A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
“They don’t. They came just a few months ago from a faraway village.” He was pleased to see a trace of worry in slow migration across her face.
Then she was annoyed. “It’s amazing. Just amazing how much you know about them, isn’t it?”
They ignored each other for most of the evening, but while working on the quilt after dinner, she spread out the squares and tried to get him to talk. “Well, Maneck? How does it look now?”
“Looks terrible.” He was not ready to forgive her while the tailors remained unaccommodated in the night.
The sign read “Sagar Darshan – Ocean View Hotel.” The only sea in sight was the rectangle of blue painted on the weather-beaten board, with a little sailboat perched upon a wave.
Inside, a youth in a frayed white uniform sat on the floor by an umbrella stand, staring at pictures in Filmfare. He did not look up as the tailors came in. A grey-haired man, eating busily behind the counter, broke pieces from a loaf of bread and dipped them in quick succession into a series of four stainless steel saucers. “Thirty rupees per night,” he mumbled through an overloaded mouth, revealing a gold tooth in the process. Masticated fragments of his dinner flew past the moist lips onto the counter. He swept them to the floor, then polished away the smudge with his sleeved elbow.
“See? I told you, we cannot afford a hotel,” said Ishvar as they retreated.
“Let’s try another one.”
They checked place after place: Paradise Lodge, at twenty rupees a night, located over a bakery with a badly insulated ceiling, so that the searing heat of oven flames could be felt upstairs; Ram Nivas, the signboard stating that all castes were welcome, whose rooms reeked with a horrible stench, courtesy of a small chemical factory next door; Aram Hotel, where their luggage was almost stolen while they inquired, the would-be thief bolting as they retraced their steps down the hallway.
“Had enough?” said Ishvar, and Om nodded.
They lifted their loads and started towards the train station, pausing to inspect every doorway, awning, and façade that might offer shelter. But wherever shelter was possible, the place was already taken. To discourage pavement-dwellers, one shop had laid down in its entrance an iron framework covered with spikes, on hinges that could be unlocked and folded away in the morning. This bed of nails was being used by an enterprising individual – first, a rectangle of plywood over the spikes, and then his blanket.
“We will have to learn things like that,” said Ishvar, watching admiringly.
They passed the beggar on his platform, who greeted them with the usual rattle of his tin. Intent in their search, they didn’t acknowledge him. He gazed forlornly after them. There were a few empty places outside a furniture store that was still open. “We could try there,” said Om.
“Are you crazy? You want to get killed for taking someone’s spot? Have you forgotten what happened on the pavement near Nawaz’s shop?”
They passed the store that never closed, the twenty-four-hour chemist’s. The lights were going out in the main section as the sales clerks left. The dispensing side stayed bright, with a compounder on duty.
“Let’s wait here,” said Ishvar. “See what happens.”
Someone put a wooden stool outside, in the entrance way that was shared by the chemist’s and the antique shop next door. Steel shutters descended like eyelids on the two windows. Soaps, talcum powders, cough syrups on one side, and bronze Natarajas, Mughal miniatures, inlaid jewel boxes on the other, all vanished from view. The two managers locked up and handed over the keys to the nightwatchman.
The tailors waited till the nightwatchman loosened his belt, pulled off his shoes, and got comfortable on the wooden stool. Then they approached with their packet of beedis. “Matches?” asked Ishvar, making the striking gesture with his hand.
The nightwatchman stopped rubbing his calves to dig in his pocket. The tailors shared a match. They offered the beedis to the nightwatchman. He shook his head, producing a pack of Panama cigarettes. The three puffed silently for a while.
“So,” said Ishvar. “You sit here all night?”
“That’s my job.” He reached for the night stick that leaned against the door and tapped it twice. The tailors smiled, nodding.
“Anyone sleeps in this entrance?”
“No one.”
“Sometimes you must feel like taking a rest.”
The nightwatchman shook his head. “Not allowed. I have to watch two shops.” He leaned towards them and confided, pointing inside to the night compounder, “But he. He takes a rest. He takes a long sleep, inside, on a mat on the floor, every night. For that, the rascal gets paid, and much more than me.”
“We have no place to sleep,” said Ishvar. “The colony where we lived – it was destroyed by the government yesterday. With their machines.”
“That’s happening often these days,” said the nightwatchman. He continued his complaint about the compounder. “That fellow has very little work at night. Sometimes a customer comes for medicine. Then I unlock the door and wake the rascal to mix the prescription. But if he has been sleeping his mind is cloudy. He has trouble reading the labels.” He leaned closer again. “Once, he put wrong things in the medicine mixture. Customer died, and police came to investigate. Manager and police talked. Manager offered money, police took money, and everybody was happy.”
“Crooks, all of them,” said Ishvar, and they nodded in agreement. “Can you let us sleep here?”
“It’s not allowed.”
“We could pay you.”
“Even if you pay, where’s the space?”
“Space is enough. We can put our bedding near the door if you move your stool just two feet.”
“And what about other things? There is no storage place.”
“What things – just one trunk. We will take it with us in the morning.”
