Book Review: Girl In White Cotton, by Avni Doshi

 

The mother-daughter relationship is supposed to be a special bond, which is unique and can’t be replicated. Antara too has a special relationship with her hippie mother, though it is a tad different. Brought up by her divorced mother in an ashram in Pune and on the streets, and by her grandparents in a catholic boarding school, artist Antara has more than her share of grudges and bruises, and she remembers each of them as her mother slips into Alzheimer's disease. American Husband Dilip isn’t too pleased when Antara takes her mother in to look after her and Dilip’s mother is even less so, but Antara doesn’t shy away from her filial duties.

Antara is such a fascinating character that at times I wanted her to go downhill like her mother did, just to see how far she would go. She does slide down many times, though, for most of the story, if one ignores the past flashbacks, Antara is not very different from any other modern Indian married woman. Antara has many, many dark secrets, a few of which she shares with her special friend Purvi and one is reminded time and again that Antara’s lifestyle isn’t normal, though Antara is totally placid on the surface. Each time I thought Antara was beyond the point of no return, she surfaces, in a manner that doesn’t look too strained or contrived and holds up her life, marriage and the baby who arrives towards the end.  

Avni Doshi’s debut novel Girl In White Cotton is set in Marathi speaking Pune, in a world of Mozarin biscuits, middle class housing societies and maids. When I reached the middle of the novel, I was suddenly reminded of Shinie Antony’s novel The Girl Who Couldn’t Love, which also has a very similar troubled and tortured mother-daughter relationship in the background. However, unlike Shinie Antony who uses the rusty relationship to tell a very clever story, Avni Doshi’s story is the relationship itself. In impeccable native English that has shades of Arundhati Roy, Doshi travels back and forth across time zones and relationships, opening small memories every few paragraphs and then slamming the drawer shut or opening it even wider. Just as Shinie Antony’s Roo did in The Girl Who Couldn’t Love by sleeping with her brother, Antara too extracts her pound of flesh from her mother (or rather her mother’s boyfriend), but the similarity ends there.

Girl In White Cotton, which has been shortlisted for the Booker Prize 2020, is an excellent read and I highly recommend it. This novel goes by the name Burnt Sugar in the UK.