How I Wept for Maneck Kohlah: Existentialist Meaninglessness in Rohinton Mistry’s "A Fine Balance"

Rohinton Mistry is one of the diasporic Indian authors who fascinate me immensely. In fact, my obsession with Mistry is so great that I took up his fictional works as my subject of research. Of his four works, it is Family Matters which in my opinion is most touching. However, surprisingly enough, the novel which initially seemed endlessly long—the very length appeared so intimidating that I took it up not too happily, left me crying. It’s A Fine Balance, Mistry’s epic narrative of the horrendous Emergency that tore the country in the late 70s. I hardly knew then that I would get so involved with the “accidental family” comprising two low class tailors, a middle-aged peevish Parsee widow, and a young Parsee boy from the hills that I would end up living through their joys and sorrows.

Coming from the hills, Maneck Kohlah finds it difficult to adapt himself to the indiscipline of the college hostel, and puts up as a paying guest with Dina Dalal, his mother’s childhood friend. Dina Aunty, as he calls him, was widowed at a very young age, and had not been able to remarry owing to a strong attachment with her husband’s memories, though potential proposals had come her way more often than not. As a means of earning livelihood, she took up tailoring. It is quite late when she gets attached to Au Revoir, an international garment company, for which she needs to hire two tailors, Om and Ishwar. These two tailors too have an interesting past. To evade oppression in remote villages, they give up their ancestral profession. They become tailors for to live the life of chamaars is like dying into life everyday. These four become a family through several ups and downs. The bonding that is established between them is worth envying, especially in a world suffering from the incurable monster of a disease called loneliness. However, Maneck has to return to the mountains and from there he migrates to Dubai. Meanwhile Ishwar, Om and Dina suffer unspeakable tragedies for no faults of their own. The demonic Emergency laws victimize them making life a hell. Dina, most sceptical and too overtly suspicious of the tailors, is the one who finally lends out a hand of friendship when both of them have been dismembered and dehumanized beyond recognition. Maneck remains unaware of the fate that strikes Om and Ishwar. When he comes back to Bombay after a gap of eight years, things had changed so much so that he starts feeling the intensity of a loss so profound that he kills himself.

It is the last scene of the novel that would leave any sensitive reader flummoxed and he/she almost wishes he/she were within the diegesis of the narrative to save Maneck from throwing himself on to the gleaming railway tracks. Maneck goes to visit Dina Aunty to find that she has shifted to her brother’s. He learns that Om and Ishwar are going to be there soon. Being in a hurry to catch the flight to Dubai, he leaves promising to come back soon. Round the corner of the road, he sees two beggars approaching. He does not recognize them at first. He realises soon much to his dejection that the beggars are none but his beloved Om and Ishwar. Ishwar sitting on a platform with wheels is being pulled by Om. He is so terribly flabbergasted that he does not respond to Om and Ishwar pleading with him for alms. He is speechless. He fails to act. Back to the station from where he is head to the airport, he commits suicide.

We soon learn that Om and Ishwar had recognized him. But Maneck’s failure to identify them had left them utterly hurt. What they and Dina do not come to know is that it is for them that he commits suicide. Unable to stand life anymore, which in any case has taken away a lot from him, Maneck chooses death. A family of four people collapses under the bull-dozing assault of inhuman politics of the state…innocent lives are lost, meaningful relationships are killed. The tragic epic ends intensifying your feeling that you belong to an essentially existentialist world devoid of any meanings. But believe me, that does not leave you depressed. You find in Maneck Kohlah a fellow-sufferer…the very feeling that you are not the only one is highly pleasurable. You see yourself dying with Maneck…but the very experience teaches you to take life by its horns. The tears that run down your cheek purge you many suppressed emotions that bog you down. The last pages of the novel are cathartic in that sense…redeeming you while showing you the darkest of realities.