They shifted the stool and unrolled the bedding. It fit exactly. “How much can you pay?” asked the nightwatchman.
“Two rupees each night.”
“Four.”
“We are poor tailors. Take three, and we will do some free tailoring also for you. We can repair your uniform.” He pointed to the worn knees and fraying cuffs.
“Okay. But I’m warning you, sometimes the nights are very noisy here. If a customer comes for medicine you will have to move. Then don’t say I spoiled your sleep. No refund for spoiled sleep.” And if the night compounder should ask, they were to say two rupees, because the rascal would demand a cut from it.
“Bilkool,” agreed the tailors to all his conditions. After another beedi, they took needles and thread out of the trunk and got to work. The nightwatchman sat in his underwear while they fixed his uniform.
“First class,” he said, slipping on his trousers.
The compliment gratified Ishvar, and he said they would be pleased to mend other things for him and his family. “We can do everything. Salwar-kameez, ghaghra-choli, baby-baba clothes.”
The nightwatchman shook his head sadly. “You are kind. But wife and children are living in my native place. I came here alone, looking for work.”
Later, as the tailors slept, he watched them from his wooden stool. When Omprakash twitched in his sleep, it reminded him of his children: those special nights with the family still together, and he present at his babies’ dreamings.
The street awoke early to rouse the tailors before dawn. In fact, the street never slumbered, explained the nightwatchman, only drowsed lightly between two a.m. and five a.m. – after the insomniac gambling and drinking ended, and before the newspapers, bread, and milk arrived. “But your sleep was beautiful,” he smiled proprietorially.
“It was two nights’ sleep poured into one,” said Ishvar.
“Look, the rascal is still snoring inside.” As they peered through the window, the compounder’s eyes opened suddenly. He scowled at the three faces flattened against the glass, turned over, and went back to sleep.
They smoked in the entranceway, observing the stree
Om’s left shoulder and arm were aching from the trunk, but he refused to let his uncle take it. “Use your right hand,” said Ishvar. “Give them both equal exercise, they will grow strong.”
“Then both will be useless. How will I sew?”
They stopped at the railway station and washed before proceeding to the Vishram Vegetarian Hotel for tea and a bun. “You didn’t come yesterday,” said the cashier-cum-waiter.
“We were busy – looking for a place to rent.”
“Now that is something you could spend your whole life searching for,” put in the cook from his corner, shouting over the roaring, blue-flamed stoves.
In the window Om noticed a large picture of the Prime Minister that hadn’t been there before, along with a poster of the Twenty-Point Programme. “You have a new customer or what?”
“That’s no customer,” said the cashier. “That’s the goddess of protection. Her blessing is a business necessity. Compulsory puja.”
“How do you mean?”
“Her presence keeps my windows from being smashed and my shop from being burned. You follow?”
The tailors nodded. They told the cashier and the cook about the Prime Minister’s meeting into which they had been dragooned. Their stories of the helicopter, the rose petals, the hot-air balloon, and the huge cutout had them laughing.
After the first night of sound sleep, the nightwatchman’s forecast about nocturnal disturbances proved accurate. He apologized each time he had to shake the tailors awake. In his system of beliefs, nothing was more despicable than depriving a fellow human being of either food or sleep. He helped move the bedding to unlock the door, comforting them as they stumbled around in the dark, Om’s drowsy head on one shoulder, Ishvar leaning heavily on the other.
They kept muttering while the customers waited for their medicine. “Why do all these people have to fall sick at night only?” grumbled Ishvar. “Why are they harassing us?”
“What a headache I have,” moaned Om.
The nightwatchman gently rubbed his brow. “Not long now. Only two minutes more, okay? Then you can sleep very, very peacefully. I promise, I won’t let any more customers disturb you.” But he had to break his promise over and over.
Later they learned about an outbreak of dysentery – bad milk had been sold in the neighbourhood. If the tailors had stayed around during the day, they would have discovered that illness was an impartial thief who struck in sunshine and darkness. Fifty-five adults and eighty-three children dead, the nightwatchman told them, having heard the official figure from the compounder, who explained that fortunately it was bacillary dysentery, and not the more serious amoebic variety.
Lugging the trunk and bedding, the tailors arrived at work ready to collapse, dark circles around their red-streaked eyes. Work fell further behind. Ishvar’s impeccable seams strayed often. Om with his stiff arm had trouble doing anything right. The Singers’ rhythms turned sour; the stitches were no longer articulated gracefully in long, elegant sentences but spat out fitfully, like phlegm from congested lungs.
Dina read the deterioration in their haggard faces. She feared for their health and the approaching delivery date – the two were joined like Siamese twins. The trunk’s weight hung heavy on her conscience.
That evening, the sight of Om straining to lift his load yanked her to the verge of saying the trunk could stay. Maneck watched her from the doorway, anxious to hear it. But the other fears made her leave the words unspoken.
“Wait, I’ll come with you,” said Maneck, hastening to the verandah. Om protested feebly, then surrendered the trunk to him.
Dina was relieved – and angry and hurt. Nice of him to help, she thought. But the way he did it. Walking out without a word, making her seem like a heartless person.
