Can a child ever really know their mother and can a mother ever really know her child? Though we're made to feel there should be a natural, inextricable bond here it's seldom ever so simple. It certainly isn't for Antara, the narrator of Avni Doshi's heart-aching and intensely thoughtful novel “Burnt Sugar”. As an adult she finds herself in the tricky situation of caring for her mother Tara who is showing signs of dementia. But Antara seldom felt cared for as a child when her mother abandoned her unhappy arranged marriage, joined a religious commune, had a passionate affair with an unpredictable artist and spent some time living as a beggar on the street. Given their turbulent history together, Antara naturally feels ambivalent about being her mother's carer and confesses in the novel's opening line “I would be lying if I said my mother's misery has never given me pleasure.” Painful emotions run deep throughout this narrative where Antara is haunted by her past and because of this burden struggles to negotiate her relationships with her husband Dilip, her often absent father and her mother in law. I felt intensely involved in this novel which asks poignant questions about the bonds of family and the nature of memory.
I appreciate how this tense mother-daughter relationship becomes deeper and more complex as the novel progresses. It's easy at first to label Tara as a villainous “bad mother” but, as her daughter probes into the past and considers the strain of familial expectations and society, Tara's rebelliousness feels in some ways justified. That's not to ignore the abuse Antara sustains, but it shows how there are many factors at play. Nor should Antara's point of view be taken as the whole truth since we as readers only see things through her perspective. I like how Doshi incorporates a mystery through the novel concerning a portrait of an anonymous man. As an artist Antara reproduces this figure in a series of drawings until he bears little resemblance to the original, but the question of who he is eventually becomes a crucial factor between the mother and daughter.
Antara's artwork is also one of the many intriguing ways in which this story approaches the question of memory. Like many people, Antara's touchstone to the past is through photographs which she peruses but the real circumstances of this history remain semi-clouded. One of Tara's doctors comments to the daughter how “memory is a work in progress. It's always being reconstructed.” Tara's perspective may be unreliable because she might be experiencing dementia, but Antara's memories seem to clash with the recollections of others at some crucial points. The question of who to trust remains throughout the novel. But Antara's trauma is clear and it's moving the way Doshi writes about how Antara learned to mentally distance herself from the present and her methods of self-preservation: “I disown so I can never be disowned.” This might ensure her survival but, of course, the tragedy is that relationships can't function if there isn't a healthy degree of trust.
As I get older I sometimes mull over how my childhood and upbringing have moulded my personality. Naturally I can dwell on the ways I might have been hurt or neglected at various points, but I also try to question how honest I am with myself about the memories that I mull over. This is difficult to do. No one can have a perfect childhood and I appreciate how this novel shows how “Humans grow up flagrantly, messily and no one was afforded the choice of looking away.” If we allow ourselves a degree of self-scrutiny we must own how we were participants rather than simply a victim of our past experiences. It was heartrending following Antara's journey in confronting her mother about the past, but it's even more touching how the narrator must radically confront herself in order to move forward.
