The creative assignment I have chosen to write on is based on the novel .
"A Fine Balance", written by Rohinton Mistry. The novel is set during the period of Emergency in India, which was flanked between the years of 1974 to 1979. The assignment is principally focused on the life of a key character - Beggarmaster.
At first, we are introduced to Beggarmaster at the work camp when he arrives to collect his most loyal beggar, Shankar. Beggarmaster offers Shankar's two friends, Ishvar and Om, who are present at the work camp, their freedom at a relatively high price, which is conditioned to be paid off in periodic installments. .
Beggarmaster gradually develops a pleasing relationship with the two tailors, Ishvar and Om, as he visits them on a regular basis at their work place (Dina's house) to collect his money. Beggarmaster is often proved to be a very influential and helpful man as he is able to get Dina and the tailors out of trouble with their landlord on several occasions.
A few weeks after Beggarmaster had rescued Shankar, Ishvar and Om from the work camp, one of his beggar women, Rosey, old and about to die, told him that she was his mother as well as Shankar's. This made Beggarmaster and Shankar brothers. At first Beggarmaster refused to believe the former and felt offended, till Rosey was able to prove her motherhood by describing Beggarmaster's father's naked body of unusually having a thirty-fourth vertebrae sticking out at the nape of his neck.
Though the fact of Shankar being her son was not hard to believe, Beggarmaster had always seen Rosey breast-feed an infant when he took rounds of the streets with his father. It is believed that the infant was further sent for professional alteration.
(i.e. to make him a cripple) and was later distributed to the beggar women of different neighborhoods, carrying the name, Shankar.
Unfortunately for Beggarmaster, the bright future has been clouded with an ill-fated accident faced by Shankar, which lead to his death.
