A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
Once every month, Mrs. Shroff attended her husband’s prayers at the fire-temple. She said it gave her great comfort to hear the elderly Dustoor Framji’s soothing tones supplicating for her husband’s soul. Dina missed school to accompany her mother, worried about her wandering off somewhere.
Before commencing the ceremony, Dustoor Framji unctuously shook Mrs. Shroff’s hand and gave Dina a prolonged hug of the sort he reserved for girls and young women. His reputation for squeezing and fondling had earned him the title of Dustoor Daab-Chaab, along with the hostility of his colleagues, who resented not so much his actions but his lack of subtlety, his refusal to disguise his. embraces with fatherly or spiritual concern. They feared that one day he would go too far, drool over his victim or something, and disgrace the fire-temple.
Dina squirmed in his grasp as he patted her head, rubbed her neck, stroked her back and pressed himself against her. He had a very short beard, stubble that resembled flakes of grated coconut, and it scraped her cheeks and forehead. He released her just when she had summoned enough courage to tear her trapped body from his arms.
After the fire-temple, for the rest of the day at home Dina tried to make her mother talk, asking her advice about housework or recipes, and when that failed, about Daddy, and the days of their newlywed lives. Faced with her mother’s dreamy silences, Dina felt helpless. Soon, her concern for her mother was tempered by the instinct of youth which held her back – she would surely receive her portion of grief and sorrow in due course, there was no need to take on the burden prematurely.
And Mrs. Shroff spoke in monosyllables or sighs, staring into Dina’s face for answers. As for dusting the furniture, she could never proceed beyond wiping the picture frame containing her husband’s graduation photograph. She spent most of her time gazing out the window.
Nusswan preferred to regard his mother’s disintegration as a widow’s appropriate renunciation, wherein she was sloughing off the dross of life to concentrate on spiritual matters. He focused his attention on the raising of Dina. The thought of the enormous responsibility resting on his shoulders worried him ceaselessly.
He had always perceived his father to be a strict disciplinarian; he had stood in awe of him, had even been a little frightened of him. If he was to fill his father’s shoes, he would have to induce the same fear in others, he decided, and prayed regularly for courage and guidance in his task. He confided to the relatives – the uncles and aunts – that Dina’s defiance, her stubbornness, was driving him crazy, and only the Almighty’s help gave him the strength to go forward in his duty.
His sincerity touched them. They promised to pray for him too. “Don’t worry, Nusswan, everything will be all right. We will light a lamp at the fire-temple.”
Heartened by their support, Nusswan began taking Dina with him to the fire-temple once a week. There, he thrust a stick of sandalwood in her hand and whispered fiercely in her ear, “Now pray properly – ask Dadaji to make you a good girl, ask Him to make you obedient.”
While she bowed before the sanctum, he travelled along the outer wall hung with pictures of various dustoors and high priests. He glided from display to display, stroking the garlands, hugging the frames, kissing the glass, and ending with the very tall picture of Zarathustra to which he glued his lips for a full minute. Then, from the vessel of ashes placed in the sanctum’s doorway, he smeared a pinch on his forehead, another bit across the throat, and undid his top two shirt buttons to rub a fistful over his chest.
Like talcum powder, thought Dina, watching from the corner of her eye, from her bowed position, straining to keep from laughing. She did not raise her head till he had finished his antics.
“Did you pray properly?” he demanded when they were outside.
She nodded.
“Good. Now all the bad thoughts will leave your head, you will feel peace and quiet in your heart.”
Dina was no longer allowed to spend time at her friends’ houses during the holidays. “There is no need to,” said Nusswan. “You see them every day in school.” They could visit her after being granted his permission, but this was not much fun since he always hovered around.
Once, he overheard her in the next room with her friend Zenobia, making fun of his teeth. It only served to confirm his belief that the little devils needed monitoring. Zenobia was saying he looked like a horse.
