Em and The Big Hoom

by Jerry Pinto

'A beautiful book, a child's-eye view of madness, full of love, pain, and, unaccountably, much wild comedy' Salman Rushdie

In a tiny flat in Bombay Imelda Mendes - Em to her children - holds her family in thrall with her flamboyance, her manic affection and her cruel candour. Her husband - to whom she was once 'Buttercup' - and her two children must bear her 'microweathers', her swings from laugh-out-loud joy to dark malevolence.

Brilliantly comic and almost unbearably moving, Jerry Pinto's portrait of a woman finding it difficult to stay sane - and what happens to those who cannot help but love her - is one of the most powerful and original fiction debuts of recent years.

Genres: Fiction, India, Indian Literature, Contemporary, Mental Health, Family, Literary Fiction

224 pages, Hardcover

First published April 1, 2012

About the author

Jerry Pinto is a Mumbai-based Indian writer of poetry, prose and children's fiction in English, as well as a journalist. His noted works include, Helen: The Life and Times of an H-Bomb (2006) which won the Best Book on Cinema Award at the 54th National Film Awards, Surviving Women (2000) and Asylum and Other Poems (2003). His first novel Em and The Big Hoom was published in 2012.

Reviews

[Samadrita · Rating 5 out of 5]

The tragedy of words like 'touching' and 'poignant' is that they have become hackneyed to the point they only give rise to skepticism if one spots them in a blurb. And yet I can't think of word choices more apt at the moment.

After having had nothing but disdain for the present crop of Indian Dan Brown wannabes and writers of mythological retellings and nauseating romances riddled with blatant sexism, featuring terminally ill fiancees and 'hot girl on campus' and what other pathetic genre tropes have you, my faith in contemporary Indian literature (sans the Kiran & Anita Desais, Amitav Ghoshs, Vikram Seths, and Arundhati Roys) has been revived all thanks to this critically acclaimed gem of a novel. Rejoice Indian readers! Do not abandon hope ye all.

It comes as a blessing when your mind is still fresh from the tvshow-esque humor of White Teeth and you are confronted with a good instance of the kind of tragicomic family drama you consider free of any intent of providing amusement at the cost of insidious disparagement. 'Em and the Big Hoom', which is only but a few modifications away from being the story of my growing years, is suffused with the kind of humor which delineates the comedy of quotidian life while attempting to pare down its tragedies.

For a country whose pop culture validates the use of the word 'mad' as an excuse for dehumanizing the psychologically unwell, here's an author who cuts through the bullshit of stereotypes, accepted misconceptions, and whatever it is that sets the cash registers ringing and keeps us stuck in the dark ages, and creates an endearing, true to life portrait of a Goanese, Roman Catholic family in the Bombay of 70s-80s. A family of four ensconced in a love for each other as much as an acute distrust for life's caprices. An unusual but not dysfunctional family conjured from reality and not the fantasy of Bollywood-ish tear-inducing schmaltziness.

The bumbling, manic depressive, bipolar disorder-afflicted, suicidal, terrifying and fascinating matriarch Imelda, called Em by her offsprings, is the centre of this family with her dreadful mood swings, her chain-smoking of cheap beedis and addiction to countless cups of tea, and her capability of antagonizing and praising her children in the same sentence. Em is loved, feared and despised in equal measure while Augustine aka the Big Hoom is the reliable better half of volatile Em, the father with the stolid outer facade, a 'paragon' of patience, the iron wall which refuses to be shaken even in the most distressing of circumstances.

"Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it, as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again."

The young narrator, who unravels the mysteries of his mother's life, takes the reader on a journey through Bombay of the last few decades, its socio-cultural quirks, the hilarity of Imelda and Augustine's courtship years, their unspoken, enduring love for each other, and the family's bitter battle with Em's post-partum depression.

There's something to be said for a book which makes you tear up and laugh at the same time. And I am not exaggerating or making a good use of rhetoric in this context.
For those of you, like me, adequately suspicious of blurbs, you can take those words of high praise from Rushdie and Amitav Ghosh at face value here. For this one at least you can more than suspend your disbelief.

[Reading_ Tamishly · Rating 5 out of 5]

*this book should be put in the list of 'Most Difficult Books to Read'


'There seemed to be nothing I could do: no preventive medicine, no mental health vitamins, no mind exercises in the cool of the morning.'

The moment I picked up this book, I never thought that this book would make such a huge impact. I was sobbing uncontrollably towards the end. It's relatable, it's heartbreaking, it's phenomenal. It's real. It's unbreakable. It's deep and ugly and beautiful.

The main theme is mental health - the plot involves a family with someone who has manic-depressive episodes alongwith schizophrenia and how the remaining three family members (the husband, the son and the daughter) deal with the situation. The narrator is the son of the main character, Em. The Hoom is their father. The title has little to do with the overall story or the characters.

Regarding the characters, they are so real and happening. I rate this book a full 5 stars because of the characters, their realistic thoughts and actions as well as for revealing their human nature of showing frustrations and restraints because of family and for something that someone outside the family would never understand.

Everything about life is not rosy and sweet; mental health is something we will have to cope with even though it is something which is really difficult to understand or 'figure out' and getting it 'cured' or just saying 'just try to stay happy' or 'do not keep thinking about it'.

I appreciate this little book for the realistic approach in the character representation and the writing style. I like how the story deals everything in a very realistic way when it comes to accepting the fact of having someone with mental health problems in the family, regarding the treatment and the overall care of the person, of feeling the void of missing the person even when the person is right there with them all, of how others see the family with someone with mental health issues.

This book is so damn important to me. It's so worth it.

[Praj · Rating 2 out of 5]

I've known her. Since the days when I was pudgy child panting from the summertime games, grabbing the large glass of cold crystalline water right off her benevolent hand. I've known her through those ritualistic morning temple walks with my grandmother buying radishes from her garden. When she birthed three lovely children gifting them with her naivety of grey irises, I've known her. But, she doesn't know who I am, not anymore. Not even my mother, at times, who when heavily pregnant with me relied on this woman’s help. The peaches and cream complexion mislaid among the heavily sunburnt dermal cells, the hair haphazard in monochromatic shades demarcating the fading cheap black dye. Every alternate hour of the day, tucking her flimsy end of her sari in the folds of the wrinkled waist, she immaculately stands at the corner of the street fervently gesturing the obstinate transparency of the muggy air. Her incessant ramblings never cease to stop as she makes a detour to her house and then back again to the street corner shaking her head in dismay at the unsuccessful symphony of her hands and the invisibility of delusional opaqueness. She has her “good” days and “bad” days and then those daily loquacious outings reprimanding an unknown entity with the bus horn honking behind her. “Poor thing, she’s gone mad!”..........”Tsk, Tsk, what a shame... her brain is devoid of oxygen supply....”......” What can her family do? She’s a bit mental...”

