A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The ordeal ended when he was eight. He was sent to his uncle Ishvar for exposure to a wider range of sewing skills at Muzaffar Tailoring Company. Besides, the school in town now accepted everyone, high caste or low, while the village school continued to be restricted.
Radha and Narayan were not as desolate as Roopa and Dukhi had been when their sons had left to apprentice with Ashraf Chacha. A new road and bus service had shrunk the gap between village and town. They could look forward to frequent visits from Omprakash; besides, they had their two little daughters at home.
Still, Radha felt unjustly deprived of her son’s presence. A popular song about a bird that was the singer’s constant companion, but which for some inexplicable reason had decided to fly away, became Radha’s favourite. She ran to their new Murphy transistor and turned up the volume, shushing everyone when the familiar introduction trickled forth. When her son was home, the song meant nothing to her.
Omprakash’s sisters resented his visits. No one paid attention to Leela and Rekha if their brother was in the house. It started as soon as he stepped in the door.
“Look at my child! How thin he has become!” complained Radha. “Is your uncle feeding you or not?”
“He looks thin because he has grown taller,” was Narayan’s explanation.
But she used the excuse to lavish on him special treats like cream, dry fruits, and sweetmeats, bursting with pleasure while he ate. Now and then her fingers swooped into his plate, scooped up a morsel and tenderly transported it to his mouth. No meal was complete unless she had fed him something with her own hands.
Roopa, too, relished the sight of her lunching, munching grandson. She sat like a referee, reaching to wipe away a crumb from the corner of his mouth, refilling his plate, pushing a glass of lussi within his reach. A smile appeared on her wrinkled face, and the sharp light of her memory flickered over those pitch-dark nights from many years ago when she would creep out into enemy territory to gather treats for Ishvar and Narayan.
Omprakash’s sisters were silent spectators at the mealtime ritual. Leela and Rekha watched enviously, knowing better than to protest or plead with the adults. During rare moments when no one was around, Omprakash shared the delicacies with them. More often, though, the two girls wept quietly in their beds at night.
Narayan sat on the porch at dusk with his father’s aged feet in his lap, massaging the cracked, tired soles. Omprakash, fourteen now, was expected home tomorrow on a week-long visit.
“Ah!” sighed Dukhi with pleasure, then asked if he had checked on the newborn calf.
There was no answer. He repeated his question, nudging Narayan’s chest with the big toe. “Son? Are you listening?”
“Yes Bapa, I was just thinking.” He resumed the massage, staring into the dusk. His fingers worked with extra vigour to make up for his silence.
“What is it, what’s bothering you?”
“I was just thinking that… thinking how nothing changes. Years pass, and nothing changes.”
Dukhi sighed again but not with pleasure. “How can you say that? So much has changed. Your life, my life. Your occupation, from leather to cloth. And look at your house, your –”
“Those things, yes. But what about the more important things? Government passes new laws, says no more untouchability, yet everything is the same. The upper-caste bastards still treat us worse than animals.”
“Those kinds of things take time to change.”
“More than twenty years have passed since independence. How much longer? I want to be able to drink from the village well, worship in the temple, walk where I like.”
Dukhi withdrew his foot from Narayan’s lap and sat up. He was remembering his own defiance of the caste system, when he had sent his little sons to Ashraf. He felt pride at Narayan’s words, but also fear. “Son, those are dangerous things to want. You changed from Chamaar to tailor. Be satisfied with that.”
Narayan shook his head. “That was your victory.”
He resumed massaging his father’s feet while the dusk deepened around them. Inside, Radha was lost in happy preparations for her son’s arrival the next day. By and by, she brought a lamp to the porch. Within seconds it attracted a cluster of midges. Then a brown moth arrived to keep its assignation with the light. Dukhi watched it try to beat its fragile wings through the lamp glass.
That week, parliamentary elections were being conducted, and the district was under siege by politicians, sloganeers, and sycophants. As usual, the assortment of political parties and their campaigning antics assured lively entertainment for the village.
Some people complained that it was difficult to enjoy it all properly, with the air hot enough to sear the lungs – the government should have waited for the rains to come first. Narayan and Dukhi attended the rallies with their friends, taking Omprakash along to see the fun. Roopa and Radha resented the time stolen from the boy’s brief visit.
The speeches were crammed with promises of every shape and size: promises of new schools, clean water, and health care; promises of land for landless peasants, through redistribution and stricter enforcement of the Land Ceiling Act; promises of powerful laws to punish any discrimination against, and harassment of, backward castes by upper castes; promises to abolish bonded labour, child labour, sati, dowry system, child marriage.
“There must be a lot of duplication in our country’s laws,” said Dukhi. “Every time there are elections, they talk of passing the same ones passed twenty years ago. Someone should remind them they need to apply the laws.”
“For politicians, passing laws is like passing water,” said Narayan. “It all ends down the drain.”
On election day the eligible voters in the village lined up outside the polling station. As usual, Thakur Dharamsi took charge of the voting process. His system, with the support of the other landlords, had been working flawlessly for years.
