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Kishwar Desai’s Origins Of Love examines the surrogate motherhood industry in India against the backdrop of desperate parents from the Western world.
Review by Anjana Basu
Womb renting has been proving fairly lucrative for many women in India who are using it to bring much needed money home to their families – the more so since many of the womb rental requests come from couples in the UK or US. This is where Kishwar Desai’s second novel begins – with an HIV positive English baby in an incubator and no clue as to how she was infected, barring the fact that she was carried in an Indian womb.
Desai’s social activist cum detective Simran, whom we met in her first novel Witness The Night, is determined to find out how baby Amelia was infected, the more so since the child was conceived and carried at a fertility clinic run by her friend Anita and her husband.
Simran has become a single parent by adopting the girl Durga from Witness The Night but that hasn’t stopped her irrepressible mother from trying to find her a husband. Desai wisely refrains from weaving too much of the previous novel into this so that Origins of Love stands on its own. She moves the location to London, a city she knows well and introduces Kate and Ben, a couple desperate for a child, so desperate that Kate is willing to go in for surrogacy and spend nine months in India. Each chapter brings in a new scenario widening the picture that Desai draws of a world where women can be easily exploited and unscrupulous doctors can make fortunes for themselves.
Simran’s investigations into Amelia’s origins and the death of the baby’s English parents runs parallel to Kate’s determination to find the right womb for her child and to Anita’s futile hunt for an embryo shipment that has been hijacked by the police and diverted to another hospital in Mumbai, with slices of the life of Sonali who thinks that renting out her womb will spare her abuse from her pimp Rohit.
It’s a tale linked by wombs and emotions – with even a touch of romance as Simran meets Edward, a serial sperm donor and begins to find him attractive. These stories make for compulsive reading in themselves.
Desai is far more at home in the London, Mumbai, Delhi scenario than she was with the dark undercurrents of the Punjab. She has a deft hand when she draws the currents and cross currents of official corruption, including the ambitions of female politicians who find themselves without heirs in a country where power is usually passed down bloodlines. The fact that she was a journalist is very apparent in her detailed research.
The novel is not primarily a piece of detective fiction – Simran is a nosy activist who goes asking questions where she is not welcome to help a friend. However, given the fact that the book focuses on the social consequences of surrogate motherhood, it isn’t necessary for Desai to provide a thriller, though there are thrilling undercurrents and a Bengali villain.
Against Western affluence and incomprehension, Desai sets a world of Indian poverty. Never, she suggests, will the twain meet, though occasionally the two worlds can co-exist peacefully side by side.
Publishers: Simon & Schuster
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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