The Indian Mental Health care system has three main terminologies in the layperson’s world, “Alcoholic”, “drug addict” and “mad/mental”. The third one is dismissed as a mere infliction, something that simply exists. The bulimic, anorexics are “mad” for not eating or puking, bi-polarity, schizophrenia is just some “madness”, post-partum...” the mother has gone “mad”.... The psychiatric ward at the J.J. Hospital or the infamous Thane hospital is dreaded more than submitting a blood sample for an HIV+ testing. Disregarding the essential need to categorise the mental illness treatments, majority of patients are shackled under a general psychiatric ward like cattle tied in overcrowding shed alongside alcoholics, drug addicts, for they are all “mad”. The Indian Mental Health Care system is in shambles with inadequate education imparted for the needy.


Mad is an everyday, ordinary word. It is compact. It fits into songs. As the old Hindi film song has it, M-A-D, mad mane paagal. It can become a phrase – ‘Maddaw-what?’ which began life as ‘Are you mad or what?’. It can be everything you choose it to be: a mad whirl, a mad idea, a mad March day, a mad heiress, a mad mad mad mad world, a mad passion, a mad hatter, a mad dog. But it is different when you have a mad mother. Then the word wakes up from time to time and blinks at you, eyes of fire. But only sometimes, for we used the word casually ourselves, children of a mad mother. There is no automatic gift that arises out of such a circumstance. If sensitivity or gentleness came with such a genetic load, there would be no old people in mental homes.


Unlike the vile stench of the Mahim creek spewing endless annoying grimace, I shall desist from the audacious display of my personal exasperation resisting the simmering urge to execute a meticulous anatomical bookish dissection. Abiding the serenity of the humble candlestick lit at the altar every Wednesday Novena at St. Michael Church and keeping my elitist biases at bay, my apprehensions over Pinto’s prose coagulate within the blurry stream of textual insipidness. Gratified as I am of Jerry Pinto for risking the unchartered waters of Indian Fiction dwelling on the neglected facets of mental health and suicide stemming in the narrow urban lanes of Indian diasporas humiliated by the medically privileged units and cementing the festering ignorance between the diversified therapeutic health care systems , nonetheless, somewhere among the crammed wordings of a lacklustre prose the quintessence of Imelda (Em) is misplaced , pick pocketed from a substantial subject matter that could have been safeguarded by a well-crafted assiduous manuscript. The journey of Augustine from Old Goa to a burgeoning Bombay, the vulnerability of a family in dealing with a system well-suited for the moneyed, fraudulent and mentally sound, languidly jogs around hoping to find a decent outlet through the cups of Nescafe and a faint whiff of a beedi.


Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself......... At times, when I was young, I wanted to be inside the dark tower so I could understand what it was like. But I knew, even then, that I did not want to be a permanent resident of the tower. I wanted to visit and even visiting meant nothing because you could always leave. You're a tourist; she’s a resident..


All is not lost, yet. Only if Pinto had found a better editor, a smooth platform to run his thoughts and not jam-packed like a horde of sardines parallel to one bedroom claustrophobic continuation, this book would have been superior. The incessant human lines at Breach Candy hospital, needles piercing after numerous taps on swollen veins, the phenyl reeking white floors of J.J. Hospital, the calming doses of Lithium Carbonate and the schizophrenic subsistence of Em behind the flaky walls of a small flat repudiate to be empowered like the gallant Marine Drive breeze through this half-baked prose. A bottle of Old Monk and garlic chicken dry, however have a tale of their own. So does the archaic Indian Penal Code and the nauseating attitude of Indians towards patients of cerebral maladies.

[Sharanya · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four-and-a-half. I propped this book up on the water cooler because I did not want to stop reading it while filling my bottle. End of review.

[Paul Bryant · Rating 2 out of 5]

My reaction to this novel




Narrative version : okay that’s mildly amusing oh it’s all about the parents I see oh the mother’s a manic depressive and the dad’s not now it’s about how they got together zzzzzz

The blurbs say MUCH WILD COMEDY and HOWLINGLY FUNNY so I read half of it and got myself hooked up to one of those devices which measure the amount of fun you are having. So sensitive is this device, it can detect the merest twitch of facial musculature which may indicate a suppressed smirk or pleasurable eyebrow lift. The result was



checking all other reviews, everyone’s like



and



I have been a BAD novel reader. I’m going to sit on the naughty step now.



I may never come out of my Russian house again

[Sairam Krishnan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I was a participant in the author's fiction writing workshop a couple of weeks ago in Bangalore, and one of the first things I noticed about him was how effortlessly funny he was. It made an impression then, and today as I read and finished ' Em & the Big Hoom', I'm again struck by the number of times he actually made me laugh in so dark a story.

It's a gorgeous book, in more ways than one. The story is beautifully told and the characters feel familiar, like we've always known them. This is the work of an established craftsman, this feeling of familiarity, an identification with the text. The author has received high praise for this book, and just as I finished reading it, I saw that it had just won the Hindu Literary Prize as well. The event was in Chennai, where I now live, but I chose to stay home and read the book itself, which I think was the better choice.

Most reviews of the book fail to point out that it is first and foremost a love story, and there are some scenes that will break any reader's heart. I loved this book, and have read few others as moving.
I have stayed away from describing anything from the book because I cannot do the story justice with my descriptions. You'll have to read it and have the words sweep you off your feet.

The author taught me a bit of writing that week in Bangalore, but reading this book showed me how much I still have to learn.

Very highly recommended. Do not miss this book.

[Ahtims · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is not for:
1. the weak minded
2. the prude
3. the juvenile

A powerful work dealing with a scary subject - the mind of a "mad" person.
The boy lives in a 1 BHK house in Mumbai with his maniac depressive beedi smoking mother Em, who doesn't consider discussing sex (or any other subject on earth) with her children a taboo, the stoic dependable father, Hoom , and the quiet elder sister, Susan.
Their lives are full of trials and tribulations as Em often tries to commit suicide, albeit unsuccessfully. Life with her is a constant adventure, an ongoing lesson.
This was a powerful evocation on the subject of madness, the real thing, not the colloquially used much dilute substitute emotion, and especially its effect on near and dear sane ones.

A touching book, a frightening theme.

[Srividya Vijapure · Rating 5 out of 5]

Depression, a sordid little word, one that conjures a thousand reactions from the people around you and the people you meet. A look of pity, more for the caregivers than for the patient; a sense of disdain, coming from the thought ‘what reasons does she have to be depressed about’; sympathy from strangers who just want to move on, in case it is contagious; helplessness of those who are primary caregivers to a depressed person, which comes with a deluge of guilt, pain, anger, sorrow and other emotions that the caregiver cannot express; a sense of sweeping it under the carpet with the words ‘this too shall pass’; and finally the horror that comes to face of the individual who finally realizes that the depressed individual is not joking. Depression – the only way a person can know what it means is when he or she goes through the fire and storm that is created within by this ailment. Of course, once you are in, understanding matters not, for you are all in and there is no way out.

