Books

Listen To The Ultrasound

Notwithstanding the gaps, an important first step towards a more politically astute and personally heartfelt portrait of motherhood in all its complexity.

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Listen To The Ultrasound
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More than any other experience, motherhood is about duality: virtually a definition of the divided self. In A Life’s Work: On Becoming a Mother, Rachel Cusk writes that "birth is not merely that which divides women from men: it also divides women from themselves, so that a woman’s understanding of what it is to exist is profoundly changed..."

Rinki Bhattacharya’s collection is in three parts: ‘Our Mothers’, ‘Ourselves’ and ‘Our Children’. This simple structure has a curious overall effect of seeing the biological clock run backwards. We start with death beds and end up with cradles.

Five of the eight authors in the first section talk about their mothers’ death, and the poignant reversal of roles—when the mother becomes a child to the daughter—that precedes it. The sacrifices made by mothers for their children is a double-edged sword whose legacy is not only emancipation but also guilt. Where Bharati Ray rails against it ("She lived like a shadow of my father"), Maitreyi Chatterji celebrates it: "This is not only one daughter’s emotional tribute to her mother but to all the mothers who give up their todays to create better tomorrows for us."

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The second section includes essays by those who, like Dhiruben Patel, haven’t given birth, but have nevertheless been mothers. She writes, movingly, that "love for a child heightens one’s perceptions and understanding to such a level that one acquires a sixth sense and a third eye". Others paint a bleaker picture. In her brilliant essay, Shashi Deshpande rails against the impossible idealisation of Indian motherhood in which "all attributes are squeezed out of her, so that she is shorn of...even humanhood, leaving behind nothing but motherhood".

Deepa Gahlot’s is the only essay against motherhood, and I found myself ruing the missed opportunity for a more serious, hard-edged voice to articulate this position. Her characterisation of mothers as "caged birds" who "lack the courage to be free", I found both simplistic and juvenile.

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For a book on motherhood, it’s ironic that the strongest piece is on its opposite. Anwesha Arya takes her cue from the opening line of Anne Sexton’s poem The Abortion: "Somebody who should’ve been born is gone." It is rare enough that silence shrouding ‘the Act’ is broken; rarer still that the scars it leaves are delineated with such unflinching honesty, and in finely-crafted prose.

Bhattacharya points out the lacunae in the book: "None of the authors enter into the grave issue of Indian society’s condemnation of women who fail to give birth to children.... Also, the portrait of mothers who burn their young daughters-in-law is absent from this picture gallery." But notwithstanding the gaps, Janani is an important first step towards a more politically astute and personally heartfelt portrait of motherhood in all its complexity.

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