A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

How much gratitude for a little sherbet, thought Maneck, how starved they seemed for ordinary kindness.

She became an expert at noncommittal nodding.

Desperate, and scarred by the certain knowledge that he no longer had any prospects, he watched his wife, two sons, and two daughters still believing in him and thereby increasing his anguish. He asked himself what it was he had done to deserve a life so stale, so empty of hope. Or was this the way all humans were meant to feel? Did the Master of the Universe take no interest in levelling the scales – was there no such thing as a fair measure?

cared. He had learned that dignity could not be acquired from accoutrements and accessories; it came unasked, it grew from one’s ability to endure.

Maneck would have preferred it if his father had scolded or slapped him, or punished him in any manner he wanted. But this contempt, this refusal to even talk about it, was horrid. The enthusiasm drained from his face, leaving behind a puzzled anguish, and he felt on the verge of tears.

In bed at night she conveyed to Mr. Kohlah that Maneck’s feelings were badly hurt. ‘I am aware of that,’ he said, facing away from her on the pillow. ‘But he must learn to walk before he can run. It’s not good for a boy to think he knows everything before his time.’

But with optimism surging through youthful veins, he was certain that things would sort themselves out. He was fifteen: he was immortal, the hills were eternal.

Distance was a dangerous thing, she knew. Distance changed people.

An owl hooted, and he was glad that he had stayed silent, had followed her secretly like this, to see her so beautiful, so absorbed, as she stood there, embodying their years together, their three lives fused in her being, vivid in her face and in her eyes.

The letters sailed before my eyes, line after line, orderly fleets upon an ocean of newsprint. Sometimes I felt like a Lord High Admiral, in supreme command of the printer’s navy.

‘You see, you cannot draw lines and compartments, and refuse to budge beyond them. Sometimes you have to use your failures as stepping-stones to success. You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair.’ He paused, considering what he had just said. ‘Yes,’ he repeated. ‘In the end, it’s all a question of balance.’

talking about their yesterdays and smiling in that sad-happy way while selecting each picture, each frame from the past, examining it lovingly before it vanished again in the mist. But nobody ever forgot anything, not really, though sometimes they pretended, when it suited them. Memories were permanent. Sorrowful ones remained sad even with the passing of time, yet happy ones could never be recreated – not with the same joy. Remembering bred its own peculiar sorrow. It seemed so unfair: that time should render both sadness and happiness into a source of pain.

How much can a bald man know about hair?’ ‘That’s not a fair question,’ said Rajaram. ‘Does a beggar possess a lot of money? No. Yet he knows how to handle it.’

wedding. And marriage is like death, only happens once.’ ‘How true,’ she said.

‘In a manner of speaking,’ he sighed. ‘After all, our lives are but a sequence of accidents – a clanking chain of chance events. A string of choices, casual or deliberate, which add up to that one big calamity we call life.’