In A Village By A River – Exploring The Struggles Of The Marginalized In Mistry's "A Fine Balance"

Abstract

The paper critically analyses one single chapter – In A Village by a River from Rohinton Mistry’s full-length novel ‘A Fine Balance’. The full novel is centered mainly on the lives of four characters Dina Dalal, a Parsi widow, Maneck, a young Parsi boy, and two chamar characters Ishvar, the uncle, and his nephew Omprakash. The novel shows the life struggle of the four in Bombay in a very critical time for the country. The present chapter taken for critical analysis presents us with short and simple annals of the poor and the marginalized, where the family of the Chamaars is in a village by the river. But this single chapter itself has become epical regarding the portraiture of the poor lower caste people of Independent India. Quite naturally caste prejudice, oppression, poverty, corruption, and above all the fatal effects of the partition and its aftereffects in the name of the Hindu-Muslim riot come to the forefront of the discussion in the paper. The paper also shows the futile attempt of the oppressed to uproot the system.