[Review also published in YouthKiAwaaz]
Prayaag Akbar’s ‘Mother India’ is set in contemporary Delhi where young people without the benefit of fancy degrees or social networks are struggling to make a decent living. Mayank and Nisha are both diligent workers with above average intelligence and a willingness to take on the responsibility to get things done. Both are constrained by their circumstances, but neither blames their circumstances. They just put setbacks behind them and get on with life.
Mayank, who’s family has lived in the margins of Delhi for generations, is employed by a right wing content creator, and though not himself bigoted is swayed by the propaganda generated by him. Nisha moved to the city from the hills and works at a high end Japanese chocolate store in an upscale mall. Neither considers their current job as a profession, but both are willing to put in the effort to learn and grow.
Their lives collide when Mayank is asked to create a video of Mother India. Since AI was unable to come up with anything satisfactory, he was forced to feed in a photograph of a real person on which the image could be based. A photograph of Nisha taken without consent from her Instagram account served the purpose, and she found herself in the centre of a storm when the clip of her as Mother India being stoned by Muslim youth went viral. She, however, had other things on her mind because not only had her boyfriend turned cold towards her, she found out that he was actively sabotaging her career too.
The book looks at how young people navigate a changing world where the old rules no longer hold, but new rules have not yet evolved enough to replace them. It is a world where there are hierarchies of power, almost all of which are based on the accident of birth. It is a world where a person could simultaneously feel compassion for puppies that are traumatised by the noise of Diwali fireworks, yet have nothing but contempt for an actress who he believes disrespected his religion by asking people to burst fewer crackers.
The book talks about the changing face of Mother India- from a idea created to unify Indians during the freedom struggle to the modern avatar of Bharat Mata which is used to generate hate against a community. But Mother India is not the only mother in the book. Mayank’s mother had been forced to do things that she knew were not right in order to secure her son’s future, yet she is the one who serves as his confidant and conscience when the clip featuring Nisha goes viral. Nisha’s mother had faced social pressure when her older daughter had married outside her caste, yet was strong willed enough to not hold Nisha back when she wanted to move to Delhi. There is the elderly mother of the jailed student leader who refused to leave the police station till her son was released. There was also Nisha who wasn’t sure whether or not she was pregnant, and wasn’t’ sure what to do if she found she was. And there is even a canine mother who was forced to abandon her litter- would she have had more agency had she been human?
This is a slim book, yet it packs so much between the covers. Gender dynamics, classism, bigotry, environmental degradation, corruption, ambition, the changing face of urban India are all issues that feature prominently in the book, and each of them is dealt with in sufficient detail. There isn’t a single superfluous sentence in the book, and you remember parts of the book long after you finish reading the last page. The book, despite the topic, is a book of Hope- hope that tomorrow will be better for Mayank, Nisha and all the other young people like them.
[I bought a copy of the book and the views are my own.]
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