“Yes, a horse with cheap dentures,” added Dina.
“An elephant would be proud of that much ivory,” continued Zenobia, raising the stakes.
They were helpless with laughter when he entered the room. He fixed each one with a black stare before turning away with menacing slowness, leaving behind silence and misery. Yes, it worked, he realized with surprise and triumph – fear worked.
Nusswan had always been sensitive about his bad teeth and, in his late teens, had tried to get them straightened. Dina, only six or seven then, had teased him mercilessly. But the orthodontic treatment was too painful, and he abandoned it, complaining that with a doctor for a father, it was surprising his condition had not been taken care of in childhood. As evidence of partiality, he would point to Dina’s perfect mouth.
Distressed by his hurt, their mother had tried to explain. “It’s all my fault, son, I didn’t know that children’s teeth should be massaged daily, gently pressed inward. The old nurse at Dina’s birth taught me the trick, but it was too late for you.”
Nusswan had never been convinced. And now, after Dina’s friend left, she paid the price. He asked her to repeat what was said. She did, boldly.
“You have always had the habit of blurting whatever comes into your loose mouth. But you are no longer a child. Someone has to teach you respect.” He sighed, “It is my duty, I suppose,” and without warning he began slapping her. He stopped when a cut opened her lower lip.
“You pig!” she wept. “You want to make me look ugly like you!” Whereupon, he got a ruler and whacked her wherever he could, as she ran around trying to escape the blows.
For once, Mrs. Shroff noticed that something was wrong. “Why are you crying, my daughter?”
“That stupid Dracula! He hit me and made me bleed!”
“Tch-tch, my poor child.” She hugged Dina and returned to her seat by the window.
Two days after this row, Nusswan tried to make peace by bringing Dina a collection of ribbons. “They will look lovely in your plaits,” he said.
She went to her school satchel, got out her arts-and-crafts scissors, and snipped the ribbons into small pieces.
“Look, Mamma!” he said, almost in tears. “Look at your vindictive daughter! My hard-earned money I spend on her, and this is the thanks.”
The ruler became Nusswan’s instrument of choice in his quest for discipline. His clothes were the most frequent cause of Dina’s punishment. After washing, ironing, and folding them, she had to stack four separate piles in his cupboard: white shirts, coloured shirts, white trousers, coloured trousers. Sometimes she would strategically place a pinstriped shirt with the whites, or liberate a pair of pants with a hound’s-tooth check among the white trousers. Despite the beatings, she never tired of provoking him.
“The way she behaves, I feel that Sataan himself has taken refuge in her heart,” he said wearily to the relatives who asked for updates. “Maybe I should just pack her off to a boarding school.”
“No, no, don’t take that drastic step,” they pleaded. “Boarding school has been the ruination of many Parsi girls. Rest assured, God will repay you for your patience and devotion. And Dina will also thank you when she is old enough to understand it’s for her own good.” They went away murmuring the man was a saint – every girl should be fortunate enough to have a brother like Nusswan.
His spirit restored by their encouragement, Nusswan persevered. He bought all of Dina’s clothes, deciding what was appropriate for a young girl. The purchases were usually ill-fitting, for she was not allowed to be present while he shopped. “I don’t want tiresome arguments in the shopkeeper’s
All her friends were now wearing their hair short, and she begged to be allowed the same privilege. “If you let me cut my hair, I’ll swab the dining room every day instead of alternate days,” she tried to bargain. “Or I can polish your shoes every night.”
“No,” said Nusswan. “Fourteen is too young for fancy hairstyles, plaits are good for you. Besides, I cannot afford to pay for the hairdresser.” But he promptly added shoe-polishing to her list of chores.
A week after her final appeal, with the help of Zenobia in the school bathroom, Dina lopped off the plaits. Zenobia’s ambition was to be a hairstylist, and she was overwhelmed by the good fortune that delivered her friend’s head into her hands. “Let’s cut off the whole jing-bang lot,” she said. “Let’s bob it really short.”
