A Fine Balance

by Rohinton Mistry

‘Dinabai, what is this Emergency we hear about?’ ‘Government problems – games played by people in power. It doesn’t affect ordinary people like us.’ ‘That’s what I said,’ murmured Omprakash. ‘My uncle was simply worrying.’

The Chamaars skinned the carcass, ate the meat, and tanned the hide, which was turned into sandals, whips, harnesses, and waterskins. Dukhi learned to appreciate how dead animals provided his family’s livelihood. And as he mastered the skills, imperceptibly but relentlessly Dukhi’s own skin became impregnated with the odour that was part of his father’s smell, the leather-worker’s stink that would not depart even after he had washed and scrubbed in the all-cleansing river. Dukhi did not realize his pores had imbibed the fumes till his mother, hugging him one day, wrinkled her nose and said, her voice a mix of pride and sorrow, ‘You are becoming an adult, my son, I can sniff the change.’ For a while afterwards, he was constantly lifting his forearm to his nose to see if the odour still lingered. He wondered if flaying would get rid of it. Or did it go deeper than skin? He pricked himself to smell his blood but the test was inconclusive, the little ruby at his fingertip being an insufficient sample. And what about muscle and bone, did the stink lurk in them too? Not that he wanted it gone; he was happy then to smell like his father.