From Son to Stranger

Book Review

Relationships add much beauty and meaning to life. Family ties play a vital role in keeping people happy especially in old age. The holiest of all relationships on earth must be the mother-child bond. The mother brings the child to the earth from her own body and feeds it also from her own body. For quite a protracted while, the infant is part of the mother. This bond is hard to break. If it does break, it leaves much debris and more scars.

Ritu Lalit’s first non-fiction book, From Son to Stranger: Coping with Loneliness, is a poignant account of a mother-son relationship that went sour. What makes it heart-touching is that it is her own story told in the most candid manner possible. The elder of her two sons became estranged leaving a vacuum in the author’s psyche which she had to deal with in order to carry on with her life. The book is the story of what she did and what similarly estranged parents can do.

A mother-child relationship undergoes a lot of changes as the child grows up. There is a natural weaning as the child becomes more and more independent as an individual. There is the rebellion of adolescence in the process. That is followed by the inevitable compromises of the youth. Then comes the mature understanding and acceptance of the adult.   

Not every person grows up into that maturity with the ease of a flower blossoming. “We’re human and sometimes being human means tears and loss,” says Ritu in the introductory chapter. Being human means to err and errors bring tears and loss. What matter are the lessons one should learn from the errors.

Again, few people seem to learn the right lessons. “The only time adult children seem happy to see their parents is when they want to enlist unpaid babysitting services for their children and pets,” says Ritu rather wryly. The world has changed a lot and relationships are also commercialised today like everything else. Ritu has rightly put a question mark on parents and the society. “Gone are the days when parents were authority figures,” she says, “now we are the ATM cards and providers of … expensive luxuries.” It is a child-centred world that we have forged today. Our psychologists, pedagogues, policy makers and the judiciary, everyone proclaims loud and clear the child’s rights. But no one seems to understand the flip side of the approach: shaping narcissists and bullies. Even parents end up as victims.

Ritu takes us to vridashrams in the National Capital Region and shows us parents who are dumped there by their own children. Dumped cruelly. Meet Maya, for instance, who was brought to Delhi from her village on the pretext of a pilgrimage to Akshardham temple. She never reached the temple. On the way, their vehicle stopped on the Delhi-Faridabad Highway apparently for the passengers to relieve themselves. Maya found herself left on the highway on the side of which her cloth bundle was left as a metaphor for her situation.

Ritu has done much research before writing this book and we meet many estranged parents and their pathetic plight in old-age homes. She has also done much research on how psychology can be of help to estranged parents. She explains certain models and solutions suggested by well-known psychologists. She also looks at the role of spirituality. Meditation can be of immense help, for example, the book shows how the author derived more than solace from her meditations.

The narrative has the potential to grip the reader. It is not just a straightforward rendition of a tale of estrangement. It is interspersed with the experiences of some real people, solutions suggested by experts, and the journal entries of the author herself. The unsent letters she wrote to her estranged son stipple the narrative touching our hearts in an emotive way. The book ends with a long and final unsent letter that leaves a lingering feeling in the heart of the reader.

The book is not sentimental at any place. Ritu knows what she is doing. She has come to terms with her pain and grief. She has accepted it with resignation and, more importantly, mature understanding. Here we meet a mother who went through the various phases of a traumatic experience: blame, guilt, depression, shame, self-contempt, self-questioning, understanding and acceptance.

The book can be an inspiration to all estranged parents and their adult children. Others can benefit by a deep awareness of a severe malady that has gripped our society today: commercialisation of vital relationships.