A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
The Chamaars skinned the carcass, ate the meat, and tanned the hide, which was turned into sandals, whips, harnesses, and waterskins. Dukhi learned to appreciate how dead animals provided his family’s livelihood. And as he mastered the skills, imperceptibly but relentlessly Dukhi’s own skin became impregnated with the odour that was part of his father’s smell, the leather-worker’s stink that would not depart even after he had washed and scrubbed in the all-cleansing river.
Dukhi did not realize his pores had imbibed the fumes till his mother, hugging him one day, wrinkled her nose and said, her voice a mix of pride and sorrow, “You are becoming an adult, my son, I can sniff the change.”
For a while afterwards, he was constantly lifting his forearm to his nose to see if the odour still lingered. He wondered if flaying would get rid of it. Or did it go deeper than skin? He pricked himself to smell his blood but the test was inconclusive, the little ruby at his fingertip being an insufficient sample. And what about muscle and bone, did the stink lurk in them too? Not that he wanted it gone; he was happy then to smell like his father.
Besides tanning and leather-working, Dukhi learned what it was to be a Chamaar, an untouchable in village society. No special instruction was necessary for this part of his education. Like the filth of dead animals which covered him and his father as they worked, the ethos of the caste system was smeared everywhere. And if that was not enough, the talk of adults, the conversations between his mother and father, filled the gaps in his knowledge of the world.
The village was by a small river, and the Chamaars were permitted to live in a section downstream from the Brahmins and landowners. In the evening, Dukhi’s father sat with the other Chamaar men under a tree in their part of the settlement, smoking, talking about the day that was ending and the new one that would dawn tomorrow. Bird cries fluttered around their chitchat. Beyond the bank, cooking smoke signalled hungry messages while upper-caste waste floated past on the sluggish river.
Dukhi watched from a distance, waiting for his father to come home. As the dusk deepened, the men’s outlines became vague. Soon Dukhi could see only the glowing tips of their beedis, darting around like fireflies with the movement of their hands. Then the burning tips went dark, one by one, and the men dispersed.
While Dukhi’s father ate, he repeated for his wife everything he had learned that day. “The Pandit’s cow is not healthy. He is trying to sell it before it dies.”
“Who gets it if it dies? Is it your turn yet?”
“No, it is Bhola’s turn. But where he was working, they accused him of stealing. Even if the Pandit lets him have the carcass, he will need my help – they chopped off his left-hand fingers today.”
“Bhola is lucky,” said Dukhi’s mother. “Last year Chhagan lost his hand at the wrist. Same reason.”
Dukhi’s father took a drink of water and swirled it around in his mouth before swallowing. He ran the back of his hand across his lips. “Dosu got a whipping for getting too close to the well. He never learns.” Eating in silence for a while, he listened to the frogs bellowing in the humid night, then asked his wife, “You are not having anything?”
“It’s my fasting day.” In her code, it meant there wasn’t enough food.
Dukhi’s father nodded, taking another mouthful. “Have you seen Buddhu’s wife recently?”
She shook her head. “Not since many days.”
“And you won’t for many more. She must be hiding in her hut. She refused to go to the field with the zamindar’s son, so they shaved her head and walked her naked through the square.”
Thus Dukhi listened every evening to his father relate the unembellished facts about events in the village. During his childhood years, he mastered a full catalogue of the real and imaginary crimes a low-caste person could commit, and the corresponding punishments were engraved upon his memory. By the time he entered his teens, he had acquired all the knowledge he would need to perceive that invisible line of caste he could never cross, to survive in the village like his ancestors, with humiliation and forbearance as his constant companions.
Soon after Dukhi Mochi turned eighteen, his parents married him to a Chamaar girl named Roopa, who was fourteen. She gave birth to three daughters during their first six years together. None survived beyond a few months.
Then they had a son, and the families rejoiced greatly. The child was called Ishvar, and Roopa watched over him with the special ardour and devotion she had learned was reserved for male children. She made sure he always had enough to eat. Going hungry herself was a matter of course – that she often did even to keep Dukhi fed. But for this child she did not hesitate to steal either. And there was not a mother she knew who would not have taken the same risk for her own son.
After her milk went dry, Roopa began nocturnal visits to the cows of various landowners. While Dukhi and the child slept, she crept out of the hut with a small brass haandi, some time between midnight and cock-crow. The pitch-black path she walked without stumbling had been memorized during the day, for a lamp was too dangerous. The darkness brushed her cheeks like a cobweb. Sometimes the cobwebs were real.
She took only a little from each cow; thus, the owner would not sense a decrease in the yield. When Dukhi saw the milk in the morning, he understood. If he awoke in the night as she was leaving, he said nothing, and lay shivering till she returned. He often wondered whether he should offer to go instead.
Soon Ishvar cut his milk teeth, and Roopa began to pay weekly visits to orchards in season and ready for harvest. In the darkness, her fingers felt the fruit for ripeness before plucking it. Again, she restricted herself to a few from each tree, so their absence would not be noticed. Around her, the dark was filled with the sound of her own breathing and little creatures scurrying out of her way to safety.