The election officer was presented with gifts and led away to enjoy the day with food and drink. The doors opened and the voters filed through. “Put out your fingers,” said the attendant monitoring the queue.
The voters complied. The clerk at the desk uncapped a little bottle and marked each extended finger with indelible black ink, to prevent cheating.
“Now put your thumbprints over here,” said the clerk.
They placed their thumbprints on the register to say they had voted, and departed.
Then the blank ballots were filled in by the landlords’ men. The election officer returned at closing time to supervise the removal of ballot boxes to the counting station, and to testify that voting had proceeded in a fair and democratic manner.
Sometimes, there was more excitement if rival landlords in the district were unable to sort out their differences and ended up supporting opposing candidates. Then their gangs battled it out. Naturally, whoever captured the most polling booths and stuffed the most ballot boxes got their candidate elected.
This year, however, there were no fights or gun battles. All in all, it was a dreary day, and Omprakash was depressed as he returned home with his father and grandfather. Tomorrow he had to go back to Muzaffar Tailoring Company. The week had passed much too quickly.
They sat on the charpoy outside the house to enjoy the evening air while Omprakash fetched water for them. The trees were loud with frantic birdsong. “Next time there is an election, I want to mark my own ballot,” said Narayan.
“They won’t let you,” said Dukhi. “And why bother? You think it will change anything? Your gesture will be a bucket falling in a well deeper than centuries. The splash won’t be seen or heard.”
“It is still my right. And I will exercise it in the next election, I promise you.”
“Lately you are brooding too much about rights. Give up this dangerous habit.” Dukhi paused, brushing away a column of red ants marching towards the foot of the charpoy. The creatures scurried in all directions. “Suppose you do make the mark yourself. You think they cannot open the box and destroy the votes they don?
“They cannot. The election officer must account for every piece of paper.”
“Give up this idea. It is wasting your time – and your time is your life.”
“Life without dignity is worthless.”
The red ants had regrouped, though it was too dark for Dukhi to see. Radha brought the lamp out to the dusk-devoured porch, instantly populating it with shadows. The fragrance of wood smoke clung to her clothes. She lingered for a moment in the silence, searching her husband’s face.
“Government has no sense,” the people complained about the state assembly elections. “No sense at all. It’s the wrong month – with the earth parched and the air on fire, who has time to think about voting? Two years ago they made the same mistake.”
Narayan had not forgotten his promise to his father two years ago. He went off alone to vote that morning. The turnout was poor. A ragged queue meandered by the door of the schoolhouse set up as the polling station. Inside, the smell of chalk dust and stale food made him remember the day when he was a small boy, when he and Ishvar had been beaten by the teacher for touching the slates and books of upper-caste children.
He swallowed his fear and asked for his ballot. “No, that’s okay,” explained the men at the table. “Just make your thumbprint here, we will do the rest.”
“Thumbprint? I will sign my full name. After you give me my ballot.”
Two men in line behind Narayan were inspired by him. “Yes, give us our ballots,” they said. “We also want to make our mark.”
“We cannot do that, we don’t have instructions.”
“You don’t need instructions. It is our right as voters.”
The attendants whispered among themselves, then said, “Okay, please wait.” One of them left the polling station.
He returned shortly with a dozen men. Thakur Dharamsi, who, sixteen years ago, had ordered the musicians not to play at Narayan’s wedding, was with them. “What is it, what’s the trouble?” he asked loudly from outside.
They pointed at Narayan through the door.
“So,” muttered Thakur Dharamsi. “I should have known. And who are the other two?”
His assistant did not know their names.
“It doesn’t matter,” said Thakur Dharamsi. His men entered with him, and it became very crowded inside. He wiped his brow and held out the wet hand under Narayan’s nose. “On such a hot day you make me leave my house to sweat. Are you trying to humiliate me? Don’t you have some clothes to sew? Or a cow to poison and skin?”
“We’ll go as soon as we mark our ballots,” said Narayan. “It is our right.”
Thakur Dharamsi laughed, and his men joined in approvingly. They stopped when he stopped. “Enough jokes. Make your thumbprint and go.”
“After we vote.”
This time he did not laugh, but raised his hand as though in farewell and left the booth. The men seized Narayan and the other two. They forced their thumbs to the ink pad and completed the registration. Thakur Dharamsi whispered to his assistant to take the three to his farm.
Throughout the day, at intervals, they were flogged as they hung naked by their ankles from the branches of a banyan tree. Drifting in and out of consciousness, their screams grew faint. Thakur Dharamsi’s little grandchildren were kept indoors. “Do your lessons,” he told them. “Read your books, or play with your toys. The nice new train set I bought you.”
“But it’s a holiday,” they pleaded. “We want to play outside.”
“Not today. Some bad men are outside.” He shooed them away from the rear windows.
In the distance, in the far field, his men urinated on the three inverted faces. Semiconscious, the parched mouths were grateful for the moisture, licking the trickle with feeble urgency. Thakur Dharamsi warned his employees that for the time being the news should not spread, especially not in the downstream settlement. That might disrupt the voting and force the election commission to countermand the results, wasting weeks of work.
