Tulsi
Badrinath

Granary of Received Wisdom Susan Visvanathan This is an elegantly written book about life in upper-crust Adyar, (Chennai) where the jasmine flowers flourish, and ritual, dance and music go hand-in-hand with the routine chores of bringing up children, and running a house. The servants are often sharply delineated in their various jobs, each with a clear Identity, with language as the only real mediating force between those who serve and those who are served. Men and women have sharp divisions between them in terms of the visible duties of office, and the concentrated routines of kitchen, cleanliness and child care. Modernism does not infiltrate this divide, the segmentalization seems total, and the women are burdened more heavily. In this world, looking in, one sees that women are loved for just that, for being mothers and wives, and while conjugal love may seem diminished by prioritizing house and children, the men expect it, demand it, and will brook no question. The protagonist's mother says to her very tellingly, 'Look at me, I married a philosopher, You tell me, in all these years how many stimulating, intellectual conversations did we have? Mostly, your father would complain about ants on the dining table or why his dinner was not ready on time' (p.211).

Underlying the tedium of the days, and the regret at giving up a creative career as a dancer to bring up her son (while the father of the child slogs at his job in France without a backward look or a full sentence of enquiry for his family) the protagonist writes these lovely lines, explaining the nature of the suburb of the wealthy living by the sea;

A cyclone sulks at sea, a compressed whirl of energy waiting for the right time to approach. At night the wind tears through the city, uprooting old venerable trees that have the temerity to stand upright in its path. The next morning, those huge trees look like toys flung by a bad-tempered giant, broken in play. Huts have collapsed, hoardings crumpled like paper, fishermen are lost at sea, and water maroons the residents of low-lying areas near the River Adyar.

In our garden, the jasmine creeper has been torn away from its support, it lies on the ground, folded upon itself, everywhere leaves and branches lie broadcast. Rain pours incessantly from a sky grizzled with clouds. It is gloriously cool (p. 151).

Fiction always mediates between truth and reality, embroidering as it goes along, and accompanying it is the forgiveness of clan members who may recognize themselves as more than cut-out characters. For the first part of the book, regret for one's fate is larger than art, but as we proceed, the sense of authenticity and clarity become more vivid. This is Adyar, this is the enclave of the wealthy with good manners and taste, where the most avid or the most avaricious may be hidden in daily dealings by tacit understanding that 'we do not discuss this'. Tulsi Badrinath writes of the loneliness of those left alone to carry out responsibilities, without being judgemental about the lack or loss they experience. Yes, they do feel it, they are miserable, but civility demands acceptance on all sides. She also captures the sense of children growing up with a sense of their own doom, protected by the family, but needing constant care, where love is not enough, but responsibility is an even larger domain. If you do not have a maternal Instinct, would you be even more careful than others who do? This is a very sharp question, and it cuts into the heart of the book. Those who are aware for instance that they have cerebral lesions work very hard to simplify their life. They cut out everything that complicates and muddles, they make lists, they throw out everything which complicates. A survival instinct might just be annoying for others, but sometimes it's rationale becomes evident over a period of time. For Tulsi Badrinath, her character's lesion is her art, and while she lets the dance performances go, her writing will not let it die. Through the writing she informs us what it is like to remember (not only that lost love, her peripatetic husband) but also the moment of tranquility achieved in dance, the moment of fulfillment which may never be repeated. That is the mystical moment, and the protagonist discovers it in the retelling of the myths, of Shiva, and Punyavati, of Krishna and the theft of butter, of Adi Sankara and his mother. These stories weave interestingly through the work, (while the dread bulk up by child rearing is for me the routine spaces of everyday existence, made more difficult now with war zones appearing like dragon's teeth) these mythic spaces are platforms for further conversations.

Not surprisingly one of the key characters is Thayee, who is an abandoned woman, resilient in her old age, collecting empty milk packets, and making her living by selling old bottles and newspapers. The Adyar housewife, too perfect in her housekeeping, sees in Thayee a mirror opposite, but in some odd rendering the who is so derelict becomes holy. This is not startling at all, because the closeness that upper class women often feel to their women Servants is a symbiotic space of shared duties, compounded by the acceptance of hierarchy and difference. Thayee it not just a servant, but is central to the story, in terms of her independence and her fortitude. The Nadars and the Fisherpeople who work for the brahmins of Adyar communicate a sense of their own vitality and personhood. Two languages meet, and a common dialect is sometimes forged. It is somehow, outside of politics, outside of mutual contempt.

