Explication: Truly Falling Prey to Cruelty and Misfortune

            The brutality of life in India is skillfully painted by Rohinton Mistry in A Fine Balance and evokes trauma and pain in the reader on a scale that not even Polti’s classification could attest to. This leaves the very essence of the novel’s cruel dramatic situations engrained in one’s consciousness for a time that extends beyond the book. It’s drama is not the kind concocted only of clever prose and heightened imagery, but of the very essence of the human condition, and the ultimate pain that one can experience in the raw and fragile state of cruelty. I strongly believe that the horrors the characters in this novel face transcend conventions, for these horrors are not limited to a few specific events, but rather are represented by their entire lives. The lives of Maneck, Dina, Ishvar and Om are larger than their two dimensional existence on paper, however in the confines of their literary home, they become defined at the end of the novel by the seventh dramatic situation- what George Polti calls “Falling Prey to Cruelty or Misfortune.” Polti explains this situation with the elements of a master, an unfortunate and a misfortune, all of which are displayed through the complex lives of the main characters. There are two central ways in which the characters of this novel begin their consuming relationship with life’s unfortunate cruelties; through losing the status of what Polti calls “the master” of their lives and secondly by falling from an already meager existence. Both of these aspects create an incredibly dynamic portrayal of the ways in which people live through the dramatic situation of misfortune.

            All of the characters in this book are left in a state that promises no recovery at the end of their stories, but of those who have lived with some measure of benevolence in their lives beforehand, we as readers are able to experience their capture by cruelty with a greater sense of tolerance, rather than dismay. We believe in this way that they may still have the strength to regain control of their lives, and can be affected more deeply as we anticipate the outcome. This is the case for three characters I will address, Maneck, Dina and Beggarmaster. Dina takes on a quieter sense of equilibrium than the other two, showing a facet of dealing with suffering that is different than the other two in this category. Instead of giving up her life to explicit misery, she simply continues silently forward, and is able to demonstrate the resilience that we as humans are capable of in the face of misfortune. She has lived a life of great pain and great uprising, arriving at her place in threshold of the story by living through the death of her husband killed on his way to buy ice cream. ‘ “A bastard lorry driver,” said the sub-inspector. “Hit and run. No chance for the poor man I think. Head completely crushed.” ’(Mistry, 51).  Throughout her days she rose out of the confines of her brother’s care, opened up shop by employing the two tailors Ishvar and Om, and fiercely fought her oppressive landlord, and was able to keep her flat for much of her life. But as all of the characters in this book do, she met the master of cruelty in the end, having the land lords “goondas” evict her when she realized the “the law works just like a lemon and spoon race,”(Mistry, 657)-she was simply unable to walk fast enough to beat the inevitable tragedy. Yet in the end she finishes the book without a trace of regret, opening her arms to the misfortune that has enveloped her. The last line of the book captures the essence of her ability to cope with tragedy and portrays the way in which she was forced into a eerie calm, for after everything that had transgressed she simply “dried her hands, and decided to take a nap before the evening meal.”(Mistry, 713)

            Maneck and Beggermaster are subjected to a far crueler end by their misfortunate fall from the apparent mastery of their lives. Yet they become just as defined by what Polti calls “falling prey to cruelty and misfortune” as they allow it to dictate the outcome of their lives. Maneck has existed throughout this story, with the ability to maintain a moderate level of complacency given the turmoil the goes on all around him. He has the support of his background and mostly loving family where “he would hear the familiar sounds from downstairs as his father opened up the store and stepped outside to sweep the porch.”(Mistry, 231) However this is not enough to keep him within the reaches of happiness. He crumbles into a pitiful state of existence after his second mother, Dina, is evicted, and his dear friends Ishvar and Om are forced to become beggars when the government forcibly castrates them. He takes his last leap into the arms of misfortune at the end of the book- “Now the express tracks could be seen in the distance…when the first compartment had entered the station, he stepped off the platform and onto the gleaming silver tracks….Maneck’s last thought was that he still had Avinash’s chessmen.”(Mistry, 710) This is the last image of Maneck that we as readers are left with, and it engrains us with the impression of someone who has succumbed to the cruelties of life, defining his character by the situation of misfortune. We are given a much more confined glimpse into the life of Beggarmaster, yet as readers we can gather that he has been able to rise up from the slums he was born into and become the master of the “unfortunates”, hence his title. Yet he meets a horrific end and is murdered by someone he has previously tried to give assistance to- “When Beggarmaster entered, he jumped upon his back and tried to stab him…He who had lived by the beggings of helpless cripples, died by those beggings, rooted by their heaviness.”(Mistry, 643) In the end of this book, the characters who had been hanging onto the wisps of tangled hope that Mistry hid in the confines of their stories, were left without any means of surviving life’s cruelties, therefore defining their lives by Polti’s seventh dramatic situation.

            As painful as it is to observe characters fall prey to cruelty and misfortune from an initially contrasting state of existence, nothing evokes more pain in a reader than helplessly watching those who have nothing, fall into a deeper state of lack and misfortune. This was the epitome of Ishavar and Om’s circumstance, for without a doubt they experienced a more difficult life, on a more unprecedented scale than I have ever encountered before in a literary composition. They lived their life simply trying to get by and dwell comfortably in their horrendously meager circumstances. At times they would pay a man to sleep in the doorway of his shop with the constant notion that “If a customer comes for medicine you will have to move. Then don’t say I spoiled your sleep. No refund for spoiled sleep.”(Mistry, 358) These two tailors as I mentioned in my previous writings have risen out of the village when there entire family was murdered, but in the end are castrated and disabled by the very same man that ended the lives of their loved ones. Ishvar cries out, “I have let down your dead father! Our family will die without children, it is the end of everything-everything is lost!” (Mistry, 620) when “with a swift incision, the doctor removed the testicles.”(Mistry, 622) A Fine Balance literally becomes the embodiment of the next course in their lives as they are reduced humiliatingly to roam the streets as beggars in search for the human kindness that they have not encountered in all of their lives, except by Dina’s generosity. However they are alive if nothing else, and this balances out the heaviness of death that pervades the ends of the other character’s stories. They are nonetheless defined by the dramatic situation of cruelty and misfortune as is the motivating forced of each challenge Ishvar and Om must face and tragedy becomes their most memorable companion for the reader.  Their lives are completely demolished in one fell swoop of fate and they become the ultimate prey of misfortune with cruelty’s master as Thakur Dharamsi the man who killed their family and took away their hope.

            By the end this story I was left in a state of absolute shock and even personal agony from having experienced vicariously, the truly honest fall from mercy that these characters exemplified. The dramatic situation of cruelty and misfortune was able to evolve, by Mistry’s prolific telling of a remarkable story, into not only the identity of the central characters, but into the entire scope of life and the human condition that was presented. By reading A Fine Balance I had the opportunity to experience the absolute pain of tragic suffering, but also the remarkable beauty that comes when you realize misfortunes are part of the fine balance of all our lives.