The Durgas in our lives

These days of Durga Puja are a reminder of when Prime Minister Indira Gandhi vanquished the enemy in the 1971 war. Opposition leader AB Vajpayee publicly likened her to Goddess Durga. What a different story it is today. Forget about any bonhomie among our political class (the long opposition silence over first family son-in-law Robert Vadra is explainable as the complicity of thieves); even Indira’s daughter-in-law Sonia Gandhi does not make the grade as an avatar of the Divine Mother (though she has tried hard to be a warrior, occasionally berating her opponents in and out of politics, perhaps trying to pass on to her mild-mannered son some of her belligerence).

There are several reasons Sonia failed to be Durga: her mount is not a tiger but a mild-mannered economist; she can’t decide whether her mahishasura is babu-turned-RTI activist-turned-anti-corruption crusader-turned-neo-politician Arvind Kejriwal or Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi or even   damaad Vadra; and there are other Goddesses waiting in the wings and sharpening their knives, namely, Mamata Banerjee, Mayawati, and J Jayalalithaa. The real tragedy is that India, which sometimes resembles a country of thieves (what with its widespread penchant for graft and its addiction to deficit financing), needs a Warrior-Goddess at the helm of affairs. No wonder so many Congressmen are now looking beyond the seemingly-comatose Rahul Gandhi and at the scarily Durga-like Priyanka.

To meet a successful Durga you have to exit the political arena. I recently encountered one who spent her life battle against demons, though these were the demons within. She was in a book: Jerry Pinto’s Em And The Big Hoom. I read it during a recent visit abroad and liked it so much that I read it a second time, consecutively. The Durga in this book is Imelda Mendes, inhabiting a tiny Mahim flat with husband Augustine and their two children. It’s a personal tale, both sad and funny, of a mother dealing with madness. The writing is so good — the sentences are well-crafted paragons of simplicity, as if the sentences indicated the nature of how one deals with madness: by keeping it simple — that it is certainly the best Indian fiction in years.

Em battles her demons with help from lithium-based pharmaceuticals and, frighteningly, electro-convulsive therapy. Her real weapon though is her mount, which provides her with a stable ride through her journey in and out of her inner blackness; that mount is her husband, the big Hoom. Why does he put up with it: her suicide attempts, her disappearances, and her sudden dissipation of their life savings? Pinto shows and doesn’t tell, by running a parallel narrative of how his parents met and married. It is sweet, which makes the tale of deepening madness all the more bittersweet.

I read Jerry Pinto because I went and spent ten days with my mother, who is in a NY nursing home recuperating from a paralytic stroke. I thought I might read this book to her, but she just wanted to chat or quietly watch TV with me, though she did start reading a Japanese crime novel I had brought along, The Devotion Of Suspect X, in which a mother murders her ex-husband. My mother has always been a force of nature among the various overlapping circles of relatives and acquaintances, and to see her suddenly bed-ridden is difficult to accept. This is particularly so for my father. It is now apparent that he is deeply rattled by the prospect of being alone. I am certain my mother is less daunted at the prospect of being left behind than he is.

During these ten days, I did something that I had never had to before: to take physical care of my mother. Suddenly, it was as if I were with my children when they were infants. It’s the kind of activity in which you lose yourself. To care for one’s mother is like trying to return a favour that can never be repaid; but still you feel inner peace. There were several routines we developed, one of which involved me fetching, at 6.30 in the chilly morning, her daily cup of morning tea from the nearby Starbucks (which is why I now will be a regular at India’s first Starbucks outlet in Fort). These ten days were both sad and sweet.

Like anyone else, when I was a small boy and felt frightened, I ran to my mother. Like Durga, she was my protector. Each child’s mahishasura is the big, bad world out there. Each of us finds that life is a constant challenge, an eternal struggle, filled with narrow roads, hairpin turns and the threat of a landslide of problems. Each mother shapes her offspring’s personality, from childhood through adolescence and youth, and occasionally even in adulthood. This Durga Puja, I will pray for my mother.

Being a political junkie, I will also pray for India. Ours is a nation of babies, forever bawling in newspaper columns and on TV screens. Because we are a nation of babies, we need a Warrior-Goddess to take charge. Only a Durga can sort out the mess that is India.

The writer is the Editor-in-Chief, DNA, based in Mumbai