Sarojini's Mother

Loss and Motherhood

Is motherhood just a biological concept?

In Sarojini's Mother, Sarojini-Saz-Campbell comes to India to search for her biological mother. Adopted and taken to England at an early age, she has a degree from Cambridge and a mathematician's brain adept in solving puzzles. Handicapped by a missing shoebox that held her birth papers and the death of her English mother, she has few leads to carry out her mission and scant knowledge of Calcutta, her birthplace.

In this emotionally intense journey, Sarojini finds a guide, close friend and confidante in Chiru Sen, an Elvis lookalike. The excerpt below shows us the depth of their friendship with Sarojini confessing a deep-rooted grief to Chiru:

The visitors' room was filling up quickly with the family of a young man who'd died from a head wound in a traffic accident. His relatives had come to take him home. His grandmother was weeping, comforted by her son, the victim's father. Attending physicians were busy preparing the death certificate. I led Saz out to the parking lot to catch a breath of fresh air.

'See what I've done!' Saz was uncontrollable, and I tried to pacify her as best as I could.

'One woman in jail, the other practically dead. All because I had this stupid idea of searching for a mother. How ridiculous! Couldn't I have lived my life without one? Did I have to ruin the lives of others? It would've been so much better if Jamuna didn't know that I even existed, if she thought I'd died in the riots or was given away by the Shuklas to some stranger. She'd have searched, but sooner or later known that it was futile. Urvasi too. She'd have wasted her time in the chat room, then given up. At least, they'd be safe.'

An ambulance arrived to take the accident victim to the crematorium, and we moved out of its path.

'All along I thought this was the way left for me to . . .'

'For what, Saz?' I asked gently.

'To find out if my mother could give me a reason to go on living.' She gave me a strange look, then spoke in a voice I didn't recognize from before, 'You don't know what I mean, do you?' I shook my head. Those were the very same words she had uttered when I'd asked her what she'd do if she indeed met her mother in Calcutta. Words that didn't make any more sense now than they did then.

'There is something you don't know, that I haven't told you or anybody here. It didn't seem necessary to go back and bring it up, bring out all that pain once again. Let it stay where it is, I told myself . . .'

Taking out a cigar that I kept in my pocket for unexpected situations such as this, I lit up and passed it over to Saz. Her fingers were shaking.

'What pain . . . will you tell me about it?' I asked her. Breathing out some smoke, she seemed lost in thought. 'It is something I share with Jamuna and Urvasi . . . with every mother who's lost her child.'

'What are you saying!'

'Life seemed pointless after Lucy went into coma. Surrounded by blank walls, I went numb. Lucy, dead but breathing, scared me. I wanted to run away, but she called me back; she was the only one I had, my only mother. I didn't want to lose any more, thought it better to lose myself.' Saz looked up at me. 'You must think I'm crazy telling you all this.'

I put my arm around her and held her close.

'So I lived like I'd never lived before. Lived rough, tortured myself, did things that didn't make any sense afterwards. I got myself with child . . .'

'Do you mean . . . ?' I brought my face close to hers to hear her clearly.

'I became a mother while I was still very young, then got rid of my child before it was born.' Her lips quivered, 'It was the right thing to do. I wasn't ready to be a mother, and it was unfair to land the baby in the mess I was in. I did what a smart woman would do.

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Join Sarojini in her journey to (re)discover the nuances of biological and familial relationships.