“Here it is, our new sleeping place,” said Om, and introduced the nightwatchman: “Our new landlord.”
The latter laughed, beckoning them into the entrance. They huddled together on the steps to smoke and watch the road. “Ah, what kind of landlord am I? I cannot even guarantee a good night’s sleep.”
“Not your fault,” said Om. “It’s all this sickness. And on top of that, I keep having bad dreams.”
“So do I,” said Ishvar. “The nights are full of noises and shapes and shadows. Too scary.”
“I am sitting here with my stick,” said the nightwatchman. “What’s there to be scared of?”
“It’s hard to give it a name,” said Ishvar, coughing and extinguishing his beedi.
“We should just go back to our village,” said Om. “I’m fed up of living like this, crawling from one trouble to another.”
“You prefer to run towards it?” Ishvar squeezed the tip of the beedi to make sure it was out, then reinserted it in the packet. “Patience, my nephew. When the time comes, we will go back.”
“If time were a bolt of cloth,” said Om, “I would cut out all the bad parts. Snip out the scary nights and stitch together the good parts, to make time bearable. Then I could wear it like a coat, always live happily.”
“I’d also like a coat like that,” said Maneck. “But which parts would you cut out?”
“The government destroying our house, for sure,” said Om. “And working for Dinabai.”
“Hoi-hoi,” cautioned Ishvar. “Without her, where would the money come from?”
“Okay, let’s keep the paydays and throw out the rest.”
“What else?” asked Maneck.
“Depends how far back you want to go.”
“All the way. Back to when you were born.”
“That’s too much, yaar. So many things to cut, the scissors would go blunt. And there would be very little cloth left.”
“How much nonsense you boys are talking,” said Ishvar. “Been smoking ganja or what?”
The evening sky darkened, summoning the streetlights. A torn black kite swooped down from the roof like an aggressive crow, startling them. Om grabbed it, saw that it was badly damaged, and let it go.
“Some things are very complicated to separate with scissors,” said Maneck. “Good and bad are joined like that.” He laced his fingers tight together.
“Such as?”
“My mountains. They are beautiful but they also produce avalanches.”
“That’s true. Like our teatime at Vishram, which is good. But the Prime Minister sitting in the window gives me a stomach-ache.”
“Living in the colony was also good,” suggested Ishvar. “Rajaram next door was fun.”
“Yes,” said Om. “But jumping up in the middle of a shit because of a fast train – that was horrible.”
They laughed, Ishvar too, though he insisted that that had happened just once. “It was a new train, even Rajaram didn’t know about it.” He cleared his throat and spat. “Wonder what happened to Rajaram?”
Pavement-dwellers began emerging through the gathering dusk. Cardboard, plastic, newspaper, blankets materialized across the footpaths. Within minutes, huddled bodies had laid claim to all the concrete. Pedestrians now adapted to the new topography, picking their way carefully through the field of arms and legs and faces.
“My father complains at home that it’s become very crowded and dirty,” said Maneck. “He should come and see this.”
“He would get used to it,” said the nightwatchman. “Just like I did. You watch it day after day, then you stop noticing. Especially if you have no choice.”
“Not my father, he would keep grumbling.”
Ishvar’s cough came back, and the nightwatchman suggested asking the compounder for medicine.
“Can’t afford it.”
“Just go and ask. He has a special system for poor people.” He unlocked the door to let him in.
For those who could not pay the price of
“Tastes nice,” said Ishvar, licking his lips.
“Come tomorrow night for another spoonful.”
The nightwatchman inquired how much he had been charged for the dose. “Fifty paise,” said Ishvar, and the nightwatchman made a mental note to demand his cut.
For three more days the trunk hung from Om’s arm during the march between the nightwatchman and Dina Dalai. The distance was short but the weight made it long. He was sore from shoulder to wrist, the hand useless for guiding the fabric through the machine. To feed the cloth accurately to the voracious needle took two hands: the right in front of the presser foot, and the left behind.
“The trunk has paralysed me,” he said, giving up.
Dina watched him, her compassion muted but not dead. My spirited little sparrow is really not well today, dragging his injured wing, she thought. No more hopping and chirping, no more arrogance and argument.
In the midst of a morning filled with tangled threads and twisted seams, the doorbell rang. She went to the verandah to look, and returned very annoyed. “It’s someone asking for you. Disturbing our work in the middle of the day.”
Surprised and apologetic, Ishvar hurried to the front door. “You!” he said. “What happened? We went to the colony that evening. Where were you?”
“Namaskaar,” said Rajaram, joining his hands. “I feel very bad about it, what to do. I got a new job, they needed me right away, I had to go. But look, my employer has more jobs to fill, you should apply.”
Ishvar could sense Dina trying to listen in the background. “We’ll have to meet later,” he said, and gave him the address of the chemist’s.
“Okay, I’ll come there tonight. And look, can you lend me ten rupees? Just till I get paid?”
“Only have five.” Ishvar handed it over, wondering if Rajaram’s habit of borrowing money was going to become a nuisance. The earlier loan was still unpaid. Should never have let him know where we. work, he thought. He returned to his Singer and told Om about their visitor.