So many were she times scared me, lying on the kerb with her lifeless appearance. Then she would turn or straighten a leg and the knot of worry would come undone.

I search for a woman with white hair, dragging herself about in a garment the texture of dust. An unlettered woman, a woman leaning against nothing but God.

I find a broken bucker, neem flowers on the ground and an absence.

Had that been a body, had there been the finality of death, then it would have fed the very elements once her voice had entered the fire, returning, what had rust proceeded from them- her breath mingling with the air; her eyes reaching the brilliant sun; the mind speeding toward the full, effulgent moon; hearing to all the directions; the self dispersed in ether; the hairs of the body to be the aromatic herbs, the silver mass on her head to the trees; and fluids, blood, to the waters of the earth. The name alone would have remained (p.234).

It is this odd ability to reach confluence that Tulsi Badrinath gives us, where mortality and immortality are a skein In the writer's hand. Seasons, work, the heart of the city and its handful of people (she writes of what she knows) encased in the unusual pod of words, brings to us the final understanding that for the dancer, the guru is the ultimate reality, the unachievable and the perfect.

The dancer, the guru is the ultimate reality, the unachievable and the perfect. (And like all books which have success in the West, an elephant appears in due time!) Heat, light, fragrance, love and disillusionment, the tenderness of loving friends, relations and parents, the wonderful winter festival of music and dance in Chennai - this is the sense of confluence that the writer brings to us as her granary of received wisdom.

Tulsi Badrinath's Meeting Lives was on the longlist of the Man Asian Literary prize. It is easy to read and the translated verses from the Upanishads and biographical texts of revered Vedantins that liberally intersperse the narrative are a pleasant surprise. This allows the author to travel in time and history and connect the vignettes to the present time and the physicality of the storyscape.

Aditi inhabits and traverses many worlds in her search for meaning of her role and identity. She is a well-educated, well-informed, Vedanta-inspired, independent woman and introspects periodically on her various roles as daughter, friend, wife and mother and an empathiser of an abandoned woman. The storyline is fairly straightforward. There is hardly anything unusual about a plot that engages with a young woman's concerns about her married life and motherhood which unfold a sequence of disappointments and frustrations.

Aditi marries a person of her choice and has a baby who becomes her central focus as she tires to raise him single-handedly. The narrative throws up unusual challenges to the reader as Aditi sometimes goes into overdrive in her internal dialogues with mythological and historical characters to seek and find understanding, parallels, and solace. At times the joy of reading gets overwhelmed by cross references and requires a dogged approach to get through to the end.

Badrinath wanted her novel to reflect her life as an Indian and wanted it to be about India. Like her protagonist, Badrinath is a young mother, spiritually and philosophically informed, a trained Bharatnatyam dancer who loves to write fiction. So far, this bears up with her ideas of what she wanted to do with her story.

The storyline and its conceptualisation, however, suffer from weak ideation. Aditi struggles through her period of motherhood in trying to raise a baby who is a handful. She is disillusioned in her relationship and finds it hard to cope with being a single mother living in her parental home. The Juxtaposition of Thayee - an old, abandoned mother of four who lives on the street - with that of Aditi adds an interesting contrast. The only thing that ties them is their individual isolation and the fact that both live their lives in total surrender to what comes their way.

The part of the insensitive husband is meant to lend support to why Aditi feels abandoned and distraught when overworked and tired with the baby. This somehow does not wash.

Mothers all over the world are the primary nurturers and caregivers, even in bonded relationships. Her frustrations with not having her husband around for emotional and physical support cannot justify a full novel. It is her choice that Aditi rejects outside help and becomes a fulltime mother. The conflicts and insecurities are her own as she remains a dutiful daughter and unchallenging in her husband's life decisions. This novel needs a sequel to see how the situation gets resolved.

Motherhood and a spouse indifferent to child-rearing is hardly what exciting fiction is made of. What saves and enlivens this narrative are the beautiful verses from spiritual treatises cleverly interwoven with the running story. But if Badrinath is looking for a global audience then she will unfortunately fall into the trap of using spirituality to attract a foreign readership. Fortunately, the book had a detailed glossary and references pages.

The novel must be read not so much for its complex ideas but mostly to feel its inner fabric of soft and calm vibrations of positive resonance.