“Are you crazy?” said Dina. “Nusswan will jump over the moon.” So they settled for a pageboy, and Zenobia trimmed the hair to roughly an inch above the shoulders. It looked a bit ragged, but both girls were delighted with the results.
Dina hesitated about throwing the severed plaits in the dustbin. She put them in her satchel and raced home. Parading proudly about the house, she went repeatedly past the many mirrors to catch glimpses of her head from different angles. Then she visited her mother’s room and waited – for her surprise, or delight, or something. But Mrs. Shroff noticed nothing.
“Do you like my new hairstyle, Mummy?” she asked at last.
Mrs. Shroff stared blankly for a moment. “Very pretty, my daughter, very pretty.”
Nusswan got home late that evening. He greeted his mother, and said there had been so much work at the office. Then he saw Dina. He took a deep breath and put a hand to his forehead. Exhausted, he wished there was some way to deal with this without another fight. But her insolence, her defiance, could not go unpunished; or how would he look himself in the mirror?
“Please come here, Dina. Explain why you have disobeyed me.”
She scratched her neck where tiny hair clippings were making her skin itch. “How did I disobey you?”
He slapped her. “Don’t question me when I ask you something.”
“You said you couldn’t afford my haircut. This was free, I did it myself.”
He slapped her again. “No back talk, I’m warning you.” He got the ruler and struck her with it flat across the palms, then, because he deemed the offence extremely serious, with the edge over her knuckles. “This will teach you to look like a loose woman.”
“Have you seen your hair in the mirror? You look like a clown,” she said, refusing to be intimidated.
Nusswan’s haircut, in his own opinion, was a statement of dignified elegance. He wore a centre parting, imposing order on either side of it with judicious applications of heavy pomade. Dina’s taunt unleashed the fury of the disciplinarian. With lashes of the ruler across her calves and arms, he drove her to the bathroom, where he began tearing off her clothes.
“I don’t want another word from you! Not a word! Today you have crossed the limit! Take a bath first, you polluted creature! Wash off those hair clippings before you spread them around the house and bring misfortune upon us!”
“Don’t worry, your face will frighten away any misfortune.” She was standing naked on the tiles now, but he did not leave. “I need hot water,” she said.
He stepped back and flung a mugful of cold water at her from the bucket. Shivering, she stared defiantly at him, her nipples stiffening. He pinched one, hard, and she flinched. “Look at you with your little breasts starting to grow. You think you are a woman already. I should cut them right off, along with your wicked tongue.”
He was eyeing her strangely, and she grew afraid. She understood that her sharp answers were enraging him, that it was vaguely linked to the way he was staring at the newfledged bloom of hair where her legs met. It would be safer to seem submissive, to douse his anger. She turned away and started to cry, her hands over her face.
Satisfied, he left. Her school satchel, lying on her bed, drew his attention. He opened it for a random inspection and found the plaits sitting on top. Dangling one between thumb and forefinger, he gritted his teeth before a smile slowly eased his angry features.
When Dina had finished her bath, he fetched a roll of black electrical tape and fastened the plaits to her hair. “You will wear them like this,” he said. “Every day, even to school, till your hair has grown back.”
She wished she had thrown the wretched things away in the school toilet. It felt like dead rats were hanging from her head.
Next morning, she secretly took the roll of tape to school. The plaits were pulled off before going to class. It was painful, with the black tape clutching hard. When school was over, she fixed them back with Zenobia’s help. In this way she evaded Nusswan’s punishment on weekdays.
But a few days later riots started in the city, in the wake of Partition and the British departure, and Dina was stuck at home with Nusswan. There were day-and-night curfews in every neighbourhood. Offices, businesses, colleges, schools, all stayed closed, and there was no respite from the detested plaits. He allowed her to remove them only while bathing, and supervised their reattachment immediately after.