Jerry Pinto’s book, Em and the Big Hoom, deals with depression, albeit of a manic kind. Imelda or Em as she is known to her family is a manic depressive, where her highs are full of mad joy and her lows often turning to suicidal attempts. Her family consists of her husband, Augustine or The Big Hoom as she calls him; her son who is the narrator of this tale and her daughter, Susan. This book is not only about this subject but it is about what goes on in a family where one of its members is suffering from depression. The book talks about the highs and lows, the guilt and sorrow and yet in some places and at some times, the happiness that comes into the house with depression. A beautifully moving tale that takes you through every emotion known to man and leaving you with a huge heaviness in your heart, a heaviness that despite being a burden, you will need to carry if you want to understand the world completely, especially the morbid moments.

Jerry Pinto beautifully describes the condition of manic depression. Em, as a manic depressive character, brings forth all the darkness, madness and the sly presence of sanity, beautifully. You alternately feel bad for her, laugh with her, cry with her, get upset or angry and then promptly feel guilty. She brings about a deluge of emotions in the reader and I guess this credit goes to the author, who has dealt with this subject with sensitivity and compassion. Calling herself a mad mother, Em brings about humour in her life and tries to make them feel better. Her cries for ‘please kill me’ are borne out of a guilt that is a constant in such persons. Jerry Pinto has managed to bring out that dichotomy, which exists within the mind of an individual suffering from manic depression. What makes this more special is the fact that he doesn’t let go of his balanced prose while doing so. Nowhere does Em or her condition feel stressed out or farcical but is a natural flow of thoughts, words and actions.

Em’s husband, the Big Hoom, is the stoic caregiver who loves her and does everything he can to keep her comfortable without saying a word. The narrator of the book is the son and therefore we view both Em and the Big Hoom through his eyes. While this was beautiful and definitely compassionate, I kind of missed having a part from the Big Hoom’s point of view. Where the wife is a patient, it is the household that suffers but the one who suffers the most is the husband. When going out to work, the husband doesn’t know if he would come back to a hale and hearty wife or a dead one. And yet despite this fear and pain, he has to go out and earn money for the family. The pressure on the husband, as a primary caregiver, is the most and therefore it would have been nice to read a book from Big Hoom’s point of view. However, its lack was not a major issue for me, given that the subject was handled beautifully.

One of the most important points that struck me about this book is the inclusion of the caregivers’ point of view. Often we find and have read books that are from the point of view of the depressed individual. Most of these do not care to mention the impact of the patient on the caregivers’ life and when they do, it is often a single statement, which is more rhetoric than anything else. Here, Jerry Pinto has taken it upon himself to give us a narrative from the caregivers’ point of view, her son who despite not being the primary caregiver has played that role and has experienced the pain, anguish and sorrow, not to mention guilt of being a caregiver to a patient. Despite his very young age, he has had to deal with it and deal with it, he has equally stoically as his sister and father. To gain that kind of maturity and that too at such a young age and in a time where depression is equivalent to madness, is really noteworthy. That the author has created such a character with such ease and sensitivity is again praise worthy.

Another important aspect that the author touches upon is society’s apathy towards those suffering from depression. Mental health, despite being a very important subject, is often neglected. Mental hospitals are understaffed and worse these staff members are not properly trained and what’s worse is that they react to the patients as a lay person would. Mental asylums face the same problem added to which is the fact that families of such patients deem such institutions to being a dumping ground (yes I am using that word here) for their family members who don’t fit their ‘norm’. Where compassion is needed, detachment is present, where love is needed, a general antipathy is present and worse when companionship is needed, abandonment is the answer. It doesn’t matter whether you are educated or not, the reaction to this issue is always in the negative. Of course, this does not mean that there don’t exist good and supportive families but that they are the exception to the above rule.

I could write reams about this book and the subject but that would be an endless litany of oft used phrases and emotions. So, I shall end this here, with these words;

“Depression is an ailment. The bane of this ailment is that there are often no reasons for its presence in our world, which often leads to their being ostracized. Compassion, support and sensitivity will go a long way in helping these individuals.”

Highly recommended!

[Sangeetha Ramachandran · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book to understand how matured you are mentally !

[Ankit Garg · Rating 4 out of 5]

Em and The Big Hoom is a hidden gem. The humor and gentleness with which it handles the ever serious and delicate topic of mental instability and depression is a welcome way to approach the subject in my opinion.

Jerry Pinto has vividly explained the condition of a person going through depression, and how it affects the life of people who are connected to the said person. He subtly mentions the 'dark' times when the person needs saving (from herself, the invisible ghosts, and the world in general), and the urge to kill oneself, while behaving like a normal human being would for the rest of the time.

"Suicide was a crime, the only one where you could be punished for failing."

From time-to-time, the author also challenges the faith in the Almighty, when it becomes impossible to believe in miracles or the one who is supposed to do them, when you know there is not going to be one.

"I would have prayed to any god, any god at all, if I could have been handed a miracle."

"I lost my faith as an hourglass loses sand. "

"How could one demand perfect submission from those who are imperfect? How could one create desire and then expect everyone to pull the plug on it? And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God."

P.S.: Stop making sense of the title. Read the book instead, which will then explain the title anyway. Although if you are weak-hearted, it may not be for you - consider yourself warned.

Verdict: Recommended.

[Jigar Brahmbhatt · Rating 4 out of 5]

"She discovered with great delight that one does not love one's children just because they are one's children but because of the friendship formed while raising them": Marquez writes in Love in the time of Cholera.

I like to believe that that is the case. In Gujarat, where I grew up, it is a common practice to not use a respectful address for one's mother. You need not call her "aap" and often use "tu", more intimate in comparison, and it removes the gap that "aap" presupposes. Having lived my formative years in a middle class family, I look at mothers in a certain way. Mine has spent a better part of her life in the kitchen and managing our daily routines, limiting the many possibilities life could have offered. She has always been what I was supposed to fill on innumerable forms over the years: a housewife. And she is a pretty good one at that. But once in a blue moon, when in a reflective mood, mostly when I visit her in our hometown and when we sit at the dining table after everyone in the family sleeps, she allows a hint of regret or something of its ilk to drop during our conversations. It is often subtle. But when it is pronounced it makes her look sad. It could be due to her body already feeling spent in her mid fifties. But what is going on in her head when she puts aside her usually cheerful self on such rare occasions? I have asked her to write. I bought her a diary: write anything that comes into your head, about your life, about your childhood, about your health, anything. She usually waves it off with a smile: "when you are with me, I will talk. When you go back to Bombay, I will write". I know she will never write.

