Jerry Pinto
“Home is not an address, home is family” pretty much defines what the story is all about. Jerry Pinto’s debut novel is the story of one woman, her madness, and how her family lives through it in a 1 BHK flat in Mahim. There is no large canvas, no spectacular events, it’s a simple story about complex lives, narrated in the most disarming and sensitive manner.
Em holds the story together, as she does her family too, despite (or because of) her manic and wild self that writes, embarrasses her kids, smokes beedis, attempts suicides, and in flashes, also reveals an understanding of raw human nature. In contrast is The Big Hoom, standing like a breakwater that calms the storms lashing through their lives. He is an enigma to me, and it would seem, to the narrator too! The nameless narrator and ‘Lao Tsu’ complete the family. The back stories and idiosyncrasies of the other characters give them an identity that does not get lost in the narrative. A good time to note that Bombay exists too, peeping out once in a while, though thankfully it doesn’t take itself seriously and is content being a backdrop. Goa probably gets a better role!
The story switches between the past and present, either through Em’s recounts or letters or via the narrator. It is difficult to imagine the office going Imelda, (Em) who contributes her entire salary to her parents, and has a relatively lengthy courtship with Augustine (the Big Hoom) who called her buttercup, morph into the state we see her in. In Em’s own words, it was like a tap that someone turned on, and from small drips it became a fast, free flowing torrent of sadness.
There is some focus on the narrator too, especially around the part where he gets his first job, and begins to worry whether his mother’s condition would pass on to him too. His efforts to reach his mother’s mind, and to understand it fail mostly and he equates it to a dark tower that allows access only occasionally.
I am guessing it is autobiographical (semi, at least) and there is much pain and suffering that underlies this book. It will make you sigh deeply thanks to the intensity of the emotions, it will make you laugh out loud at what seems to be effortless wit, and it could make you deeply sad, but you must read it!
A little hat tip to the design – the dark edges really add to the theme of depression, and the illustrations at the beginning of chapters somehow communicate (probably) the randomness of a mind.
