”

  “Yes, maybe you are right,” said Mrs. Shroff, vaguely convinced of the need for money-saving measures.

  But Dina knew there was more to it. The week before, while passing the kitchen on her way to the wc well past midnight, she had noticed her brother with the ayah: Lily sitting on one end of the kitchen table, her feet resting on the edge; Nusswan, his pyjamas around his ankles, stood between Lily’s thighs, clasping her hips to him. Dina watched his bare buttocks with sleepy curiosity, then crept back to bed without using the toilet, her cheeks flushed. But she must have lingered a moment too long, for Nusswan had seen her.

  Not a word was spoken about it. Lily departed (with a modest bonus, unbeknownst to Mrs. Shroff), tearfully declaring that she would never find as nice a family to work for ever again. Dina felt sorry for her, a
nd also despised her.

  Then the new household arrangement got under way. Everyone made an honest effort. The experiment in self-reliance seemed like fun. “It’s a little like going camping,” said Mrs. Shroff.

  “That’s the spirit,” said Nusswan.

  With the passing of days, Dina’s chores began to increase. As a token of his participation, Nusswan continued to wash his cup, saucer, and breakfast plate before going to work. Beyond that, he did nothing.

  One morning, after swallowing his last gulp of tea, he said, “I’m very late today, Dina. Please wash my things.”

  “I’m not your servant! Wash your own dirty plates!” Weeks of pent-up resentment came gushing. “You said we would each do our own work! All your stinking things you leave for me!”

  “Listen to the little tigress,” said Nusswan, amused.

  “You mustn’t speak like that to your big brother,” chided Mrs. Shroff gently. “Remember, we must share and share alike.”

  “He’s cheating! He doesn’t do any work! I do everything!”

  Nusswan hugged his mother: “Bye-bye, Mamma,” and gave Dina a friendly pat on the shoulder to make up. She shrank from him. “The tigress is still angry,” he said and left for the office.

  Mrs. Shroff tried to soothe Dina, promising to discuss it later with Nusswan, maybe convince him to hire a part-time ayah, but her resolve melted within hours. Matters continued as before. As weeks went by, instead of restoring fairness in the household, she began turning into one of the chores on her daughter’s ever-growing list.

  Now Mrs. Shroff had to be told what to do. When food was placed before her, she ate it, though it did her little good, for she kept losing weight. She had to be reminded to bathe and change her clothes. If toothpaste was squeezed out and handed to her on the brush, she brushed her teeth. For Dina, the most unpleasant task was helping her mother wash her hair – it fell out in clumps on the bathroom floor, and more followed when she combed it for her.