When Peter Handke's mother committed suicide, he took it on himself to record her life. His reasons were: "I know more about her and how she came to her death than any outside investigator who might, with the help of a religious, psychological, or sociological guide to the interpretation of dreams, arrive at a facile explanation...". The result is an interesting little book titled "A sorrow beyond Dreams" (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2...). Filled with extreme hardship and disillusionment, Handke's mother had spent her life trying to become, a word he carefully uses, an "individual". What she does to herself is not the result of a moment's frenzy, but a culmination of slowly accumulating pain over the years. That is how Handke looks at it, and that is how he tries to make us look. What went on inside his mother's head is the soul concern of the book. And such is the concern of Jerry Pinto's book. But Em is immensely fascinating, a Prospero high on nicotine.

Pinto's design replies heavily on conversation. He structures the book around letters written by Em, words spoken by Em, and a lot of times the narrative is molded on how and where Em's whimsies take you when you talk to her. She uses words interestingly and often there is a hint of trapped intelligence deep inside her:

"Did it leave a God-sized hole in your life?"

"That sounds suspiciously like a quotation," she said. "I wish you wouldn't. I never feel like having conversation with someone who quotes".

She looked at me, a cold, hard stare.

"It is a quote, isn't it?"

"It feels like one".

"I hate quotes," she said fiercely. "I feel like I am talking to a book. I feel like I am talking to History. I feel like I am being practiced upon"

"Practiced upon?"

"For a public performance. For a debate club. For some schoolboy shit like that."

She speaks without filters. She once tells her kids that she never wanted to have children, and goes on a long rant about how it is a woman who should bear the brunt and all. But when she realizes that she is talking to her own children, she withdraws: "off course, when it happens you don't regret it and all that shit, okay?"

In her early letters, the narrator sees a spirited young woman who was far removed from the Em he knew, and he saw the father, called The Big Hoom, in a very different light. They were two young people and their love story is told mostly in remembrances. This then is the epicenter of the novel, the curiosity of the narrator to know what happened, like Handke's curiosity, curiosities to know more about mothers who didn't fit in the norm. Pinto writes: "And through all this, I told myself, and with all this, I told myself, I'll try and understand her. I'll try and figure out how this happened to my mother, once a beautiful woman with a lovely singing voice, and yes - how this happened to my father, a man with a future who had given it all up to make sure the present was manageable. For her. For us."

When I was 100 pages into the book, I disliked the fact that a lot of it was mere recounting, and that the writer should have invested more time in carving out proper scenes, the way Naipaul transported his pain into the magisterial canvas of A House for Mr Biswas. I felt that the scenes featuring the pastoral Goan life of the Big Hoom (who conveniently was like a rock they all could depend on) could have benefited from a bit of drama than mere "telling". But I understand, after finishing the book and having recently attempted a family narrative myself, that in the third person one feels removed from the family one writes about. One feels distant and in that state the juices of lived experience are not mixed the way they should. I am, off course, not generalizing but trying to understand Pinto's choice of narrative. At one point he talks about the state of mental illness in India and shock therapy. They take Em to a clinic once because her erratic behavior was out of control, and a week later "she was returned to us as from the dry-cleaners". She has been subjected to shocks and she behaves unlike herself during the whole sequence. I understand the need for an intimate approach here. There is pain involved and it has to be tackled only in the first person, because you can write "returned to us" instead of "returned to them". It makes a whole lot of difference.

I seriously considered successful third-person family narratives (One hundred years of Solitude, Family Matters, The Pleasure Seekers) and more personal first-person accounts (this book, Handke's book, I curse the river of Time) and wondered what approach would be better? The former can provide an arc through which events are freely interlinked in space-time, while the latter can turn into nothing more than psychological confessions. The former has the danger of turning too descriptive, too pedantic, while the latter has the danger of turning too subjective, too boring. Pinto writes "our" Em at a lot of places. We feel the emotional charge of that word choice, the kind of possibility omnipresent narrator cannot provide. Our Em: it sounds so "accepting" that you forgive the lack of proper drama. He also manages well by discarding chronology, his prose jumps between timelines in the manner of Em's conversations, and he sets some beautiful scenes along the way, scenes of moving impact, especially because he makes you equally curious about Em, makes you care for her, and the book slowly reaches where a narrative like this eventually reaches: the mother's death. To call the whole effect devastating would, I guess, be a compliment.

And I learned yet again that there is great freedom if the first person is used well. I stumbled upon a short story by Akutagawa Ryūnosuke, whose mother was also mentally ill and he talks about her death in the story. It is titled "Death Registers". This is how it starts:

"My mother was a madwoman."

Can you deny the stark, direct power of this sentence!?

[Bharath · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a very unusual story – that of Em (Imelda) and the Big Hoom (Augustine) and their children. The story is told by their son – part of a family who has struggled in life and has just about stays afloat all the time. The story shuffles between the present and the past starting from when Em and the Big Hoom met and decided to get married.

Em, now battles mental illness (bipolar / schizophrenia) and keeps trying to take her own life. She however retains much of her ready wit and sharp tongue. She is addicted to smoking beedis and sees conspiracies in the mundane, like, pits in the road as someone conspiring and digging mass graves. She lands up in hospital quite often, as the family struggles to cope.

The descriptions of the life of the middle class, their eating habits and the city of Bombay / Mumbai of many years back is a delight to read. The humour has brilliance, but unfortunately not in it’s entirety. While there is sophisticated and great dialogue with the humour you would read in a PG Wodehouse novel, there is also the very ordinary variety – which is a sad setback for the book.

[Abhinav · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yeah yeah, go on. You know you have your 5 stars already, don't you?

Honestly, it's hard to find fault with a book like 'Em and the Big Hoom'. Review to follow, probably or probably not. I usually find myself reluctant to do reviews of books I love, for I fear my review won't do justice to their brilliance.

For now, all I can say is that Jerry Pinto's debut novel is easily one of the best books I've read so far this year - perhaps it would make the top five in my year-end list. Highly recommended for those who enjoy literary fiction and I urge you to read it for its sensitive handling of a difficult subject.

[Sumati · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't remember when did I last see a book so beautifully designed. Since the time it arrived I couldn't move my eyes from it. That's how it attracts you first and then you pick it up to find that it is as beautiful inside as the cover promised. An extremely well-written book and Pinto is easily one of the best Indian authors I have read.

[Girish · Rating 5 out of 5]

Inserted within the prose effortlessly is one of the most simple statements - "It's such a mess, that's why it's madness". The book had such a strong after-effect that I did not dare write a review till I could shake off a bit of the heaviness.

