A Girl like me, by Swati Kaushal
Book Review
Were you ever a teenager who had problems? Were you ever a teenage girl who had problems with her mother? Have you ever been uprooted from one country and put into an unfamiliar environment, and expected to excel? Do you still harbor grudges against your parents? Or, even more dangerous, do you still hero-worship your parents? On the other side of the spectrum, do you wonder what your teenager thinks about? Are you concerned about your communication levels with your teenager? Are you a single parent, juggling both career and home?
If you have answered yes to any of these questions, a girl like me will unravel a few mysteries, and maybe untie some knots. A good book is something of a magic mirror. It helps you look at what might be happening behind your back. And an excellent book is one that helps you see what is happening at the back of your mind.
Teenage is one of the most unconscious and fast moving time of our lives. It is so rare to come across a teenager who talks to you.
If you meet Anisha Rai, the protagonist of this novel, outside the pages of the book, you will probably think that she is a snobbish, US returned teenager with an insufferable attitude. But when you open the book, Swati Kaushal unveils the inner reality of a troubled life.
Ani, or Annie, has promised her father on his deathbed that she will keep her mother happy. She will be a good girl. It is this promise that proves to be the bane of the crumbling communication between mother and daughter.
Less than two years after her father has died, Ani’s mom, Isha, announces that she has found a wonderful job in New Delhi, and they are moving to India from Minnesota, where they have lived since Ani was born.
Moving back to India is a wonderful, much needed home coming for Isha. But Ani is a foreigner in her mother’s country. It’s hot, it’s a lot of hard work at school, and the hardest part is to see mother dear so happy. Cribbing, or asking for sympathy is not the done thing. So Ani fakes her smiles, just to go along with her mother. And Isha? She is so busy with her new hot-shot job; she just can’t sense the façade of her daughters smile.
And these symptoms cover a deeper issue. Mother and daughter seem to have diagonally opposite ways of dealing with the grief of losing the man in the family. For Isha, work is worship. Anisha worships memories of her father.
The communication gap deepens as Ani falls for an older guy, (Electra–complex?), and Isha gets friendly with their neighbor. It seems as if Isha is too insensitive to realize that what her daughter needs is a little bit of attention, a simple chat. A successful person, a hardworking mother, she has put Ani in the best of schools, and made sure her daughter has everything she needs. But it does not occur to her that the most dangerously missing factor in Ani’s life is a mother she can pour out her problems to.
Swati Kaushal’s writing style has not changed from her first novel, A piece of cake. She makes you pause at her choice of adjectives, but she does not let you take a pause from the novel. This book can make you identify completely with the silent suffering teenager. You ache for her to relieve her angst by throwing a tantrum. However, the end takes you by surprise. You might want to call up your mother and say sorry.