Motherhood: boon, curse, or a mixture of both? Prema Nandakumar Is maternity a boon or a curse or a mixture of both? At a time when the English-educated, jet-hopping, PC-savvy younger generation is scratching India's religion, spirituality and economic condition with a desecratory itch, it is refreshing to find Tulsi Badrinath reveal the infinite possibilities of consecration in the same material. She has chosen one atomic particle in this vast sea of Indian culture: motherhood. Is maternity a boon or a curse or a mixture of both? Is it woman alone who becomes a mother? Does a man never become a father? Meanwhile let us sanctify motherhood!

I wouldn't call Meeting Lives an unputdownable book. The reading calls for cogitations now and then, mulling over a legend, a quote, a phrase. And the apt citations from Devi Mahatmya to start and stop the chapters. Adroitly doing parikramas around familiar icons like Karaikkal Ammaiyar, Bhuvaneswari Devi, Jabala and Aryamba, Tulsi draws us back repeatedly to the narrative in one long present continuous.

To fling a vast, all-comprehensive look at Swami Vivekananda's writings or the voice of M S in one breath and then turn to the plastic surgeon in the hospital or the unkempt Thayee in the garden is done with ease, leaving behind no ragged edges. There lies Tulsi's triumph with a prose style which yet trembles on the edge of poetry.

So many mothers and their children. Just as Avvaiyar said that humanity had only two castes, Tulsi also gives a neat division for global motherhood in the reverie of Aditi about her mother and her son: "It is a strange irony of life. She spoilt me with her love, in the sense that I could never bear to accept the idea that there might be uncaring mothers. I spoilt her in the same way; she looks at Sanju now and is unable to see how a child might not be in exact harmony with its mother, configured to match her energies, her need for space."

Meeting Lives strains to be heard as poetry, precisely because the novelist has given spaces for the reader to fill up with his imagination. Not a very easy thing to do, as most of the time Aditi has to put up with the mundane happenings in this world of human affairs. Like her son's constant rushing around and getting hurt.

Or his serious questions: "Why doesn't Shiva Bhagavan change his clothes always?" However, everything is in its place, probably because the heroine is not unlike her creator. A dancer knows that she cannot afford to show stagefright, she cannot stop midway in the dance because the decorated 'rakkodi' on her head has come loose, and she must not stop smiling through even the most intricate jatis.

Aditi's training comes in good stead and her emotions are kept shut up from the public eye, even from little Sanju. He must not get hurt emotionally. Physical hurt can be cured by a plastic surgeon but one's mind does not get a sympathetic physician on the platter. It is the dance being performed by thousands of talented girls like Aditi who put their promises in cold storage for a while, when the child grows up. But then, can one's talent be un-freezed successfully after 10 or 12 years?

Writing itself can be a therapy for such girls. Perhaps it was for Tulsi Badrinath. Anyway Meeting Lives could help girls floundering in an identical dilemma. Do not lose your connection with your talent. Be like Thayee who deftly tears the coconut pinnae, collects the stalks and makes brooms. Be stolid. Retain your self-respect as Thayee does.

Remember, he who is unemployed becomes unemployable. If you cannot dance, write. Writing is an art invented by dancers who cannot dance. That divinity abiding in every being in the form of a writer, I bow my head before her to thank for this fresh breeze that has come into Indo-Anglia

What it means to be a mother? Alpana Chowdhury Mothers are generally taken for granted. Alternatively, they are deified to such an extent that the day-to-day effort of rearing children is lost in a halo of veneration. Dancer and writer Tulsi Badrinath's presentation of motherhood is refreshingly realistic.

Written in a fluid, ballet-like form, Meeting Lives focuses on the nitty-gritty of what it means to be a mother. Whether it is Swami Vivekananda's mother who had to forego her claims as mother so he could attain sainthood, or the bedraggled, abandoned Thayee, it has not been easy for any of these women to be a mother.

Aditi, the protagonist of the book, has been brought up by a doting mother to be an independent young lady. "Even if you get into the worst sort of trouble, come to me," her mother has always told her.

"We will sort it out together. Somehow." Reassuring words that have ensured that Aditi has had the most wonderful childhood; and yet it had not prepared her for life as a single mother. When her emotionless husband, for whom his career is all, re-locates to France after depositing Aditi with their son at her parental home, she ponders on the irony of her situation, "It is a strange paradox. I, who treasure solitude, have found myself alone in a marriage and very alone in bringing up my child. It wrings from me the kind of strength that I do not want to possess."