One night, as she was filling her sack with oranges, a lantern was suddenly raised amid the trees. In a small clearing a man sat on his bamboo-and-string cot, watching her. I’m finished, she thought, dropping her sack and preparing to run.
“Don’t be afraid,” said the man. He spoke softly, his hand gripping a heavy stick. “I don’t care if you take some.” She turned around, panting with fear, wondering whether to believe him.
“Go on, pick a few,” he repeated, smiling. “I have been hired by the owner to watch the grove. But I don’t care. He is a rich bastard.”
Roopa retrieved the sack nervously and resumed picking. Her shaking fingers dropped an orange as she tried to slip it past the mouth of the sack. She glanced over her shoulder. His eyes were greedily following her body; it made her uneasy. “I’m grateful to you,” she said.
He nodded. “You are lucky I am here, and not some bad man. Go on, take as many as you like.” He hummed something tunelessly. It sounded like a mixture of groans and sighs. He gave up the humming, trying to whistle the tune. The results were equally unmusical. He yawned and fell silent but continued to watch her.
Roopa decided she had enough fruit, it was time to thank him and leave. Reading her movements, he said, “One shout from me and they will come running.”
“What?” She saw his smile disappear suddenly.
“I only have to shout, and the owner and his sons would be here at once. They would strip you and whip you for stealing.”
She trembled, and the smile returned to his face. “Don’t worry, I won’t shout.” She fastened the mouth of the sack, and he continued, “After whipping you, they would probably show you disrespect, and stain your honour. They would take turns doing shameful things to your lovely soft body.”
Roopa joined her hands in thanks and farewell.
“Don’t go yet, take as many as you want,” he said.
“Thank you, I have enough.”
“You are sure? I can easily give you more if you like.” He put down his stick and got up from his cot.
“Thank you, this is enough.”
“Is it? But wait, you cannot go just like that,” he said with a laugh. “You haven’t given me anyt
Stepping back, she forced a laugh too. “I don’t have anything. That’s why I came here in the night, for the sake of my child.”
“You have got something.” He put out his hand and squeezed her left breast. She struck his hand away. “I only have to shout once,” he warned, and slipped his hand inside her blouse. She shuddered at the touch, doing nothing this time.
He led her cringing to the cot and ripped open her top three buttons. She crossed her arms in front. He pulled them down and buried his mouth in her breasts, laughing softly as she tried to squirm away. “I gave you so many oranges. You won’t even let me taste your sweet mangoes?”
“Please let me go.”
“Soon as I have fed you my Bhojpuri brinjal. Take off your clothes.”
“I beg you, let me go.”
“I only have to shout once.”
She wept softly while undressing, and lay down as he instructed. She continued to weep during the time he moved and panted on top of her. She heard the breeze rustle the leaves in trees that stood like worthless sentinels. A dog howled, setting off others in a chorus. Coconut oil in the man’s hair left streaks on her face and neck, and smeared her chest. Its odour was strong in her nostrils.
Minutes later, he rolled off her body. Roopa grabbed her clothes and the sack of oranges and ran naked through the orange grove. When she was certain he wasn’t following, she stopped and put her clothes on.
Dukhi pretended to be asleep as she entered the hut. He heard her muffled sobs several times during the night, and knew, from her smell, what had happened to her while she was gone. He felt the urge to go to her, speak to her, comfort her. But he did not know what words to use, and he also felt afraid of learning too much. He wept silently, venting his shame, anger, humiliation in tears; he wished he would die that night.
In the morning Roopa behaved as if nothing had occurred. So Dukhi said nothing, and they ate the oranges.
Two years after Ishvar was born, Roopa and Dukhi had another son. This one was named Narayan. There was a dark-red mark on his chest, and an elderly neighbour who assisted Roopa during the birth said she had seen such a mark before. “It means he has a brave and generous heart. This child will make you very proud.”
The news of a second son created envy in upper-caste homes where marriages had also taken place around the time Dukhi and Roopa were wed, but where the women were still childless or awaiting a male issue. It was hard for them not to be resentful – the birth of daughters often brought them beatings from their husbands and their husbands’ families. Sometimes they were ordered to discreetly get rid of the newborn. Then they had no choice but to strangle the infant with her swaddling clothes, poison her, or let her starve to death.
“What is happening to the world?” they complained. “Why two sons in an untouchable’s house, and not even one in ours?” What could a Chamaar pass on to his sons that the gods should reward him thus? Something was wrong, the Law of Manu had been subverted. Someone in the village had definitely committed an act to offend the deities, surely some special ceremonies were needed to appease the gods and fill these empty vessels with male fruit.
But one of the childless wives had a more down-to-earth theory to explain their unborn sons. It could be, she said, that these two boys were not really Dukhi’s. Perhaps the Chamaar had journeyed afar and kidnapped a Brahmin’s newborns – this would explain everything.
