776 Mistry, Rohinton
and his family at the end of the novel. All characters
seem to transcend ethnic and religious allegiances in
favor of personal loyalties that they come to depend
upon.
H. Elizabeth Smith
identity in A Fine Balance
The four main protagonists in Rohinton Mistry’s A
Fine Balance—Dina Shroff Dalal, Maneck Kohlah,
Ishvar Darji and Omprakesh Darji—provide useful
lenses to explore both how society identifies them
and how characters identify themselves according
to ethnicity, caste, gender, economic status, and
generation. Issues of identity also determine the
social and financial limits placed on each character’s
life; moreover, each character’s survival depends
upon confronting these limits. Dina Shroff Dalal,
a Parsi, is a middle-aged widow who is attempting
to preserve her independence; Maneck Kohlah, also
a Parsi, is a young student attending college in the
“City by the Sea”; and Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji,
both Hindus of the Chamaar caste (the tanning and
leather working caste, considered by other Hindus
to be “untouchable”). The tailors, uncle and nephew,
have recently arrived from the countryside to search
for employment and to escape the caste-related vio-
lence in their rural village.
Throughout the novel, Mistry explores how
these four protagonists identify themselves beyond
how they are constructed by society, especially as
they have been identified by their religion, which
almost always determines their economic status.
None of Mistry’s characters are satisfied with the lot
assigned to them by their highly stratified society,
and yet they each possess the ambition to be more
than they have been “destined” to be. They desire
economic independence and opportunities, and they
have the will to pursue their professional ambi-
tions. Mistry develops his characters’ identities by
illuminating their responses to particular situations.
For example, Dina’s position within her immediate
family reflects the status of women in her middle-
class Parsi culture, and she is constantly battling her
older brother’s hold on her desire for independence.
Dina’s happy but brief marriage was cut short by a
traffic accident; as a widow, however, she refuses to
move back in with her brother and instead chooses
to struggle on her own to make ends meet. Dina’s
strong sense of self-reliance is always complicated
by her ever-precarious economic situation; still, she
resists succumbing to her brother’s desire (with her
extended family’s support) that she move back with
them.
Maneck, the only child of solidly middle-class
Parsi parents, has been raised in the foothills of
northern India. His sense of identity emerges in
contrast to his family: First, as Maneck comes of
age, he struggles against the decisions his father
makes for him; and second, he struggles against
his identity as a college student at a time when
students are involved in demonstrations against the
government over an immense crackdown against
civil liberties. Over the course of the novel, for a
brief time, Maneck also develops an identity as
Dina’s “son” and Omprakesh’s “brother”—identities
that cross the social boundaries of the caste system.
The two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakesh Darji, are
originally from the “untouchable” Chamaar caste;
their ancestors were cobblers, which is consid-
ered to be an “unclean” trade. Ishvar’s father and
Omprakesh’s grandfather, Dukhi Mochi, made a
bold and unorthodox decision to have his sons serve
as apprentices to a tailor, a decision that had wide
reaching consequences. Mistry’s representation of
Ishvar and Omprakesh’s struggle for social mobility
is not hopeful.
Throughout the novel, the tension escalates
between who the characters have been born to be
and who they want to become. In addition to the
main characters, Mistry vividly portrays the lives of
the poorest in India’s society, both in the rural vil-
lages and in the city slums. While Mistry does not
typecast his characters, the myriad of minor charac-
ters we meet throughout the novel give the reader
a glimpse into the lives of ordinary Indians during
the state of emergency, people underrepresented in
literature. Dina’s brother, Nusswan Shroff, and her
best friend, Zenobia, exemplify the comfortable lives
of an emerging middle-class; Shankar, nicknamed
“Worm,” illustrates the cruelty of daily life for urban
beggars; Beggarmaster symbolizes an endemic cor-
ruption within the system as he simultaneously
controls, manipulates, and protects the beggars for
whom he is responsible; Monkey Man’s deep attach-