Of Sickness and Health: Narrativising The Emergency in Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance

Abstract

In the discourse of Indian nationalism, the years of the ‘Indian Emergency’ (1975-1977) have always been overwhelmingly infused with the complex nuances of displacement at various levels-spatial, social, political and cultural. Such nuances are often centred on the ‘body’ not only as a site of performance and violence but also as a potent site to inscribe the differences and otherness as witnessed in Rohinton Mistry’s novel A Fine Balance. The abundance of counter-spaces of alterity and the ruling metaphors of sickness and normalcy governing the systemic manipulation of ‘body’, especially the body of the dispossessed and homeless narrate the implicit violence of ‘Indian Emergency’ in the context of the hegemonic discourse of idealist nationalism. Rohinton Mistry, a Zoroastrian negotiating the socio-cultural and spatial dislocations of the alienation of the Zoroastrian Diaspora dwells on the ‘minority perspective’ on multiplicity of affiliations and locations and A Fine Balance offers an interesting perspective on the immediate and connecting reality of the concept of ‘sickness’ and ‘health’ and ‘body’ when contextualised during the traumatic years of Indira Gandhi’s rule. This paper aims to examine the specific pattern of the representations of “Indian Emergency’ in the context of disciplinary practices and the consequent transgressions integral to the representation of Indian history as valorised in A Fine Balance.