Book review: 'Does He Know A Mother’s Heart?'

Book: Does He Know A Mother’s Heart?
Arun Shourie
HarperCollins
435 pages
Rs599

Most of us presume that our god will deliver us from all kinds of suffering and our attempts to communicate with god are intensified when confronted with insurmountable odds. When things get worse instead of better, we begin to question our belief.

Does your God exist and if he does, does He care about the cruelties in the world?

Anyone contemplating this subject will find Arun Shourie’s book enthralling. Does He Know A Mother’s Heart? is centred on the deep bond of love in the Shourie family and the answers he seeks while attending to his cerebral palsy-afflicted son Aditya, and wife Anita who was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s after an accident in her 40s.

Adit’s premature birth was followed by insufficient oxygen in the incubator that led to cerebral palsy, followed by other complications. One blow after another and yet the child shows love and gratitude towards those around him.

Through his research, Shourie exposes the incongruity of the world’s major religions when it comes to seeking answers to God and suffering. In India, all suffering is blamed on bad karma — the sins of a past life. “Karma is a convenient fiction,” writes Shourie, borrowing the phrase from writer and philosopher Eliot Deutsch. It not only provides an explanation for suffering but also “puts God off the hook”. Shourie also quotes Indologist PV Kane who observed “our sense of fairness and justice would be shocked by the inequalities in the world” if doctrines of Karma and transmigration didn’t exist. Karma, inextricably linked to rebirth, is then nothing more than a clever intellectual invention. God, godmen, and religious scriptures are but mere props. “One must realise that no cosmic purpose is served by our suffering or that of those dear to us — just as no cosmic purpose is served by our birth or death. This is because there is no cosmic purpose to begin with.”

Having arrived at this realisation, Shourie believes you should accept your circumstances. Learn from Viktor Frankl the freedom to choose how you react to situations. And find salvation by serving others. “Even if our circumstances prevent us from serving those who are in pain, we can serve those who are serving them: all of us have the wherewithal to be the servants of servants.”