Extremely moving words these. Motherhood is not only about blissful fulfilment; rearing a hyper-energetic child, round the clock, single-handedly, can leave you feeling very drained. While Aditi copes with the help of prayers, her once-happy-go-lucky friend, Aasha, pops Prozac.

At a reunion of old classmates, Aditi notices that all of them share a common predicament, "Of once having been independent, earning an income, of wanting to make something of our lives but finding it more difficult than we had imagined."

But the book is not just about difficult choices and full-time, energy-draining mothering. Bringing up Sanju has many a delightful moment as well. "'Maa. Maa.' He nudges me urgently. 'Does Ravana have one big pillow or ten pillows under his heads?'"

Presenting a holistic picture of what motherhood entails, Badrinath has painted even tales from mythology with the brush strokes of realism, ending with the story of a mother who cannot give her child his father's name. "The deep and limitless ocean of love" is what she gives instead. Adopting his mother's name, the child, Satyakama Jabala grows up to be an enlightened sage. The Jabalopanishad is attributed to this son of an unwed mother. Uplifting examples all, perhaps this is the ultimate recognition of the significance of a mother's role.

The cover painting of a mother and her baby on a swing, by Buwa Shete, illustrates the narrative perfectly. Looking down tenderly at her little one who sleeps contentedly on her shoulder, the mother has to take her child with her even as she soars gently to greater heights.

Beautifully illustrated, Meeting Lives is a must-read for mothers, sons, daughters and, definitely, husbands and fathers.

The spiritual agent of change Meena Kandasamy First Published: 21 Dec 2008 12:17:00 AM IST, Last Updated: 21 Dec 2008 12:59:19 AM IST

Imagine a world where Swami Vivekananda and Adi Sankara are topics of drawing-room conversation, where pregnancy leads a woman to philosophize after reading the Brihadaranyaka Upanishad and the Garbha Upanishad, and where the myths of Markandaya, Krishna or Karaikkal Ammaiyar serve as reference-points in casual contexts. Imagine this world located within an Indian English novel. Meeting Lives, dancer-writer Tulsi Badrinath's debut novel, longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2007 tries and succeeds in this impossible feat.

Aditi is the beautiful, dutiful daughter parents pray for, she's an acclaimed dancer who has given up her artistic pursuit for the sake of bringing up her son, she's married to a selfish man she once loved, she's sympathetic to Thayee, the homeless woman in the neighbourhood - on some pages, this novel is about its protagonist Aditi's everyday existence. Other pages transport you to other worlds.

Reading this novel, like most spiritual pursuits, calls for sustained effort, immaculate patience and the dogged belief that the promised end is within one's reach. In an email interview, I point out to Tulsi that this is not the kind of fiction that one encounters daily. She is candid in her reaction: "That is a real compliment because I feel very strongly about the kind of rubbish that is being published these days under the name of literary fiction. This book was a reaction to such books that I could not connect with and yet were supposed to be about India and my life as an Indian."

Responding to a question about the extensive presence of philosophy in her novel (quotations from Swami Vivekananda's letters or Adi Sankara's treatises), she says, "I was disappointed while reading a lot of books that were supposed to be about the lives we lead in India because they seemed to completely ignore several aspects of our culture and the fact is that our lives are steeped in the spirituality of the land, whether we believe in god or not.

"I knew I wanted to map both the geographical space we live in and this spiritual space we live in, though I did not formulate it that way in my mind. I was delighted, therefore, to read one day that Raja Rao had said that in India we inhabit a horizontal geographical space and a vertical spiritual space - or words to that effect. Aha, I thought to myself, that's exactly what I want to depict but I'll have to find a way to do it."

Surely, Tulsi has taken the road less travelled: Every chapter starts and ends with a verse from the Devi Mahatmya, the religiosity is unmistakable even in the glossary that runs to more than 70 words.

I want to know how much of Aditi is autobiographical. After all, like Tulsi, she is a dancer, she is also seen writing a story and her father is a Vedanta specialist. Tulsi clarifies, "Aditi is not me. The book is not autobiography in that sense, however I would say that writing by its very nature is autobiographical as the author's own perceptions and experiences come through in the guise of fiction."

