Mothers are traditionally revered and with good
reason. They bring forth life into this overcrowded world after all. It is also
believed that it is only a mother’s love which is pure and entirely selfless.
Most mums will be happy to assert that it is all codswallop. Few of that
extremely disgruntled and overworked lot would appreciate being placed on a
token pedestal given that they are not paid or appreciated enough for the
gazillion chores they are expected to shoulder on a daily basis. Sometimes, the
very nature of the job with its attendant stressors can make the mommies
depressed, resentful, and mean.
Avni Doshi’s ‘Girl in White Cotton’ is a delicate,
yet powerfully rendered sketch of a dysfunctional mother – daughter relationship
and an evocative read. Told in spare and elegant prose from Antara, the
daughter’s perspective, Tara, tends to come across as something of a mommy from
hell. She is a loose cannon and a rebel without a cause, choosing to walk away
from an admittedly ill – suited marriage, straight into the arms of a
charismatic Casanova/Guru with her young daughter in tow. Tara is not the sort
to comfort her little one who suffers from nightmares and is unable to
acclimatize to a strange new place, where her mom has no time for her and tends
to disappear with her Guru into his boudoir, leaving her to get by as best as
she can. If Antara insists on acting up to get some attention, odds are she is
going to be physically or verbally abused.
Later when
the reprobate Godman replaces Tara with someone younger, she leaves in a huff
and is infuriated when the husband and parents she walked out on are not
exactly falling over themselves to help her out of the hole she dug for
herself. Probably with the view to cut off her nose to spite her face, Tara
decides to become a beggar before eventually returning home in disgrace and
hooking up with an unsuitable artist type.
Antara regales the reader with an account of her
mother’s shenanigans and the privations she endured on her account. She talks
about befriending a stray dog while living on the street, attending a boarding
school run by a sadistic nun who takes corporal punishment to extreme levels
and dealing with weight issues because she is always tempted to fill the emptiness
and angst gnawing away at her insides with food.
Eventually though, the shoe is on the other foot. It
is Tara who enters her second childhood as she begins to lose her memory and
finds herself at the mercy of a daughter whom she has wronged. Antara clearly
takes after her mother as she discovers her own propensity for cruelty and
vindictiveness. Though Antara is married to a wonderful man, the demons from
her past hold her down and she flails about in the depths of misery with only
her mother, turbulent memories and dreadful secrets for company.
It is terrifying how well – equipped mother and
daughter are to tear each other down, though they continue to need the other
desperately. In the end, when Antara brings new life to inhabit the sticky web
of betrayal, hurt and resentment she has woven with her own mother, one can’t
help but shudder in grim anticipation.
This book review was originally published by The New Indian Express.
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