Much has been written about the daddy’s girls and the momma’s boys of the world. The bond between fathers and sons has also propped up every now and then during proud moments of hand-overs and take-overs of power in families. But what about the mothers and their daughters?
How much do we know about this complex, sometimes dysfunctional and potentially liberating equation that has continued to exist silently in the shadows of the more jubilant bonds? As more women mull over, if not resist the idea of motherhood, contemporary literature is making an attempt dissect the notions and aspirations of being a good mother, a good daughter, and their coexistence.
Avni Doshi’s Booker-nominated Girl in White Cotton is the compelling story of Antara, who reluctantly takes up the responsibility of taking care of her mother, Tara who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and how the relationship evolves overtime. It explores the subjectivity of choice, and shows how it is possible for two women with shared genes to interpret freedom and independence differently. Tara, in her youth, fled the conventional life laid out for a woman by the society, resulting in an inconsistent and nomadic childhood for her daughter, which in turn made Antara crave stability, making the mother-daughter reconciliation a struggle of its own when the two are forced to spend more and more time together.
Anindita Ghose’s Tara in The Illuminated is not very different from Doshi’s ––she is free-spirited, rebellious and speaks her mind, quite contrary to her mother’s patient and calm demeanour. Ghose takes these poles-apart characters on a journey of rediscovering each other and themselves, in the aftermath of Tara’s father and Shashi’s husband’s death. It is in their shared grief, away from the influences of the men in their lives––father, husband, brother, son––that this mother and daughter redefine and acknowledge their bond like they did never before. Ghose’s is a story of hope and possibilities, and most of all of love between the two women.
In What We Know About Her, Krupa Ge, quite like Doshi, steers clear of the image of the sacrificial mother. Instead her mother, a political activist, is flawed and at loggerheads with the daughter Yamuna, who is pursuing her PhD, over an ancestral home. Yamuna’s resentment towards her mother, who she believes has used her, reaches an extent where the latter begins questioning her biological relationship with her. Often relationships are said to go sour owing to differences, but in Ge’s novel, it is the similarity of their personalities––their strong headedness that takes a toll on this mother-daughter relationship. Like mother, like daughter? Don’t think so.