Mother Mine and the inherited echoes of trauma

Loneliness takes a contagious form in Sheeba Shah’s novel Mother Mine. Trauma turns into a collective experience as characters struggle to find closure. The novel digs into the presence of loneliness in the characters’ lives and their attempts to come to terms with piercing bouts of anxiety, depression, and unrequited love.

The novel begins with the reunion between Priya and her daughter, Medha, in Goa. Medha has come to meet her estranged mother, who left her and her father in Kathmandu and went to Mumbai with the certainty of starring in a Bollywood movie. In an instant, we realise that these are two strangers embarking on a journey together to untangle the various knots of their uneven relationship.

Trauma across generations

The novel slowly unravels their tumultuous journey. Priya’s journey to Mumbai from Kathmandu to become an actor in Bollywood is narrated in parallel with the story of her abandoned daughter, Medha.  Her toxic relationship with a film producer, Rohit, is explored in detail, and you root for her to rescue herself from the cobweb of false promises, manipulation, and physical exploitation. As she explores the unforgiving world of the Mumbai film industry on her own, she further plunges into the quicksand of desired fame, survival and torturous compromises.

While Priya struggles to make sense of her life in Bombay, her daughter Medha attempts to grapple with the absence of her mother in her life. The writing excels in depicting the absence of motherhood and separation, with a clear evocation of the pain felt by both mother and daughter. It acutely captures the daughter’s nervous attempt at navigating adolescence and coming to terms with her father’s second marriage. The novel prominently explores the themes of loneliness, abandonment of dreams, and the coping mechanisms one develops through the characterisation of Medha’s struggles.

The novel uses dual narrative devices, traversing between Priya’s life story in third-person narration and her daughter’s perspective in first-person narration. The first-person narrative allows readers to see inside Medha’s mind—her poor self-esteem and her obsession with reconnecting with her mother. Despite the different lives they lead in Kathmandu and Mumbai, Medha inherits her mother’s trauma—her loneliness, obsessive behaviour, insecurities, and self-loathing. It all comes full circle when she becomes romantically obsessed with a gay doctor, Pritesh, whom she meets in Goa.

Chaos meets calm

The novel moves ahead at a steady pace, going back and forth between past and present with crisp writing, yet there often feels like a lack of invention in the plot. The story around the pursuit of Bollywood fame and its exploitation has been explored many times before in various art forms. The writer compensates for this lack of freshness with lucid writing that allows readers to see the internal conflicts within the characters’ thoughts and their motivations, mainly expressed through the monologues of the daughter, Medha. “My life is a classic Shakespearean tragedy. My mother is a depressed addict. I’m in love with a gay man,” says Medha in her monologue, serving as a self-indictment and allowing readers to empathise with her self-doubt and insecurities.

However, the writing also suffers from inconsistencies at times owing to variations in tone. There are some beautiful moments in the novel where the writing justifies the agony and suffering of the characters, but the pace falters just when you begin to engage with it. At times, the writing feels inadequate to capture the complexities of the characters’ lives and emotions.

Mother Mine is as much about geography as it is about people. The novel travels back and forth between Mumbai and Goa. The humdrum of Bollywood-obsessed aspirations, the strains of struggle, exhausted dreams, and moral compromises—backed by the allure of fame—are explained with careful attention to detail. “Priya has learned that Bombay is like a giant, intimidating living creature that can either devour and dissolve you or uplift you to exhilarating heights,” Priya explains in her portrayal of Bombay. The predatory imagery of Mumbai, which sucked Priya’s dreams like a black hole, is contrasted with the calm and serene presence of Goa, which offers a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. As she writes: “Even the long, wild, unrestrained rains that invaded Goa this last monsoon came as a respite. For hours, she sat staring at the rain falling in thick sheets from emboldened skies, feeling a soothing wave, a calm that tapered her frayed nerves.”

Mother Mine is right up your alley if you are looking for a novel that explores the complexities of mother-daughter relations with fast-paced writing. 

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