LIFEQUAKE : A Story of Hope and Humanity

A young woman’s quest for meaning and purpose takes a catastrophic turn when she is injured in a motorcycle taxi accident in Uganda and slips into a coma. It is not clear whether she will live – and if so in what state. A tornado has ripped through her brain. Miraculously Tarini Mohan opens her eyes three months later in a Delhi hospital with many impairments – but with her long-term memory intact. Her parents have their daughter back. As she begins to grasp the extent of her physical and cognitive difficulties twenty-four-year-old Tarini is in turmoil. She writes: “This wasn’t who I’d been wasn’t who I was inside or who I wanted to be. I didn’t want to live curled up on my parents or anyone else’s lap.” This book is her wise warm honest and funny account of how she regains control of her life. The beauty of this book is that Tarini never lets you pity her. She just draws you into her world as she learns to live her life on new terms; whether it is getting through the daily grind of therapies or handling relationships that have become infinitely more tangled especially the one with her long-term partner Nikhil. What shines through is that even after a “lifequake” Tarini remains much the same: outgoing spirited tenacious and determined to wrest joy and meaning from life. “For the gregarious” Tariniwrites reflecting on her difficulties with speech “a brief moment of repetition is a small price to pay for being heard.”