“You have to maintain a fine balance between hope and despair”

The truth in these words reverberated through me long after they were said. They replayed over and over in my head as I drove home: isn’t this the emotional tightrope we all walk? And the tightrope feels like it’s getting thinner by the moment. But I don’t think it was ever so thin as for the people in India during “The Emergency”, when Rohinton Mistry’s “A Fine Balance” takes place. Adapted for the stage by Anosh Irani and directed by Crow’s Theatre’s artistic director Chris Abraham, A Fine Balance grabs on to your heartstrings and refuses to let go.

Propaganda posters and advertisements loom large above the small home which sits beneath them. Steel bars serve as a roof, while sheet metal siding gives the impressions of the slums which lie on the outskirts of Bombay. Michael Gianfrancesco’s set design expertly blends the industrial and the domestic, into a fascinating pastiche of time and place. Ming Wong 黄慧明’s costumes likewise solidify the atmosphere of A Fine Balance; her designs have a way of feeling lived-in which I seldom see elsewhere.

Ishvar and his nephew, Omprakash (called Om for short), are new to Bombay. They’ve left their small village to make some money as tailors, which was also their family trade back home. Their boss is a woman named Dina who is starting a garment company in her apartment, regardless of the pushback she’s getting from her landlord and his goons. Ishvar and Om have nowhere to stay, so they find a modest place in the nearby slums, where they meet Rajaram and Shankar, some colourful neighbours of theirs who are willing to teach them the ropes. When Dina’s business is discovered, and that she’s employing “untouchables”, everyone’s lives and livelihoods hang in the balance.

After seeing A Fine Balance, I immediately wanted to research more about “The Emergency”; to witness such cruelty feels unfathomable to me in some ways. Yet there it all was, documents and newspaper articles about the injustices, racism, and forced sterilization we witness in A Fine Balance. There are moments where you almost want to close your eyes, or you do so entirely involuntarily, because the shock of what you’re seeing takes over. The version of history we’re taught is entirely Eurocentric, yet it s reaches beyond to what has happened within the European colonies, and how their interventions have lead to massive socio-economic changes like Partition, which then creates the perfect climate for something like “The Emergency”. A Fine Balance is certainly not as sanitized, allowing us to witness the oppression of the caste system first hand. Yet this is the harsh reality of what people were facing all over India at this time; through these unspeakable acts, we learn not only about this part of history, we learn about humanity.

The cast of A Fine Balance blew me away; their combined talent makes for an enthralling night at the theatre. Anand Rajaram gives a stellar performance as Ishvar; he radiates Ishvar’s kindness and positivity, even when things are looking extremely bleak. Ben Yoganathan’s Om is feisty and forward thinking, and Yoganathan clearly gives his all to this complicated young man. Zorana Sadiq’s Dina certainly undergoes the most significant emotional transformation within the play, and Sadiq portrays this with grace and care. Siddarth Sharma gives a powerful performance as Maneck – his vivacity shines throughout the play. Husein Madhavji and Sugith Varughese both play multiple characters, but I think my favourite for Madhavji is Shankar the beggar, his sense of humour comes through in this part especially. For Varughese, the stand out role is Rajaram for sure, again because of the levity that character brings to some of the most desperate times in the play.

“Is it fate? Or do we just not know how to take care of one another?”

Dina’s statement to Ibrahim is another I cannot get out of my head. I feel like this speaks straight to the core of that time and our own: our inability to take care of each other. Individualism is rampant in our society, yet community is how we truly thrive. Dina learns this from Maneck and from Om, who become friends despite their different castes, because they see each other simply as human beings. She learns to love and take care of people not for profit, not because she needs to, but because she wants to, and this realization of our own control over the wellbeing of others is one I hope to see proliferate through our society as well. A Fine Balance reminded me why I love theatre as much as I do; to feel as much as I felt over the course of this story, to fall in love with the characters and be so immersed in the time and culture. This is what theatre is all about.

A Fine Balance has been extended due to popular demand until October 25. For more information and tickets, visit: https://www.crowstheatre.com/shows-events/a-fine-balance

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Cover Photo: Ben Yoganathan and Anand Rajaram in A Fine Balance. Photo by Dahlia Katz.

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