When the rumours started to spread, Dukhi feared for his family’s safety. As a precaution, he went out of his way to be obsequious. Every time he saw high-caste persons on the road, he prostrated abjectly, but at a safe distance – so he couldn’t be accused of contaminating them with his shadow. His moustache was shaved off even though its length and shape had conformed to caste rules, its tips humbly drooping downwards unlike proud upper-caste moustaches that flourished skywards. He dressed himself and the children in the filthiest rags he could find among their meagre possessions. To avoid charges of pollution, he told Roopa not to appear anywhere in the vicinity of the village well; her friend Padma fetched their drinking water. Whatever task Dukhi was ordered to do, he did without questioning, without thought of payment, keeping his eyes averted from the high-caste face and fixed safely on the feet. He knew that the least annoyance someone felt towards him could be fanned into flames to devour his family.
Fortunately, the majority of the upper castes were content to wax philosophic about the problem of fallow wombs and leave it at that. They said it was obvious the world was passing through Kaliyug, through the Age of Darkness, and sonless wives were not the only aberration in the cosmic order. “Witness the recent drought,” they said. “A drought that came even though we performed all the correct pujas. And when the rains fell, they fell in savage torrents; remember the floods, the huts that were washed away. And what about the two-headed calf in the neighbouring district?”
No one in the village had seen the two-headed calf, for the distance was great, and it was not possible to make the journey and return by nightfall to the safety of their huts. But they had all heard about the monstrous birth. “Yes, yes,” they agreed. “The Pandits are absolutely correct. It is Kaliyug that is the cause of our troubles.”
The remedy, the Pandits advised, was to be more vigilant in the observance of the dharmic order. There was a proper place for everyone in the world, and as long as each one minded his place, they would endure and emerge unharmed through the Darkness of Kaliyug. But if there were transgressions – if the order was polluted – then there was no telling what calamities might befall the universe.
After this consensus was reached, the village saw a sharp increase in the number of floggings meted out to members of the untouchable castes, as the Thakurs and Pandits tried to whip the world into shape. The crimes were varied and imaginative: a Bhunghi had dared to let his unclean eyes meet Brahmin eyes; a Chamaar had walked on the wrong side of the temple road and defiled it; another had strayed near a puja that was in progress and allowed his undeserving ears to overhear the sacred shlokas; a Bhunghi child had not erased her footprints cleanly from the dust in a Thakur’s courtyard after finishing her duties there – her plea that her broom was worn thin was unacceptable.
Dukhi contributed some of his skin, too, in wrestling the universe out of the clutches of Darkness. He was summoned to graze a herd of goats. The owner was going to be away from the village during the day. “Watch them carefully,” said the man, “especially that one with the broken horn and long beard. He is a real devil.” A glass of goat’s milk was promised in return for the work.
Dukhi spent the morning minding the herd, dreaming about the pleasure Ishvar and Narayan would get from the milk. But as the day wore on and the afternoon grew hot, he fell asleep. The scrabbling animals strayed onto a neighbour’s property. When the owner returned in the evening, instead of a glass of goat’s milk, Dukhi got a thrashing.
It was a small price to pay, he felt, considering what the consequence might have been had it taken the man’s fancy. That night, Roopa crept out to steal butter to apply to the welts raised on her husband’s back and shoulders.
Butter was something Roopa could steal without a second thought. In fact, she did not even consider it stealing. After all, hadn’t Lord Krishna himself made a full-time job of it during his adolescence, aeons ago, in Mathura?
At the appropriate age, Dukhi began teaching his sons the skills of the trade to which they were born shackled. Ishvar was seven when he was taken to his first dead animal. Narayan wanted to go as well, but Dukhi said it was not time for him, he was still too young. He promised the child that he would be allowed to help with tasks like salting the skin, scraping off hair and bits of rotten flesh with a dull knife, and collecting the fruit of the myrobalan tree to tan the hide. This cheered Narayan up.
Dukhi and Ishvar arrived with a few other Chamaars at Thakur Premji’s farm, and were taken to the field where the buffalo lay. An egret was perched on the dark mound,
“Is it dead?” asked Dukhi.
“Of course it’s dead,” said the Thakur’s man. “You think we can afford to give away live cattle?” Shaking his head and muttering about the stupidity of these achhoot jatis, he left them to their work.
Dukhi and his friends positioned their cart behind the buffalo; a wooden plank was sloped from the cartbed to the animal. They grabbed its legs and began inching its hulk up the plank, keeping the wood wet so the weight might slide a little more readily.
“Look!” said one of them. “It’s alive, it’s breathing!”
“Aray Chhotu, not so loud,” said Dukhi. “Or they won’t let us take it. Anyway, it’s almost dead – a few more hours at best.”
They resumed the task, sweating and grunting, while Chhotu cursed the Thakur softly. “Bastard hypocrite. Making us break our backs. Would be so much easier to kill it, skin the carcass right here, chop it into small hunks.”
“That’s true,” said Dukhi. “But how can Mr. High-Caste Shit permit that? The purity of his land would be spoilt.”
“The only thing high caste about him is his little meat-eating lund,” said Chhotu. “It feeds on his wife’s high-caste choot every night.”
The men chuckled, then renewed their efforts. Someone said, “He has been seen in the town once a week. Gobbling chicken, mutton, beef, whatever he likes.”
“They are all like that,” said Dukhi. “Vegetarian in public, meat-eaters in private. Come on, push!”