While describing a tense moment between her mother and herself, Rani Neutill notes, “We remain locked in a cradle of enmity, sweating, grasping for air, our faces so close that I could feel her searing breath.” This sentence pretty much captures the deeply turbulent yet fiercely intimate relationship between a mother and a daughter, recalled with acute vividness by Neutill in her memoir Do You Know How Lucky You Are?. Set primarily in India and America, Neutill’s transnational memoir locates the mother-daughter relationship within the larger context of postcolonialism. Without being too analytical, Neutill shows how personal relationships are influenced by historical as well as political circumstances. The simultaneously tender and acerbic nature of the mother-daughter relationship is a reflection of precisely such circumstances.
The memoir opens with “I DON’T WANT TO SEE my mother,” a statement that is soon upended as Neutill confronts her ailing mother and remembers that same mother at her most fierce and overwhelming. In the process, Neutill confronts herself and her past too. The memoir, then, becomes a record of this dual confrontation on the writer’s part – a tale of witnessing and reconciliation. The memoir is also an ardent act of mourning, not to overcome the loss of...
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