But the novel is not about Aditi alone. It devotes considerable space to little Sanju, her restless, energetic and accident-prone son, who asks some of the wisest questions contained in this book. In my search for layers of meaning, I ask Tulsi why he is always being fed some kind of food in literally every scene in which he puts in an appearance. She points out, "I think Aditi is very fearful that if she does not feed him enough, he will not thrive (she cannot even say the word 'die' but the fear is there). As Sanju's mother, at this stage in his life she is responsible for maintaining his annamayakosha..." As a subtext, Tulsi adds, "all this is at a subconscious level."

While depicting the relationship between Aditi and Sanju (Mother and Son), she also draws out the relationship that great sanyasis shared with their mothers. I am keen to know what made her choose these diverse stories.

"I wanted to explore the strong connection we have to the myths we have grown up with," Tulsi says. "I also wanted to explore Vedanta and one way to find a link between the theme of motherhood and Vedanta was the strong bond both Adi Sankara and Swami Vivekananda had with their mothers, a link that technically ought to have been broken the day they took sanyasa. So it was enlightening to read in the many biographies of the Ramakrishna Mission monks that they went beyond this technicality to the true essence of Vedanta, making arrangements to care for their parents whom they had left behind on taking their vows. The other angle was that I did not want to limit my novel to Aditi and Sanju's story. I wanted to suggest all mothers and their children, generation after generation. One way was to move across eras and centuries."

It is surprising that in a culture which celebrates motherhood, Tulsi has cautiously exposed that being a mother can be tiring and trying. We observe that Aditi's pursuit of her creative arts career comes to an abrupt end when she becomes a mother. Since Aditi's frustration almost echoes Alice Walker's in these respects, I ask the author if she would label Meeting Lives a feminist novel?

Tulsi disagrees that it was written as a feminist novel. "It was written from observations of life, as a woman, as a mother. The reason I focused on this unspoken aspect of motherhood was because I felt all the girls of my generation who had grown up and become mothers...my friends, strangers who talked to me... were struggling with these feelings but could not express them openly regardless of whether or not they had a career to follow."

Meeting Lives highlights the fact that women like Aditi are not alone. Her best friend Aasha faces a similar predicament. Yet, they are different - Aasha survives because of Prozac, and Aditi because of prayer.

Does Tulsi then think that prayer, in our present society, has been reduced to its therapeutic powers? "No, I don't mean to suggest that," she says. "It is scary to me that the only way Aasha could cope was to accept the prescription of Prozac. Aditi is luckier in finding her way out through prayer."

Unlike philosophical arguments, this novel is left open-ended. Though the selfishness of Murthy, Aditi's husband, is brought out in a subtle manner throughout, Aditi refuses to take any course of action that will confront/challenge him.

Tulsi explains, "I think she is slow in reacting and slow in assimilating all that is happening to her. That is why towards the end it seems to her that all the time life is unfolding and it is only from the standpoint of the future that one can make sense of it in retrospect. So her action lies in the future, beyond the scope of the book." The urge to see Aditi as an agent of action and change is constantly present. How then, does a reader come to terms with her inaction in the face of familial discord? Perhaps, by assuming that Aditi finds solace in the non-dualist philosophy that the phenomenal world is itself illusory!

Review by Mridula Murgai Meeting Lives is a book that traverses the lives of three generations of Aditi's family. As the synopsis of the book on its cover states " Who is Aditi?" Her various personas - such as that of a daughter, a mother, a student and a friend, and her "process of self-discovery " form the essence of this book.

Tulsi Badrinath is herself a multi-faceted person. She acquired her Bachelor's Degree in English Literature from Chennai, and then went on to do her Master's in Business Administration from Ohio University. After working in a corporate environment for four years she quit to devote herself to her writing and her dance. She is an experienced Bharatnatyam dancer, and has given many solo performances.

Throughout the book you see reflections of the author's many facets. The main protagonist Aditi is also a dancer, but one who has given up her own career to be a fulltime mother to her young son. The plot moves back and forth between the many periods of Aditi's life: her childhood, where the story of Vivekananda is interwoven into her father's narrative; her training as a dancer, learning the intricacies of a performance; and her life as a wife and mother "trying to articulate her emotions in a cultural ethos that sanctifies matrimony and deifies motherhood".

