Of Mothers and Other Perishables

by Radhika Oberoi

Of Mothers and Other Perishables is an exquisite articulation of grief. It is also the sharp-eyed tale of a city tethered to violence and bursting with nazms. The morbidly funny voice of a dead woman echoes through the walls of her beloved storeroom, a compact space that contains her earthly belongings: cupboards full of silk sarees and baby clothes, albums of black-and-white photographs, a collection of vinyl records, a record player, old leather suitcases, an ebony-and-gold sewing machine. She reminisces about the past, and about the disease that causes her untimely death. Her storeroom becomes a quaint Bioscope of her life in Delhi as a young woman in the 1970s and 80s, decades that bring her romance, marriage, motherhood. The novel oscillates between the dead woman’s yearnings and the immediacy and excitement of a parallel narrative — her daughter’s. Nicknamed The Wailer (from the band Bob Marley and the Wailers), the dead woman’s daughter offers a sardonic glimpse into the world of advertising — the night before a presentation, temperamental colleagues, the buzz of writers and art directors at work. But the peculiar dynamics of The Wailer’s advertising firm alter drastically, when protests break out in the city of Delhi. Protesters swarm the streets, hollering against a new bill that persecutes the Muslim community. A Muslim art director is drawn to the pulsing heart of this movement. The Wailer, too, is inadvertently involved. Both narratives — the deceased mother’s digressional memories, and The Wailer’s palpable reality — also tell of Toon, The Wailer’s younger sister, who is the CEO of a coffee startup. Their worlds converge to offer shards of the past, and navigate through a turbulent present. Personal and political histories collide in this haunting tale of many betrayals.