In the evening, after the ballot boxes were taken away, burning coals were held to the three men’s genitals, then stuffed into their mouths. Their screams were heard through the village until their lips and tongues melted away. The still, silent bodies were taken down from the tree. When they began to stir, the ropes were transferred from their ankles to their necks, and the three were hanged. The bodies were displayed in the village square.
Thakur Dharamsi’s goondas, freed now from their election duties, were turned loose upon the lower castes. “I want those achhoot jatis to learn a lesson,” he said, distributing liquor to his men before their next assignment. “I want it to be like the old days, when there was respect and discipline and order in our society. And keep an eye on that Chamaar-tailor’s house, make sure no one gets away.”
The goondas began working their way towards the untouchable quarter. They beat up individuals at random in the streets, stripped some women, raped others, burned a few huts. News of the rampage soon spread. People hid, waiting for the storm to blow over.
“Good,” said Thakur Dharamsi, as night fell and reports reached him of his men’s success. “I think they will remember this for a long time.” He ordered that the bodies of the two nameless individuals should be left by the river bank, to be reclaimed by their relations. “My heart is soft towards those two families, whoever they are,” he said. “They have suffered enough. Let them mourn their sons and cremate them.”
That was the end of the punishment, but not for Narayan’s family. “He does not deserve a proper cremation,” said Thakur Dharamsi. “And the father is more to blame than the son. His arrogance went against everything we hold sacred.” What the ages had put together, Dukhi had dared to break asunder; he had turned cobblers into tailors, distorting society’s timeless balance. Crossing the line of caste had to be punished with the utmost severity, said the Thakur.
“Catch them all – the parents, wife, children,” he told his men. “See that no one escapes.”
As the goondas broke into Narayan’s house, Amba, Pyari, Savitri, and Padma screamed from the porch to leave their friends alone. “Why are you harassing them? They have done nothing wrong!”
The women’s families pulled them back, terrified for them. Their neighbours did not dare to even look outside, cowering in their huts in shame and fear, praying that the night would pass quickly, without the violence swallowing any more innocents. When Chhotu and Dayaram tried to sneak away for help to the district thanedar, they were chased down and knifed.
Dukhi, Roopa, Radha, and the daughters were bound and dragged into the main room. “Two are missing,” said Thakur Dharamsi. “Son and grandson.” Someone checked around, and informed him that they were living in town. “Well, never mind, these five will do.”
The mutilated body was brought in and set before the captives. The room was dark. Thakur Dharamsi sent for a lamp so the family could see.
The light tore away the benevolent cloak of darkness. The naked corpse’s face was a burnt and broken blur. Only by the red birthmark on his chest could they recognize Narayan.
A long howl broke from Radha. But the sound of grief soon mingled with the family’s death agony; the house was set alight. The first flames licked at the bound flesh. The dry winds, furiously fanning the fire, showed the only spark of mercy during this night. The blaze swiftly enfolded all six of them.
By the time Ishvar and Omprakash heard the news in town, the ashes had cooled, and the charred bodies were broken and dispersed into the river. Mumtaz Chachi held Omprakash close to her while Ashraf Chacha accompanied Ishvar to the police station to register a First Information Report.
The sub-inspector, suffering from an earache, kept poking around inside with his little finger. He found it hard to concentrate. “What name? Spell it again. Slowly.”
To ingratiate themselves with the figure of authority, Ashraf advised him on a home remedy, although he was seething with anger and wanted to slap the fellow across his face to make him attend.
“Really? How much? Two or three drops?”
Then, with great reluctance, the police went to the house to verify the allegations in the First Information Report. They reported that nothing was found to support charges of arson and murder.
The sub-inspector was cross with Ishvar. “What kind of rascality is this? Trying to fill up the F.I.R. with lies? You filthy achhoot castes are always out to make trouble! Get out before we charge you with public mischief!”
Too stunned to speak, Ishvar looked at Ashraf, who tried to intervene. The sub-inspector cut him off rudely: “This matter doesn’t concern your community. We don’t interfere when you Muslims and your mullahs discuss problems in your community, do we?”
For the next two days, Ashraf kept the shop closed, crushed by the helplessness he felt. Mumtaz and he did not dare console Omprakash or Ishvar – what words were there for such a loss, and for an injustice so immense? The best they could do was weep with them.
On the third day, Ishvar asked him to open up the shop, and they began sewing again.
“I will gather a small army of Chamaars, provide them with weapons, then march to the landlords’ houses,” said Omprakash, his sewing-machine racing. “It will be easy to find enough men. We’ll do it like the Naxalites.” Head bent over his work, he described for Ishvar and Ashraf Chacha the strategies employed by the peasant uprisings in the northeast. “At the end of it we’ll cut off their heads and put them on spikes in the marketplace. Their kind will never dare to oppress our community again.”
Ishvar let him entertain his thoughts of revenge. His own first impulse had been the same; how could he blame his nephew? The hands were easy to divert with sewing, but the tormented mind was difficult to free from turmoil. “Tell me, Om, how do you know so much of this?”