Enter the mad world of Em who is Em with an exclamation mark to her family. She is the uncouth beedi smoking manic depressive mother. In her good days, she lives life grand and on her bad days she is suicidal. The big hoom or angel ears is the admirable pillar holding together the family with his presence. The son and daughter who, are now grown up, did not know normal, growing up.

Told from the POV of the son, the book is not centred around the madness but the journey of the family. The kids try to make sense of the why by searching for clues in the past. The story of Imelda (Em) and Augustine (Big Hoom) before all the madness is a scarily sweet and normal love story that could feature anyone. The emotional journey of the close knit family pivoted around Em sucks you in.

For the first time since I got my kindle (5 years), I highlighted passages and re-read them. Not because of those wordy quotes, but simple dollops of almost careless quotes that hit you hard. Sample this "I am imperfect, my world is imperfect, I have no time for solutions premised on perfect persons seeing the perfection of solutions that work in a perfect world"

The writing is magical. Jerry Pinto manages to diffuse love, despair, fear, terror, humour(!) into the pages that it binds your own emotions. The episodes of madness are scary, but normalcy is equally enjoyable.

"Do what your heart tells you. It doesn't matter if you make a mistake. The only things we regret are the things we did not do"
Highly recommended!

[Saif Sayed · Rating 5 out of 5]

"You can cry in public as long as you don not sob. Tears are transparent. If you’re walking fast, if the sun’s too strong, no one notices. Sobs intrude. They push their way into people’s consciousness. They feel duty-bound to ask what has happened. "

- Em and The Big Hoom by Jerry Pinto.

A beautiful novel portraying uncommon themes, leaving the reader profoundly moved. A Roman Catholic Goan middle class family living in Bombay in a 1BHK. Their lives are full of tribulations, since Em is unwell. She is depressed, or suffering from manic disorder, often trying to attempt suicide. The Big Hoom is what an ideal father and a great husband could be, and her son and daughter, comprise to a happy family. .

I loved everything about this novel, from narration to the language. The scenes described, the wordgasm, the family dynamics, and the typical Goan essence within the texts. It was whole-hearted mesmerizing read for me.

I have a soft corner for this novel, not just that I'm from Goa myself but also because it has touched a lot of sensitive topics which are not often talked about. Mental illness is one among them and I am overwhelmed to read such a novel which mainly focuses on such an issue.

Talking about mental illness is often regarded as a taboo and is neglected by many due to unawareness about it.(at least the place I live in). Simple problems such as anxiety, depression and social isolation which are too common to us when neglected can arise major issues in the future leading to psychotic disorders like bipolar and manic. Later on, people with such disorders are looked down upon for their condition. But what we fail to understand is that actual disability or disorder is not in them, it's within us who do not care about such people. If we try to educate our self and aware people about it then maybe that can make a difference. :)

[Diane S ☔ · Rating 4 out of 5]

Absolutely love the title of this little gem of a book. Bombay, India and a family of four, the son in his twenties, his younger sister, his dad who they call the big hoom and his mother, whose bi-polar illness has effected them all.

Love the way this was written, humorously, truthfully but not meant to send the reader into pangs of anguish, Just a young man, concerned that he may develop this illness, asking questions and seeking answers.
So much of their lives revolved around the mother's illness, not bringing friends home, always making sure someone was with the mom when she was particularly bad, hospitalizing her when necessary and then visiting so she would not feel abandoned.

How did his parent's meet? When did she first show signs? Yet throughout the story one is aware of how very much this family was together, how much love was actually shared and it was all quite poignant and wonderful, if at times a bit melancholy. Mental illness is such an individual thing and this book does a great job at pointing this out.

[Ravi Gangwani · Rating 5 out of 5]

- Sometimes I would see myself as a book with bad binding. You know, like one more reader, one more face-down on the bed and I was going to spill everything, lose control.

-I didn't go to bookshops to buy. That's a little bourgeois. I went because they were civilized places. It made me happy there were people who sat down and wrote and wrote and wrote and there were other people who devoted their lives to making those words into books. It was lovely. Like standing in the middle of civilization.

- Mad is an ordinary word, everyday word. It is compact. It fits into songs. It can became a phrase - Mad or what ?. It can be mad girl, mad idea, a mad mad mad mad dog, mad world.
But it is DIFFERENT when you have a MAD mother. The word blinks up from time to time and blinks at you.

-Em and the big Hoom.


Some stories has power to touch the heart, this book I would say, had the ability to not only touch heart but to preserve that heat that transfuse in the body its warmth.
I cried, almost ten times, the story was so real, so vulnerable, so delicate that a mere passing of air can jolt and break the bone of the structure, like gushing air ruins the home made from pack of cards. The cry was so sobbing, that when I was under the spell of its emotional turbulence, some people of my office came inquiring if anything wrong with me.

This book has nothing but painted the story of mother, Em, mentally challenged, who had the divine heart and no authority or skill to handle money. And her husband, the Big Hoom, and their two children, Susan and a son-who was the story's narrator. All lives dividing the silence and noise in 1 BHK apartment of Bandra. Further from money, they also have other problem to tackle, Em, the loved mother, whose mental illness exasperating her imagination and behavior towards others. She voluntarily wants to go mental asylum, very well aware of her dysfunctional nature. The book was interspersed with her childhood stories, the problem of money, her married life and lot of stories or episode around.
And at last she dies.

But it was not only sad, it was at the witty and funny as well, every emotion was so precise that you might sat Wow Wow Wow! at some occasions when you read this book.



So It was about 2014, my roommate (who was wandering on the pavement of Crossword) came across the book. He was much fascinated with look and feel of the book. At that time, I was just done with reading Kiran Desai. And obviously my all praise of literature was airing to my roommate's ear ... Thus, at the back-cover of this book, Kiran Desai gave her comments on this book where she was saying "As I read the novel, that also portrays a very tender marriage and the life of a Goan family in Bombay, it drowned me. I mean that in the best way. It plunged me into a world so vivid and capricious, that when I finished, I found something had shifted and changed within myself. This is a world of magnified and dark emotion. The anger is a primal force, the sadness wild and raw. Against this, the jokes are hilarious, reckless, free falling… This is a rare, brilliant book, one that is wonderfully different from any other I that I have read coming out of India."
Then My roommate told me and I got this book.
I started this then. And now, after whole two years, during which I also MET Jerry Pinto , I again Started this book. I guess it fitted with the time.

Full Five stars :)

[Monika · Rating 5 out of 5]

Em and the Big Hoom sensitively carves our the life of the Mendes family - Imelda, Em for her kids, Augustine, aka The Big Hoom, their son, the unnamed narrator and daughter, Susan. Em's manic-depression kept the family at the edge of threshold; it seemed like a new beginning everytime - a beginning that knew no end in a closely-knit home. The book chronicles the lives affected and surrounded by the matriarch's bipolar disorder. It is tautly humorous at times and sad throughout.

