Ashes to Clashes
Mothers and daughters, religion and fanaticism, life and death, spirituality and identity all meld to form American novelist Tova Reich’s fractured, burning universe in Mother India. Its theme is the flawed mother as opposed to the ideal one.
The novel is divided into three sections named after three women, covering specific, dramatic episodes in the lives of orthodox American Jewish matriarch, ‘Ma’, and her daughter, Meena, and granddaughter, Maya.
When Ma, dying of cancer, moves to Varanasi from America to die, she summons Meena to make one last, blasphemous wish: she wants to be cremated, not buried. It sets the novel rolling for Meena and Maya and their catastrophic journeys. Meena, a divorced lesbian who runs a Mumbaibased spiritual tour company, has to contend with a tumultuous relationship with her dodgy Indian ex-wife, while struggling to shelter her daughter from trauma of various kinds.
Reich writes insightfully about India, moving from Varanasi and Mumbai to Kolkata, weaving in real life events and public figures. In particular, the 2008 Mumbai terror attack, which Meena and Maya witness first-hand, looms large. Ma Amritanandamayi and the experience of being under her spell is equally a marker in the arc of the story. Reich also draws parallels and connections between India and Israel. But as Meena and Maya fall prey to religious and spiritual excesses, the lyrical and ravaging narrative spins out of control, losing its grip.