Tamarind Mem

A beautifully evocative novel about the ties of love and resentment that bind mothers and daughters Kamini has recently moved to Canada. Plunged into the past by acrimonious telephone calls and odd postcards from her mother in India she tries to make sense of the eccentric family she has left behind. Why was her mother so bitter with her lot in life? And where did she disappear when Dadda was away on business? Kamini?s mother Saroja is an old woman when we meet her travelling alone across India. As a young woman we learn her tongue was so sharp that her mother forced her to eat bitter gourd to blunt its edge and people nicknamed her Tamarind Mem. Saroja?s dream of becoming a doctor was thwarted when she was married off to a railway officer almost twice her age who expected his household to run like clockwork. Saroja tried being the perfect wife but was eventually faced with a difficult choice she could either break the rules of the railway colony and follow her whims or leave her discarded dreams to her daughters and remain the perfect memsahib. Years later Saroja?s decisions return to haunt Kamini... Praise for Anita Rau Badami Winner of the 2001 Commonwealth Prize (Canada/Caribbean Region)