A Fine Balance: Chapter 9 Summary & Analysis

Dina delivers the dresses she made with Maneck and then tells Mrs. Gupta that Ishvar and Omprakash are away on a two-week vacation. But she has to extend it, and Mrs. Gupta gives her another two weeks, but says she won’t accept any more delays. Mrs. Gupta hopes the Emergency will help everything run in an orderly fashion again.

When Dina gets back home, Ibrahim is there to collect rent, and she pays him. He drops some papers and says he needs to sit down, as an excuse to come into her home and inspect whether there’s an illegal business there. Once inside, he asks if he can fix anything in her house. Dina knows he just wants to look around. She allows him to see the room with the two sewing machines but says there’s nothing illegal about owning two machines.

When Ibrahim references a young man renting a room in Dina’s house, she insults Ibrahim for spreading false rumors about a poor widow. He leaves, and later, Maneck enjoys hearing Dina’s retelling of events. Two weeks pass, and Dina realizes that she actually looks back fondly on when Ishvar and Omprakash worked for her. She fears she’ll have to borrow money from Nusswan for rent.

The Facilitator comes back to the work camp with more new workers, and the foreman greets him. Some of the paid workers on the irrigation project get laid off now that there are new free laborers to replace them. As things get more crowded, food becomes scarce, and Ishvar and Omprakash start to feel faint during the workday. The camp also runs out of shoes, so they have to walk barefoot.

One day, Ishvar gets dizzy, falls, and hurts his foot. His ankle swells, so an overseer tells him to focus on filling baskets rather than carrying them so that he can work sitting down. Others in the camp get even worse injuries. The foreman tries to blame the Facilitator for giving him bad workers, but the Facilitator just drops off the next batch of people, saying the police often force everyone into the truck.

Many of the new arrivals are street performers, so the foreman gives them the option to work as camp entertainers. Monkey-man is among them, and he does an act with two small children, his niece and nephew. He balances them on a pole and holds them way up high, but everyone gets angry and calls the act cruel. He tries to defend himself, but people don’t listen.

Beggarmaster comes to the camp and recognizes his old worker Shankar (whom he calls Worm). Shankar has no legs but gets around in a wheeled device he calls a gaadi (the word for “car” or “vehicle”). Beggarmaster offers to pay the Facilitator 2,000 rupees for everyone in the camp, including Shankar. The Facilitator is very happy with this price and agrees, then cuts the foreman in on a share.

Shankar tells Ishvar and Omprakash that he’s going back with Beggarmaster. He says he can get Beggarmaster to take them too, but Beggarmaster is less interested when he hears that the two of them want to be tailors, not beggars. Eventually, Beggarmaster offers to support them for 50 rupees a week, which is very expensive for Ishvar and Omprakash, but they feel they have no choice but to accept. Beggarmaster warns them that if they try to leave him without paying, he’ll find them.

Monkey-man was knocked out when the crowd turned against him earlier. Beggarmaster doesn’t take him, but he does take Monkey-man’s little niece and nephew in the truck, which the Facilitator has let him borrow.

Dina dresses up to go visit Nusswan at his office, and Maneck thinks she looks very beautiful. He comes with her to Nusswan’s office building. Nusswan wants Dina to become a bigger part of his family again and get more involved in the lives of Xerxes and Zarir. Dina goes to Nusswan’s office and introduces Maneck. They make small talk, until eventually Nusswan goes off on a conspiracy theory about how the CIA is trying to sabotage India’s Family Planning Programme (that Rajaram works for).

Dina learns that Nusswan is a big defender of Prime Minister’s policies and thinks that death is what many people in the slums deserve. Dina jokes that Nusswan should at least be careful not to kill her two tailors, but he accuses her of not being able to have a serious conversation. At last Dina comes around to her request: 250 rupees. Nusswan gives her the money, and she can’t make eye contact with him. As they leave, Dina tells Maneck about how Nusswan used to brag as a boy about wanting to hunt big game animals but was afraid of killing even a mouse in real life.