Mai is a multilayered work: a dissection of mothers and motherhood, an individual’s story, a fretwork of complex relationships. At its heart is Rajjo, the Mai/mother who at first glance appears to be the living embodiment of all the cliches about Indian motherhood. Cooking occupies all her time, while her fasts see to it that she seldom samples the fruits of her labour; she is sacrificing; she suffers under the twin yokes of an overbearing mother-in-law and an indifferent husband. Seen through the modern eyes of her children, Mai is someone to be taught, uplifted, taken outside of herself.
If Shree had stopped short here, she’d still have created an enduring portrait of an eternal stereotype. She is far too subtle a writer and a thinker not to delve deeper. What she excavates is a portrait of Rajjo that constantly blurs the line between what we think we can see and what we’re really looking at. Mai has her own resilient brand of strength, a sense of balance and a quiet willingness to do battle for what is really needful. The quality of this strength eludes her children, whose apparent freedom, hard won though it is, is far more hemmed in than they realise. Mai is a complex polemic, enriched by Nita Kumar’s translation from Hindi and by her afterword on the politics of translation and the internal politics of the novel itself. To read Mai is to gain entry into a house revealed, its interiors laid bare, its rooms left tantalisingly closed but not locked.
