Hot Water by Bhavika Govil is an intimate portrait of a family of three—Mira, Ashu and their Ma, an atypical family where the three feel just enough on some days and woefully incomplete on others. Mira, soon to turn nine-years old, buoys with a chirpy innocence that’s yet to be adulterated by the ways of the world. She thinks Ashu, her 14-year-old brother who has just entered the ‘Pew Burty Club’, has a bigger share of questions without answers than her even though he is older. Their Ma is a far cry from a typical mother; she tells her children that she picked them from a shop when she was in the mood and had to keep them as the shop didn’t have a return policy. She forgets basic household chores on many days, leaves Ashu and Mira in the care of her colleague and friend Mrs. Shome and disappears for long stretches of time. She conjures up witty, wry-humoured answers to Mira’s credulous queries and builds a world insulated from the past. Though the siblings share a heart-warming bond, Ashu finds himself excluded from this fragile, precariously built world where Ma gels easily and effortlessly with Mira. Ma’s lack of love for him, evident to us right from the book’s prelude, puzzles him and Mira equally.
When Ma enrolls Ashu and Mira for swimming lessons during summer, a string of events unfolds that cause the very fabric of their family to come apart at the seams. It is befitting and intelligent that the novel is split into eight sections named after terms connected with swimming lessons. When the author writes ‘summer had ripened like a peach and was now soft, quivering to burst into a new form, full of sweetness that wasn’t for everyone’ (p. 215), she figuratively hints at how the time is ripe for change, for untold secrets to pop up.
Told from the perspective of the trio, Ma’s portions detail her past and are rendered in italics. They are unnamed, subtly hinting that in a cause-effect relationship, the effects are more obvious and striking than the underlying cause itself which may even remain a mystery. In fact, Ma is referred to by her name Leela in the novel only occasionally indicating how a mother’s identity as an individual is often overlooked. While Mira and Ma’s voices are in first person, Ashu’s uses third person giving a sense of distance he is forced to maintain at home and in school.
‘When he was little, he used to put all his energy into trying to figure out what would make Ma happy. He shape-shifted his personality every other week. Tried to mould himself into a version that Ma would like. He eventually picked this one. He turned from loud to quiet, from active to passive, from present to barely there, and though he realized that Ma didn’t love this version of him either, it seemed acceptable to her’ (p. 184).
In writing that is lucid, astute and sensitive, the novel scores most of its brownie points in portraying how children are worst hit by what grown-ups utter and do. Ashu and Mira’s vulnerability and naivety leave us moist eyed. When Mira remarks that some days Ma is like a butterfly but some days, she is a moth, her inability to comprehend her mother who should ideally guide her in understanding the world better, is moving. Ashu’s coming to terms with changes associated with puberty, his trying to understand why people fall in love as he pines for understanding from his best friend Rahul and acceptance from his Ma are heartbreaking.
Leo Tolstoy wrote in Anna Karenina, ‘All happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way’. Maybe that is why stories of unhappy families are ubiquitous. And therefore, the subject of dysfunctionality in family runs the risk of feeling trite and contrived. Bhavika Govil’s Hot Water buckles in the face of this risk as it fumbles a good deal in portraying Ma. An obstinate child, a reckless college-goer, a mother who with her quirks and way of life strips her children of their innocence prematurely, deprives them of a simple life filled with friends and even jeopardizes their safety; the author leaves room aplenty to detest Ma (Leela) without providing substantial ground to empathize with her. Ma’s character that deserves clarity and depth is glaringly shallow. Many of her decisions and actions are marred by logical glitches and emotional inconsistency.
Albeit flawed, Bhavika Govil’s Hot Water, with a heart-rending finish, is a tender exploration of the weight of hidden shame, guilt and untold secrets, secrets that alter and wreck lives, a burden too difficult to shoulder, especially for children.
Divya Shankar, an engineering and sciences graduate, with seven years’ working experience in the semiconductor industry is currently a stay-at-home mother, a freelance writer and an avid reader with a soft corner for Indian literature. Literary fiction, historical fiction and short stories are her favourite genres.