A Fine Balance: Chapter 5 Summary & Analysis

Maneck moves into Dina’s house. Although she tries to be a good host, he can see signs of her money problems everywhere in the house. Zenobia was the one who originally found Maneck for Dina, and Dina didn’t actually remember Maneck’s mother, Aban Sodawalla (later Aban Kohlah) very well.

Maneck’s family used to be wealthy. His father, Farokh Kohlah, owned a lot of land. In a flashback, when Maneck is five years old, he helps his parents in a shop they own. The shop is known for having a special soft-drink formula that has been in the family for generations, Kohlah’s Cola. Maneck starts school and has a fairly happy childhood. A girl named Suraiya lives nearby, and she and Maneck sometimes go into the bushes to show each other their genitals. When they get caught, Farokh decides to send Maneck to boarding school.

While at boarding school, Maneck often misses home. When he comes home, he tries to get out of boarding school, but Farokh forces him to stay in. He tries to remind Maneck that school won’t last forever and that it’s important to get an education. When Maneck goes back, things are more bearable, and three years pass without any problems.

On a vacation home in his third year of boarding school, Maneck gets to run the family shop for a couple days while Farokh and Aban are away for a wedding. Maneck makes some changes to the shop that he thinks will improve it and make it neater, but when Farokh comes back, he’s angry that Maneck didn’t do exactly as he was told. Aban later explains to Farokh how he hurt Maneck’s feelings, and from then on, Farokh tries to involve Maneck more in the shop.

The mountains around Maneck’s home become increasingly developed, with new roads changing the natural landscape. Farokh is dismayed to see the land he owns getting polluted. Maneck begins to act more distantly toward his parents when he’s home. Farokh starts taking long walks to appreciate all the trees and rocks that still remain, and people begin to spread rumors that he’s gone mad and is talking to nature.

On vacation before his final term at boarding school, Maneck continues to argue with his parents, specifically with Farokh over Maneck’s ideas to expand the store with marketing. The new road has made Farokh try to cling to the elements of the past that he still can. Big companies try to buy the rights to Kohlah’s Cola, but Farokh refuses. Instead of changing the business, Farokh tries to get Maneck set up in a different business.

Maneck finishes boarding school but now makes plans to go away to college. On his journey to college, Maneck meets a proofreader and is surprised at how interesting the man is—more like a poet than a proofreader. The man has a sore throat because he spent most of his early years working silently in an office, then later started writing speeches and political slogans, which required him to shout and made him lose his voice. The man says his name is Vasantrao Valmik.

It takes Maneck 36 hours to get from his home to college. He says goodbye to Vasantrao Valmik and takes a taxi to his college hostel. At the hostel, a warden tells him the many rules, like always keeping his room locked. In his room, he finds and kills three cockroaches. The noise brings over his neighbor, Avinash, who helps him fumigate. Maneck and Avinash play a game of draughts (also called checkers). Maneck learns that Avinash is on a scholarship and that his father operates machinery in a textile mill, where he got tuberculosis.

Maneck and Avinash continue to spend time together over the next two weeks, with Avinash teaching Maneck how to play chess. Maneck learns that Avinash won a chess tournament at his old school. In the middle of one lesson in the dining hall, a commotion breaks out when a vegetarian student discovers meat in the lentils. The students bring out six kitchen workers, who fall to their knees and ask for mercy. Avinash intervenes, saying that the caterer is to blame, not his workers. He convinces them to lodge a protest with the college instead of hurting the workers.

The caterer loses his job, and Maneck, Avinash, and the other students celebrate. Avinash starts organizing around other causes, like getting cockroaches and bedbugs out of the rooms. Maneck is interested at first, but he and Avinash slowly grow apart as Avinash gets deeper into organizing.

Avinash tells Maneck he read in the newspaper that Prime Minister was accused of cheating in the last elections and was supposed to step down. People protested to demand her resignation, but instead she declared the Emergency in order to stay in power. Avinash has less and less time for chess, and eventually Maneck stops seeing him.

New student groups called Students for Democracy and Students Against Fascism show up on campus to silence those who oppose the Emergency. They shut down the newspaper and get the professors to sign patriotism pledges. Maneck hates this and worries for Avinash but tries to avoid trouble.

One day, Maneck is walking to the toilet and gets apprehended by some older students as part of “ragging” (hazing). Because he’s studying refrigeration and air conditioning, they lock him in a freezer for 10 minutes. They then force him to masturbate to prove that his “thermostat” is working. After this, Maneck writes home to Farokh and Aban that he wants to leave the hostel and would promise to do exactly as Farokh wants in the family shop.

Farokh would like Maneck to come home but feels he has to make some attempt to let him stay at college. This is when Zenobia comes to Aban with her idea about Maneck staying with Dina. Now, in the present, Maneck gets embarrassed about having to bathe around Dina, even though she is much older.