[Deepika Sekar · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm not really a serious reader to say I've read nothing like this book, but I really have read nothing like this book. Never has a character slurped me like Em just did. What a woman, God! She is clever, unpretentious and impossibly funny. She made me laugh in all her dark corners, and it just made me sad that someone had to be funny in this manner and yet I couldn't stop laughing. Mindfuck, she is! She is easily the reason why this book is what it is. She talks with this sense of urgency - like whatever she has to say needs to be told real fast- or else she'll lose it. And her manic energy is dangerously infectious -for nearly an hour, I wished I could be like her, talk like her, have fun like her- but changed my mind after I thought about her 'drips'. It almost feels like an addiction. I can just never have enough of her. She's mad, mad action. Just one advice: don't try to understand her. Cos' I did and for the life of me could not figure out what went wrong for her and then started to get sad and angry and hurt that I was punished for trying to understand someone I love. (seriously Pinto, that was mean!)

Big Hoom's the man I'm sure all us girls want-so solid, so comforting! ('So might a man calm a horse', Em says). It's just beyond me how a man can do so much like its so little. (shouldn't be a surprise though- this book is set in Bombay where everyone does big, big things like its really small. Sigh.)

Somewhere in the book, you'll come across Big Hoom saying this: 'anything less makes you less'. You should probably read the book just for that one moment cos' there's just too much in that statement when you read it.

There are really no highlights in their love story and perhaps that's why it knocked me off the way it did, cos' I didn't think love was that simple. Or is it? (sigh again!)

[Aparna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book came to me as a birthday gift. It had me with its dark purple cover and the title ‘Em and the big Hoom’. But I was skeptical, why read a book on mental illness? Isn’t it something we all fear? Mental illness is something that invokes fear, worry, despair, pain, sympathy and emotions that help us best keep a distance from it. Em and the Big Hoom is about minimizing that distance and embracing a condition of life, however harsh it might be, with love and a sense of selflessness. This is a small and beautiful book, and one of the many things that make it beautiful is its production quality: a brilliant cover design. Pinto’s writing has startling sweetness; it is not overwrought with emotion or tragedy. Rather, it glides into the greyness of tragicomedy, resorting as often to mirth as to distress and as often to love as to anger. Em and the Big Hoom's dark humor lies not in its content or style, but in its enchanting prose about family and relationships.This book had me enthralled. It taught me that home is not an address, home is family. Reading this book I came to understand how during the darkest period of one’s life, you can have light guiding you through this darkness. This light comes from your family, the ones who love you. The best part of the book is, the characters are believable, their stories don’t seem insane, and it is something you can relate to.
Want my opinion? Go for it. Read this book; learn the story about a woman, labeled insane in a not-so-sane world.

[Jyotsna Hariharan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm temporarily relocating out of the country in a few weeks. Aside from all the usual chaos and insanity, I'm also in the process of picking out the books - the actual paper books- which will make the journey with me across the Pacific. With three weeks to go, I thought I had it all figured - that my list was locked and loaded.

But boy, this book. Let's just say I have a nice little Em and The Big Hoom- sized niche carved into my suitcase and I will beat the shit out of anything that wants to claim that spot.

That includes pickle-dabbas - and that means a lot, coming from me.

All the time I spent reading this book was spent in a sort of feverish haze - mouth agape, raucously laughing, grasping a pencil and underlining for dear life, lest a line or two slipped away. Now my copy is smeared with jagged graphite scratches (I read most of it on buses, on really bumpy roads) and pockmarks from my grasping it too tight.

What. A . Book.

Christ.

Read. Just read. Honestly.

[Vandana Sinha · Rating 4 out of 5]

The story is about the Mendes family - Imelda (Em), Augustine (The Big Hoom), the daughter Susan and the unnamed son- their struggles as they cope with their mothers bipolar disorder, her depression and her frequent attempts to take her life. The narrative is non- linear, deliberately shorn of any emotion and understated. The attempts of the family as they attempt to lead a normal life even as they are swept into the vortex of blackness, is truly heart rending. The muted pain and the abhorrence of sentimentality lifts this book as does the conversation and the black humour.
Can understand why it was chosen for the Sahitya Akademi award. Strongly recommended

[Nandakishore Mridula · Rating 4 out of 5]

During my childhood, my grandmother had an extended menopause. She descended into a sort private hell, peopled by dark deities of her own imagination, who lay in wait to consume her children and grandchildren whom she was forced to offer up in sacrifice. Our family was enlightened enough to understand her condition and treat her with sympathy; but for me, all the ghosts from the dark underbelly of her mind were real.

At that time, treatment for such disorders used to the prescription of hypnotic drugs in large doses. I can remember my grandma snoring away under the influence of Largactil. But thankfully, she recovered and came back to "normalcy".

I was reminded of this episode while reading Jerry Pinto's semi-autobiographical novel about his mother who suffered from serious mental disorders which drove her to bouts of depression, mania, and attempted suicide. If a few years of my grandma's relatively mild problems were so terrifying to me, how would he have lived through such a nightmare of a childhood?

The story takes place in mid-twentieth century Mumbai. In those days, psychiatry was still in its infancy. There were no fancy words mental illness. You were either normal or... mad.

I grew up being told that my mother had a nervous problem. Later, I was told it was a nervous breakdown. Then we had a diagnosis, for a brief while, when she was said to be schizophrenic and was treated as one. And finally, everyone settled down to calling her manic depressive. Through it all, she had only one word for herself: mad.

This, however, is not the tale of a "madwoman". This is a tale of love. This is the tale of a man who stuck with his partner through thick and thin. This is the tale of Imelda ("Em") and Augustine ("The Big Hoom") as seen through the eyes of their progeny.

Imelda met Augustine in the office where they both worked. It was attraction at first sight on his part; which grew into love over a period of years. Ultimately, like good Indian guardians, Imelda's parents intervened and got the two of them married. It was a love-match made in heaven, until Em's second delivery opened the doors of her dark psyche and the monsters came tumbling out.

Jerry Pinto writes with empathy. For the distressing subject matter he is talking about, the treatment is surprisingly light and very readable - without glossing over any of the horrors. We get detailed pictures of the man and the woman, both of them very endearing. This is a book you will put down with a smile - with a tear behind it.

Before closing, I will leave an image here which stuck with me - about patients being herded in a group towards shock therapy.

It occurred to me then that the mad in India are not the mentally ill, they are, simply, mad. They have no other identity. Here, everyone was mad. They had lost their hair so that the institution could keep them free of lice. They had lost their clothes because their families had abandoned them, and they had lost their lives because they had lost their families. They were now free, in a bizarre sort of way. They were also alone except for the shoulder in front and the touch of the fingers of the person following behind.