Cooped up inside the flat, Nusswan lamented the country’s calamity, grumbling endlessly. “Every day I sit at home, I lose money. These bloody uncultured savages don’t deserve independence. If they must hack one another to death, I wish they would go somewhere else and do it quietly. In their villages, maybe. Without disturbing our lovely city by the sea.”
When the curfew was lifted, Dina flew off to school, happy as an uncaged bird, eager for her eight hours of Nusswan-less existence. And he, too, was relieved to return to his office. On the first evening of normalcy in the city, he came home in a most cheerful mood. “The curfew is over, and your punishment is over. We can throw away your plaits now,” he said, adding generously, “You know, short hair does suit you.”
He opened his briefcase and took out a new hairband. “You can wear this now instead of electrical tape,” he joked.
“Wear it yourself,” she said, refusing to take it.
Three years after his father’s death, Nusswan married. A few weeks later, his mother’s withdrawal from life was complete. Where before she had responded obediently to instructions – get up, drink your tea, wash your hands, swallow your medicine – now there was only a wall of incomprehension.
The task of caring for her had outgrown Dina’s ability. When the smell from Mrs. Shroff’s room was past ignoring, Nusswan timidly broached the subject with his wife. He did not dare ask her directly to help, but hoped that her good nature might persuade her to volunteer. “Ruby, dear, Mamma is getting worse. She needs a lot of attention, all the time.”
“Put her in a nursing home,” said Ruby. “She’ll be better off there.”
He nodded placatingly, and did something less expensive and more human than shipping his mother to the old-age factory – as some unkind relatives would doubtless have put it – he hired a full-time nurse.
The nurse’s assignment was short-lived; Mrs. Shroff died later that year, and people finally understood that a doctor’s wife was no more immune to grief than other mortals. She died on the same day of the Shahenshahi calendar as her husband. Their prayers were performed consecutively at the same fire-temple by Dustoor Framji. By this time, Dina had learned how to evade the trap of his overfriendly hugs. When he approached, she held out a polite hand and took a step back, and another, and another. Short of pursuing her around the prayer-hall amid the large thuribles of flaming sandalwood, he could only smile foolishly and give up the chase.
After the first month’s pra
“Very decent of Miss Lamb to promote you,” said Nusswan. “But the fact remains that your results are hopeless. I’m not going to waste money on school fees for another year.”
“You make me clean and scrub all the time, I cannot study for even one hour a day! What do you expect?”
“Don’t make excuses. A strong young girl, doing a little housework – what’s that got to do with studying? Do you know how fortunate you are? There are thousands of poor children in the city, doing boot-polishing at railway stations, or collecting papers, bottles, plastic – plus going to school at night. And you are complaining? What’s lacking in you is the desire for education. This is it, enough schooling for you.”
Dina was not willing to concede without a struggle. She also hoped that Nusswan’s wife would intervene on her behalf. But Ruby preferred to stay out of the quarrel, so next morning when she was sent to market with a shopping list, Dina ran to her grandfather’s flat.
Grandfather lived with one of her uncles, in a room that smelled of stale balm. She held her breath and hugged him, then poured out her troubles in a torrent of words. “Please, Grandpa! Please tell him to stop treating me like this!”
Already started on the road to senility, he took a while to realize who Dina was exactly, and longer to understand what she wanted. His dentures were not in, making it difficult to decipher his speech. “Shall I get your teeth, Grandpa?” she offered.
“No, no, no!” He raised his hands and shook them vehemently. “No teeth. All crooked, and paining in the mouth. Bastard stupid dentist, useless fellow. My carpenter could make better teeth.”
She repeated everything slowly, and at last he grasped the issue. “Matric? Who, you? Of course you must do your matric. Of course. Of course. You must matriculate. And then college. Yes, of course I will tell that shameless rascal to send you, I will order that Nauzer. No, Nevil – that Nusswan, yes, I will force him.”