BOOKS | SEEMA
MOTHERHOOD AND ITS SUGARBREAD BY BALLI KAUR JAISWAL
PRATIKA YASHASWI
B
ritish paediatrician turned psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott believed that a child’s sense of self is built by the kind of a relationship that they have with their primary caregiver—in most cases, their mother. There is no self for an infant without the nurturer who wipes his/her backside, takes career-interrupting breaks from work, and keeps track of Zoom lesson timetables. So deeply intertwined are mother and child that the relationship can wound or heal, or both. Sometimes in catastrophic ways. So powerful is this connection that sometimes it alone suffices to take on the world. In Hindu mythology, Parvati creates and raises child Ganesha, entirely without the involvement (or knowledge) of her husband, Shiva. If you ask a Hindu, they’ll say he turned out fine. Even today, whispers it’s like you don’t even need men anymore. In the age of IVF, epidurals and great birth control, women have more agency than ever before. Motherhood has never, ever been simple. It has always been broad, complex and multifaceted. It stretches you beyond your wildest imaginings of who you could be. And it crushes you in unexpected ways. There’s always non-fiction to tell you what to expect when you’re expecting and how to frame your parenting challenges sociologically. But nothing quite captures motherhood like a good old novel.
76 | SEEMA.COM | MAY 2021
1
Here’s a coming-of-age story set in a woefully underrepresented region of diaspora fiction: Singapore in the 90s. It’s a period writer Jaiswal is deeply connected with and she portrays it beautifully as she unfurls a tale spanning three generations of Sikh women. There is a mystery the solving of which is of utmost concern to the sweet, inquisitive heroine, Pin. Little Pin’s mother, Jini, has told her she is not to become like her. What does she mean? Then Pin’s grandmother moves in, upending the existing household order and resurfacing old secrets. With delectable prose (replete with talk of food, metaphors of food and love) and gorgeous detailing, one reviewer has called this novel “Singapore’s ‘To Kill a Mockingbird.’”