The complete alienation of the "madman" from society: a situation still existing in large parts of India.

For its dark subject, this is an uplifting book.

[Selva · Rating 4 out of 5]

To put it in a single line, it is about how a small nuclear family copes with the mom's mental illness. But the brilliance of the novel is that it has been written in a light-hearted manner with subtle humour without making a mockery of the illness nor making caricatures of the characters. Even serious episodes have been written with a lighter touch. Em is the mom and the big Hoom is the dad. The narrator is the son and his sister being the other character. It is mostly about Em, a beedi-smoking, blunt-talking, a very likeable woman, but I liked better whatever was written about the Hoom, a mentally strong man. There is not a moment of dullness in the novel neither was any drama for the sake of it. Flawless writing. The novel is set in Bombay but not much of Bombay is there in the novel. But then this is not the kind of novel for that. Only letdown being by the end of it one feels like having read a novella rather than a full-blown novel. one can easily read it in a couple of days and it is totally worth it. It is going to easily make it to my favourites shelf.

[Amogha · Rating 5 out of 5]

It is naïve to believe that the world is full of sunshine and rainbows, especially in the current conditions. But it is an altogether different kind of naivety to believe that dysfunctional families are a rarity. While portrayal of Indian families on the big screen or television or novels mostly paint the picture of all-encompassing love in nauseatingly unrealistic ways, families in real life strive as hard as possible to appear ‘normal’ in front of their peers. Psychological and emotional debilitations are brushed off under the carpet , signboards of ‘Home,Sweet home’ hanging still on the walls.

Discontent in a family is paid heed to only if it involves a domestic abuse or financial strain. This is the bane of an Indian society that most have lived with. Yet, if one were to be asked about their family, they would only paint a colorful picture of flowers in full bloom rather than acknowledge the fact that there have been gaping cracks in their lives. Dysfunctional families according to these standards only involve divorces. Or mad people. And madness, to the Indian society comes in only one form – of those dehumanized, ill-dressed people with matted hair who have absolutely zero behavioral cognizance. Mental health is least understood, often ignored or in most cases, an alien concept to a large part of this society.

Swimming against tides of such misplaced sentiments, Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom indeed breaks barriers in its realistic portrayal of a family dealing with the mental demons of the matriarch, Imelda. A few pages into the book, I found something stirring in my chest, like a serpent slithering awake.

‘After you were born, someone turned on a tap. At first it was only a drip, a black drip, and I felt it as sadness. I had felt sad before . . . who hasn't ? I knew what it was like. But I didn't know that it would come like that, for no reason. I lived with it for weeks.’

‘Was there a drain?’

'No. There was no drain. There isn't one even now'.

'It is like oil. Like molasses, slow at first.Then one morning I woke up and it was flowing free and fast. I thought I would drown in it. I thought it would drown little you and Susan. I got up, got dressed and went out onto the road and tried to jump in front of a bus. I thought it would be a final thing, quick like a bang. Only , it wasn't.'

There. Someone said it. In words I could never come up with to explain what it means to battle with blue wings. I was swimming in my tears for Imelda, for my growing years that almost traced the book’s trajectory in altogether different yet similar ways, for the years now and for the years to follow. Even though the topic is dismal, the narrative is interlaced with dark humour ; you can’t help but laugh and weep at the same time. I confided in a friend, wondering out loud as to why a book was strumming at the strings of my heart like no other book had. He simply said ,‘Because Pinto has written this from his heart.’ Yes, most definitely true. Apart from that, it is highly relatable because the writer is being candid.

Volatile, manic depressive, bipolar disorder-afflicted , suicidal yet fascinating Imelda known as Em or ‘Em!’ to her children , has never been an all-encompassing mother figure. She is terrifying in her antics, possessing an ability to nonchalantly break her children’s hearts. But , she is genuine and truthful as much as she could be. Her wit and her love for narrating stories while sipping on innumerable cups of tea or puffing away copious amounts of cheap beedis give the curious narrator and his sister material to work on as they try to figure out, albeit unsuccessfully what lead to their mother’s madness. Through Em’s meandering ramblings, humorous recollections and through her diaries and letters from her life before, the children learn of their mother’s growing years and her subsequent hilarious romance with their father.

Their father, Augustine, the Big Hoom is the human definition of a dependable rock, in his love for his wife and family always working silently, loving his beloved. The children, despite their desires for a quiet normal life, love their mother fiercely doing everything in their power to hold the pillars still.If this were to be quotidian, love would have been sufficient. But, Pinto keeps it real - too real for comfort, but as real, as real needs to be.

“Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again.”

The world of Em and the Big Hoom, though set in the 70s – 80s Bombay, transcends beyond the 450sqft of matchbox houses – the setting can be anywhere. It has full well capacity to speak to situations now and the situations to come. In a world full of madness and yet a world that dehumanizes madness, rarely do we find a narrative that describes the sunrises as extensively as the nightfalls of families under the weather. Mad people can be happy. Happy people can be depressed. Families battling depression can be happy. Even if happiness is as ephemeral as the night bloom of an orchid's cactus and full of thorns.

At a time when Indian literary scene is filled with a deluge of sexist books in the name of romance or mythological retellings or inspid whoodunits barring a few exceptions, Jerry Pinto’s Em and the Big Hoom stands out like a beacon of hope that all is not lost yet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this might be one of the best pieces of contemporary Indian literature I’ve read in the recent past.

Rating-4.5

[Priya · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had to create a new shelf on Goodreads for this book - family. Because that is what Em and The Big Hoom is about. Family, in all it's fragility and pain. But Jerry Pinto has somehow made a painful sad story into one of love and hope, of accepting our human-ness (for want of a better word) and all that it entails, even at the cost of one's sanity. It doesn't make you sad, this book. It just leaves this warm fuzzy hangover of a feeling that you knew the Mendeses as intimately as the author himself. There are little parts here and there that pierce straight to your heart and, if you were to mull upon the words, it brings out feelings that you won't normally have when reading a book.

Em is the mother (she herself says it like a cuss word - Mudh-dha). The Big Hoom is the father. There's Susan the sister. And our narrator. They live in a 1 bedroom-hall-kitchen flat in Bombay. What makes them different from any other middle class family of their time is Em - she's 'mad'. Manic depressive or schizophrenic or delusional - there's never just one diagnosis. And the narrative is about how the family copes with Em and her repeated attempts at suicide. The story is set more like a set of events and dialogues, attempts by the narrator to learn about Em and her history with The Big Hoom (their rock in that tumultuous ocean of depression that was Em).

