44 pages • 1 hour read
A Fine Balance
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Chapters 8-9Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 8 Summary: “Beautification”
After a week, Ishvar and Om acclimate to sleeping in front of the pharmacy shop, but now an unusual sound awakens them. Trucks pull up, and government officials start rounding up all the beggars sleeping on the sidewalk, including the two tailors. This is part of the government beautification project: Get the beggars off the streets and give them food, shelter, and work. The two tailors protest that they are employed, but no one will listen. Ninety-six people are forced to work on an irrigation project on the outskirts of the city. Ishvar and Om grow dizzy from the heat and become sick from the bad food.
Dina and Maneck worry when Ishvar and Om don’t arrive for work the next morning. Dina frets because she needs them to complete 60 dresses by the end of the week. Since Maneck knows where the men sleep, he goes to investigate. He returns to Dina with alarming news: Officials have taken them to an unknown location.
Maneck offers to help Dina finish the dress order in time to meet her deadline. She protests that he doesn’t know how to sew, but he insists on trying. They build a happy camaraderie as they work, and Maneck tells Dina the tailors’ history. She’s appalled by the tragic story and feels guilty for not letting them stay with her. Maneck feels increasingly despondent about the misery surrounding him, feeling like no one he knows has any good options:
In the end it was all hopeless. Look at Mummy and Daddy, and the General Store; or Dina Aunty’s life […] and now poor Ishvar and Om. No amount of remembering happy days […] could change a thing about the misery and suffering (330).
Chapter 9 Summary: “What Law There Is”
With the tailors still missing, Dina tells her boss at Au Revoir Exports that her workers have taken a two-week vacation. During this time, she tries to find new workers but is forced to go back and ask for another two-week extension when she fails. The owner grudgingly agrees.
When Ibrahim arrives to collect the rent, he notices two sewing machines in the apartment. Dina says she uses both—they are designed for different types of sewing. He is suspicious, but since he sees no tailors on the premises, he leaves.
At the work camp, Ishvar and Om are faring badly: Ishvar sprains his ankle, and both men are suffering from the long hours of toil and bad food. Their friend Shankar, a legless beggar, offers them an unexpected escape. His benefactor, known as Beggarmaster, is collecting injured workers who might make good beggars.
Shankar, one of the Beggarmaster’s favorites, pleads for him to take Ishvar and Om as well. Beggarmaster agrees if the tailors will give him 50 rupees per week from their pay for a year. This is nearly half their earnings, but the men consent. They have no other option.
Dina and Maneck dress up stylishly to visit Dina’s brother Nusswan. At first, Nusswan worries that Dina is going to ask his permission to marry Maneck. He is relieved to learn that the teenager is only a boarder. After giving them both a lecture about how good the Emergency is for the country, Nusswan grudgingly writes a check to Dina for 250 rupees to tide her over for another month.
Chapters 8-9 Analysis
These chapters amplify themes foregrounded in the last segment. Ishvar and Om are once more the victims of greed and political corruption. Now that they are sleeping on the street, government officials classify them as beggars, sweep them up in the Beautification initiative, and force them to work on an irrigation project. Because organizers are paid for delivering 98 able-bodied beggars to the work camp, the officials don’t care that Ishvar and Om are actually employed. Moreover, at the work camp, they receive substandard food because the supervisors are feeding minimal rations to the workers in order to pocket allocated government money.
Ishvar and Om are only released from this hell because they ally themselves with a different corrupting influence: Beggarmaster, a man influential in local politics because he knows the right people to bribe to further his various schemes. Beggarmaster needs a fresh lot of beggars for his troupe, so he pays the camp officials per head. He cuts a deal with Ishvar and Om to release them if they give him half of their weekly wages.
Aside from depicting these egregious examples of greed and corruption, the chapters also focus on Dina’s growing sense of affection for her flatmates. When the tailors disappear, she’s initially only worried about fulfilling her weekly quota of dresses. But after Maneck offers to help her, becoming an apprentice and a son figure, he shares the sad story of the tailors’ family. For the first time, Dina feels genuine empathy for the men themselves. She begins to worry less about her dress quota and more about whether Ishvar and Om are all right.
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