Author: Rinki Bhattacharya
Translator(s)/ Edito: Rinki Bhattacharya
Publisher: Sage Publications
Year: 2006
Language: English
Pages: 197
ISBN/UPC (if available): 076193510X
Description
Janani, or mother as the creator of life, defines this narrative collection. The book brings together autobiographical writings of women from many walks of life—noted authors, artists, academics—to share their experiences of being mothers, daughters, or both. The accounts combine memory and nostalgia in nuanced detail, making each narrative heart-warming and, at times, profoundly challenging.
The contributors abandon their public faces to provide humane, intimate and compelling narratives. The collection includes accounts of adoptive motherhood, step mothering and single motherhood. On the one hand, the reader encounters the wrenching pain of an abortion, while on the other, the choice of a woman determined not to be a mother. The Janani stories vividly explore the whole gamut of motherhood.
Immensely readable, the volume has a wide appeal-not just for mothers and daughters, but for fathers and sons as well, in fact, for all those who celebrate the rare gift of human relationships.
Contents
FOREWORD
Motherhood Revisited by JASODHARA BAGCHI
PREFACE
OUR MOTHERS
My Mother
BHARATI RAY
My Mother, My Daughter
MAITREYI CHATTERJI
When Alamelu Shrugged
C S LAKSHMI
An Outsider at Home
NEELA BHAGWAT
Her Infinite Variety
ROSHAN G SHAHANI
The Cross a Woman Carries
URMILA PAWAR
My Mother’s Gardens
TUTUN MUKHERJEE
Stepmother at Seventeen
MAITHILI RAO
OURSELVES
Motherhood and Me
DHIRUBEN PATEL
A Mother, Myself
KAMALA DAS
A Delicate Bondage
PRATIBHA RANADE
Motherhood: Not a Joke!
NABANEETA DEV SEN
Learning to be a Mother
SHASHI DESHPANDE
No Baby, No Cry!
DEEPA GAHLOT
OUR CHILDREN
More a Friend
JYOTSNA KAMAL
Letter to My Children
MALLIKA SARABHAI
Paint and Nursery Rhymes
REKHA RODWITTIYA
The Colour of Hibiscus
NITA RAMAIYA
The Mother Who Wasn’t
ANWESHA ARYA
GLOSSARY
ABOUT THE EDITOR AND CONTRIBUTORS