I love Em. She's so endearing, even in her madness or rather because of it. She's so honest and irreverent, even towards her children (in one of her bouts of depression she says she didn't really want to have children!) that, at times, you don't know whom to feel sorry for - Em or her family. We are exposed to all those moments of self-doubt and fear the narrator has, when he has to be there for her but doesn't really want to even though she's his mother. That conflict, for me, was the most poignant piece of the story. I have extended family who deal with differently-abled children and I can imagine that pain, that helplessness one feels when being a caregiver 24x7.

This paragraph describes perfectly how it all is, to be one -

"I sympathized with Granny but I also felt a deep vexation. She loved Em and she thought that should be enough. It wasn’t. Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. You can only stand outside it, as a woman might stand outside a prison in which her lover is locked up. From time to time, a well-loved face will peer out and love floods back. A scrap of cloth flutters and it becomes a sign and a code and a message and all that you want it to be. Then it vanishes and you are outside the dark tower again. At times, when I was young, I wanted to be inside the tower so I could understand what it was like. But I knew, even then, that I did not want to be a permanent resident of the tower. I wanted to visit and even visiting meant nothing because you could always leave. You’re a tourist; she’s a resident."

The style of the narrative is something I'm encountering for the first time - it's refreshing and easy on the mind. It's like this window through which we can see into that little Bombay flat, seeing that family go through a not-very-normal life in a normal way. You can't help but fall in love with them.

There's also a bit of humor in the narrative, which is surprising considering the subject. And also a bit of a relief. Like this -

"'You know when I found your Debonair ...’
‘You what?’
‘Oh, I put it back, don’t worry. Behind the tank in the toilet, what a place! I suppose you’d have hidden them under the mattress in your room, if you had a room. Poor beetle, where else are you going to fiddle?’
‘Em!’
‘Anyway, I looked at the centrefolds and I thought, some nice girls. But I didn’t want to nuzzle.’
‘Em!’
Her conversation had a way of reducing me to exclamations. I think she enjoyed that and worked out exactly how she was going to do it."

There are many more heart-warming and some chilling conversations too. Probably what kept me hooked because it was all very comforting and disconcerting at the same time!

And hence the hangover. I haven't picked up my next book yet. I don't feel like it. I don't want to lose this fuzzy feeling I have. Maybe I'm in mourning.

[~~Poulomi Sylphrena Tonk$~~ · Rating 5 out of 5]

5 Em and The Big Hoom stars!

After persistent failures at finding a book by an Indian author quite to my liking, Em and the Big Hoom happened to me. I was dubious about it at first. Maybe that was why I didn’t consider reading the synopsis even. So in my blank mindscape, the very title incited in me multifarious images, in fact some featuring magical realms, I admit unabashedly. *smirk*

Jokes aside, this is nothing like it. Let’s get to the review proper.

Books about depression leave you enquiring: “How does it feel like to be slowly collapsing that way?”
Here, Em and the Big Hoom differs. You question instead : “How does it feel like to watch one so loved slip away?”

Jerry Pinto talks of not only the victimized, but also of the lives that are bound, in one way or the other, to the victim. The pathos of a family that swayed according to Imelda’s undulating emotions, one which threw their lives into a cataclysm every now and then, the constant jeering of society, the pretence of sympathy and blatant relief on their faces simultaneously- briefly portray the outlook of the general Indian public towards the mentally unstable. Em’s husband, The Big Hoom forms the pillar that doesn’t let the Mendes family succumb under Em’s depression. He is the epitome of patience, of understanding, like a calm breeze in the aftermath of a raving storm. As the story progresses, Em in her lucid intervals, speaks of their courtship days, their unwavering love and regard for the other, thus rendering their relationship as one profoundly meritorious.

To be honest, handling one as Em, diagnosed as a manic depressive, is not a matter of joke. There will be tangentiality of thoughts and you lose track of what the subject speaks. There are unimportant, irrelevant things that get registered in their minds while stuff that are obviously far more imperative fail to make an impact. An example: when the protagonist calls her “a disgusting bitch” in a fit of rage. One, in their correct state of mind, would forgive and forget. Em didn’t. They say hurtful things which most often aren’t of their own devising, but nevertheless they cut through your skin and flesh, because your mind works in a finite, established pattern. Unlike them.
I am not trying to imply how her life doesn’t quite coincide with a normal person, nor am I alienating her. I’m merely stating how coping up with such a person is not easy. You have to take care of them and keep your own overwhelming emotions under control; a somewhat mammoth task, if you need to keep it up every day.

The story also throws light on other mundane things; things which have occurred to all of us at one time or the other. Like, when the narrator ponders on how his father realised it was time for him to switch roles and live independently. When he talks of his dwindling belief in religion, in God. Also, those letters addressed to “Angel Ears” by Em. Theirs is not the first love story I’ve read, not even the best. But there is a kind of air around their story, fresh, untainted with any kind of banality, which makes it exceptional. These were another reason of my love for this book.

The prose is beautifully written. The characters are fantastically done, reflecting on each of the members as they held the family together. Makes you wonder the working of the human mind and empathize with the characters in their pursuit for normalcy in a sea of disarray.

Highly recommended to everyone. 5 stars in all!

[Samata Joshi · Rating 5 out of 5]

What started as a journey of a book from an author I have immense respect and admiration for, became like one of those trips you take down to the nearest sea-shore. Trips where you end up staring into the sea for a long time, moving forward to feel the sand dissolve under your feet as the water recedes. You wonder marvelously at the waves, somewhere far beyond the reach of your tranquil visit. You laugh with the sea, you ogle at it, throw something at it, take something from it, embrace it, be afraid of it.
You go back home, enriched with the smell of the sea and the sand in your hair.
And all you can do is just make some tea.

Reading Em and The Big Hoom makes me realize what writing honestly means. Without having to appease an audience; no fences. Revolving around a character so lovable, innocent, strange and precariously engaging, it sort of takes you in limbo. It helps you understand the value of an Em and a Big Hoom in your life. It gives you the selfish joy of never having experienced something so unnerving. And helps you understand the capabilities and emotions that the human mind possesses. Of love; anguish.

The first time I picked up a book from Jerry Pinto was that of poetry. In a second-hand bookshop, near Borivali station. Asylum. I didn't know who he was or what to make of poetry. But I read it anyway and couldn't define what I felt after reading it. And now, after eight years, I read the Em and The Big Hoom and I feel inspired. Probably, just like I did then, eight years ago.

[Gorab · Rating 4 out of 5]

Heart touching traumatic story of a mentally ill and extremely depressed mother.

Enjoyed the ever wandering dark humorous enigmatic and uninhibited conversations of Em.... the unique courtship followed by rock solid support and care given by Big Hoom tolerating all the sufferings... and the flashback narrations in form of diary entries, letters and recollections.

Kudos to a great debut work by Jerry Pinto. Going to read all of his upcoming works.