Tulsi Badrinath has a beautifully simple style of writing and she slips through many eras and generations seamlessly. It takes a few seconds to realize that you have traversed many years in a new paragraph, but then each generation and time period seems to bring a new story forward. The depiction of Thayee, a homeless woman, who is the other main character of the book, has been done eloquently. She reminds us of all these people who we see on the roadside, the ones we do not notice or let intrude into our daily lives. Here she seems to begin and end the narrative of Aditi's life.

Meeting Lives is Tulsi Badrinath's first novel. It is an impressive debut, and we look forward to her writing as she matures and hones her skills further. This first book succeeds very well in involving the reader, because the readers are drawn into the life of the protagonist and somewhere may find shades of their lives as wives and mothers. She writes about Vasudeva and Kamsa and Devaki - as a story refined and woven by Aditi and ends it by saying "Imperfect though it is, there is the sense of having wrested something of permanence from the day, something that will last ".

This is a book that needs to be read slowly, with love and care, since it moves from the story of Shankara to that of Vivekananda to that of Aditi's son, Sanju. Enjoy the style of writing, and the narrative of many eras of Aditi's life interspersed with the Upanishads and vignettes of Hindu mythology, as I did.

A first person narrative of a dancer who thrives on the rasa of her art - something that she's recently put aside to devote her time to being a mother. Meeting Lives traces the journey of a protagonist who's questioning her decisions at some points, and reveling in them, at others. Fleshing out the surreal joyride of motherhood, especially in the early stages, when everything's desperately fulfilling, the narrator describes her highs and lows and self doubt and anger, in a stream of consciousness style. She wonders if her son, on growing up, will only remember her as a monster (the kill-joy whose favorite word was 'no'), and she grabs your sympathy, as she puzzles over such no-exit dilemmas. She mulls over her life-decisions in her extremely exhausted state of mind and body, and how some were imposed on her, and some she took of her own free will. Other people (Amma, Murthy, Thayee) remain peripheral characters, except for the pipe-smoking, Vivekananda-quoting, parable-gyan-giver, Appa.

The fragmented fissures of a dancer-mother-woman's life, told in an earnest, searching tone.

Written by a danseuse, Tulsi Badrinath, 'Meeting Lives' truly is a debut that is far from today's ordinary ones. Badrinath has based her book on the process of self discovery that can largely be called the theme of this book. But the interlacing of mythological references, Indian value systems and heritage calls for a distinction.

The protagonist is Aditi, a dancer who is now adjusting to the role of a wife and of a mother to her precocious son Sanju. Aditi's life is now an amalgamation of so many such parts and she is now trying to fit all of these to create a cohesive, comprehensive whole. The story moves between three generations but does so seamlessly.

The book was also on the Man Asian Literary Prize longlist. Badrinath's writing is very simple and lucid and yet of great depth. It provokes the reader into a lot of reflection and analysis. It is unfair to just say that this is just an enjoyable read. It is, in fact, a very valuable reading experience.

In a society largely governed by certain traditionally held and seemingly rigid values, it is not often that a writer questions those and succeeds in weaving an interesting tale. Meeting Lives is an interesting exploration of such values, questioning those aspects of traditional societies which are considered taboo, and author Tulsi Badrinath uses a powerful style to take the reader on a journey into the recreation of the protagonist Aditi's life.

The narrative is easy and flowing, yet taut; it might lead the reader to pause and wonder what exactly she means to convey. Yet, there are instances where most women and especially married women (who have often given up their career for domestic peace and maternal concerns) will certainly identify with the plight of Aditi. The inner urge and passion to follow her heart makes Aditi go back to her dance. But in doing so, she is plagued with unending questions that make her wonder whether she has made the right decision in choosing to follow her desire.

The protagonist's continuous duel between pursuing her dreams, and whether or not she is becoming selfish, runs through the entire story. At one point, she asks, "In placing one's child at the centre of one's life, does one displace oneself? Does the progression from being self-centred to being selfless as a mother, necessarily involve a loss of self?" And again, consider the following statement: One moves from lower truth to higher truth, not from error to truth.

Meeting Lives explores many facets of the mother-child relationship, and in the process touches a chord somewhere. The author makes an attempt to juxtapose instances drawn from Hindu mythology, thereby leaving the reader to draw her own conclusion. Having been longlisted for the Man Asian Literary Prize 2007, the book is also a literary delight in terms of language, visual imagery, and the manner of presentation. For it makes you sit back, pause, question, and try to look within. Not many fiction writers succeed in doing so. But Tulsi Badrinath blends it well, and indeed shows a lot of promise.