A Fine Balance

Mistry never names the city by the sea, but its stations, promenade and slums are unmistakably 1970s Bombay, today's Mumbai. Under the 1975-77 Emergency the map runs from a great railway terminus and a seafront drive out to the pavement stretches and the bulldozed slum colony where two tailors, fleeing caste violence in an inland village, try to hold a life together.

Dina Dalal

The railway terminus

Prologue

The book opens on a crowded morning train, where the student Maneck and the two tailors, Ishvar and Omprakash, are thrown together on their way into the city. The huge station where the lines from upcountry meet the sea reads as Bombay's Victoria Terminus, the gateway through which migrants poured into the city.

Prologue and Chapter 1

explicit The city is never named in the novel, but its great Gothic railway terminus is plainly Bombay's Victoria Terminus, since 1996 Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj Terminus, and the marker sits on the station building.

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