9.1 A Fine Balance "Darkness on the Edge of Town"

Mumbai Crime

Dramatisation of Rohinton Mistry's acclaimed novel about India's underclass. Two tailors - uncle and nephew, Ishvar and Om - come to the city to escape from the caste violence in their native village. They are employed by a Parsi woman, Dina Dalal who runs a sweatshop from her apartment and is struggling to preserve her independence. She has a lodger too, a reluctant student, Maneck, from the mountains. As their initial suspicion of each other turns to friendship and then love, their lives take dramatic and often shocking turns against a backdrop of India in crisis, during “the Emergency” of the mid-1970s, a period marked by huge political unrest and human rights violations. A comedy, a tragedy, a story of the triumph of the human spirit under inhuman conditions.

Cast

Dina - Shernaz Patel

Ishvar - Kenneth Desai

Om - Ananad Tiwari

Maneck - Neil Bhoopalam

Rustom - Zafar Karachiwala

Ibrahim - Rajit Kapur

The Thakur - Jayant Kripalaini

Ashraf - Darshan Jariwala

Nusswan - Farid Currim

Ruby - Anahita Uberoi

Narayan - Vivek Madan

Young Dina - Tirtha Kotrial

Young Ishvar - Eshan Savla

Young Narayan - Samar Uraizee

Ensemble – Jim Sarbh, Abhishek Saha, Meherangiz Acharya-Dar, Faezeh Jalali, Shivani Tanksale, Nadir Khan.

Production:

Music - Sacha Putnam

Sound Design - Steve Bond

Production Manager – Niloufer Sagar

Producer - Nadir Khan

Dramatised by Ayeesha Menon and Kewel Karim from the novel A FINE BALANCE by Rohinton Mistry

Director - John Dryden