Me and the big Mooh

Everyone wants to write about their mother. Is that what they’re calling it these days: “writing” I thought everyone wanted to have sex with their mother At least since Oedipus married Jocasta, no Could you please not talk about my wanting to have sex with you when I’m sitting right here Arre baba, then what do you want me to do Talk about it when you’re standing Don’t worry: I’ll do that too! But everyone does want to write about their mother, no Jerry Pinto is only the latest in a long, illustrious, messed-up line of people!

This is how Em and her narrator son might have discussed Jerry Pinto’s autobiographical novel, Em and the Big Hoom. Em talks a lot about sex — what she felt when she first saw her future husband (not much), how scared she was of having sex (a lot), and how she tried to protect herself by writing a letter about her fears to the Big Hoom, Augustine Mendes (the pater familias, and so called because every response would begin with a clearing of the throat that sounded like “hoom”). She also draws bizarre connections between different events — for instance, she remembers only two famous battles, both with water in them: Waterloo and Panipat. And she is barely maternal, except when it comes to pushing at her children’s vulnerabilities: she needles them about their sexual fears and professional anxieties; they are overwhelmed at having to live with “the Madwoman in the 1BHK”. This lack of sentimental maternity is to my mind the most interesting thing about the charismatic, manic-depressive Em. Her name seems to stand for the letter with which Mother begins; we might be fooled by this into thinking of her as the epitome of the maternal. But lest we wander down that road, Em sets us right: “She inflected the word with all the rage and contempt she felt for it. It came out mud-dh-dha”. Or consider the following exchange with her children:

“You didn’t want to get married ” I asked. “Who wants to get married ” Em asked rhetorically. “Only those who want children”. “You didn’t want children ” I don’t remember who said this, Susan or I or both of us together. “Oh God, no. I saw what children do. They turn a good respectable woman into a mudd-dha. I didn’t want to be a mudh-dha.”

What is astonishing about this exchange — as indeed, what is astonishing about the entire book — is its simultaneous honesty, pathos and cruelty. Em has had a raw deal by having two children when she did not want to. As she narrates it, her depression started after the birth of her second child, the narrator of the tale. The child/narrator scrambles desperately to locate the source of his mother’s depression elsewhere so he doesn’t have to feel responsible for it. Despite the love Em feels for her children and vice versa, then, everyone is hurt, angry and sad at once. The anguish of maternity, the anguish of depression, the anguish of dealing with someone else’s depression is the enervated soul of this book. For instance, when Em tries the tack she so often takes with the Big Hoom, imploring him to kill her so everyone can be put out of their misery, this is his response:

“I might go to jail,” he said, “and who would look after the children ” “I don’t know,” she said and she didn’t have to add, “I don’t care.” Both Susan and I knew it was the subtext. It was easy to forgive; we could see how much pain she was in. It was not easy to forgive; her pain sealed her off from us.

How does a child talk to a mother who loves him yet has not wanted him How does a mother narrate to a child who loves her yet also wants her dead

“My story sort of ends there,” Em said. “What’s to tell about the rest You came along and I became a Mudd-dha.” That word again. That venom. Maybe they should have thought about it, not just had a child because everyone did.

The children know they are loved. The children also know they have been the cause of pain. And all this ambivalence is narrated by one of the children in question. No wonder it took Jerry Pinto more than 20 years to write this largely autobiographical novel. Despite claiming that the Big Hoom was his rock, his idol, the one to whom he could look up, the one who loved him unreservedly, the narrator loses his footing somewhat when attempting to justify all of the above sentiments (perhaps because goodness does not good literature make). The narrator and his father take a side-trip to Goa during which the narrator learns about his father’s life, and has wisdom imparted to him. But that is not remotely as interesting or compelling as his mother’s story, and the writing reflects it. Take, for example, the following lines:

“One thing”, he said. “If you want to get people to talk to you, you should never interrupt.” ...And so did I get my first lesson for life as an adult from my father.

This is the stuff of sentimental prose. Em demands metaphysical poetry. Luckily she gets it. And so do we. No one since James Joyce and Arundhati Roy has been better able to capture the bewilderment of a child and his mother in a mad, mad world. No one since Sophocles and Sigmund Freud has been able to postulate that madness might be the very stuff of maternity. No one since Sylvia Plath and Mark Haddon has been able to make us cringe viscerally at the sadness of the mind. Believe it or not, this novel is a brilliant page-turner about depression.