About the Book

Book: Din about Chins

Author: Santosh Bakaya

Publisher: Penprints, Kolkata, 2025 

Price: Rs 450/-

A heartfelt collection of vignettes capturing the humour, warmth, and depth of a mother-daughter bond, writes SWATI PAL

Writing about the parent — child bond or about children growing up, is no easy task. One can descend to complete sentimentality or become a dead bore. Reading ‘Din about Chins, Vignettes about Mother-Daughter,’ penned by the prolific author, Santosh Bakaya was thus an extremely invigorating experience. Not only does she write with great ease but her writing has a remarkable blend of wit and philosophy, making the reader both smile as well as tear up. Santosh Bakaya has to be met with. I did. She is so full of life and empathy. Her laughter and the warmth in her eyes hold the promise of friendship and a deep-rooted generosity of spirit.

The book begins with a poem, ‘Hush what is that?’ extracted from Learning and Creativity (pub 2016) which will tug at your heartstrings. The too true and sweet narrative of a feisty mom chasing her daughter to put on socks, will fill any parent with nostalgia. The role reversal at the end will bring a sigh and a wistful smile to your face. The poem sets the tone forthe vignettes. Words have a certain tempo as they are penned by Santosh Bakaya, they seem to gurgle and splash around and one of the devices that help in doing this is her use of alliteration such as ‘Giggling at a gaggle of geese’, ‘plucky pups, the mischievous monkeys, the grandiose green of the gulmohar.’ The words have a rhyme and rhythm as one can see in the initial ‘Fromthe Writers Desk’ and the overall effect is captivating. She manages to encapsulate the life of her daughter from birth to late teens and the reader will feel as if the child is someone s/he knows. One can picturise the child prancing around to the melody of her favourite Bollywood number, one can hear her ribbing her mother (what an amazing variety of names she has for her mother) and admonishing her for being loud or not so aptly dressed. The daughter is special and yet could well be any daughter...so universal is the appeal in the way she has been described by Santosh Bakaya. The elation of being a loved and needed mother, the desire to understand every mood at every moment of her daughter’s life, the mixed feelings of reluctance to let go and yet, the pride at seeing the larger universe to which her daughter belongs - Bakaya may be writing about herself but in many ways, she has written for every mother.

The title vignette is droll, just like Santosh Bakaya’s humour. You discover why there is a din about chins in the Bakaya household and you enter the family not as a voyeur but as an invisible member. Iha is mercurial and you will love her as much as Santosh does. And you will be curious to know more about the personal lives of all the members of the family, so subtlely does Bakaya draw you within its folds.

Memories jostle with one another and Bakaya moves effortlessly as well as with speed between them. ‘Of Teddy bears, calories and clouds’ is one such example of Iha as a little girl imagining herself to be a teddy bear in a ditty used by her mother to make her walk and years later, the mother recalling those times. Iha now has complete control of her life and the mother grasps at the memories of her little girl, almost as if she is clutching on to a time when she called the shots for her daughter. There is profundity in the moving simplicity of narration - the philosophy that time and tide wait for nobody and that all we have are memories of time past; the umbilical cord between mother and child remains unseen but strong, understood by both and expressed at times. Another vignette that is touching even as it is written with Bakaya’s characteristic wry humour is ‘Oh the horrel of it!’ One never forgets the lisping of children and parents always remain the safest refuge for children, no matter how grown up they are, that’s what this beautiful vignette lovingly underlines.

As said earlier, Iha is mercurial and you will fall in love with her. Capricious of temperament, she is generous and will give the shirt off her back if needed as she does in the vignette, ‘Red towel’ and at the same time, she is grounded, not forgetting to scold her father for appearing in front of the domestic help, in, of all things, a red towel! The remarkable blend of wicked humour camouflaging a deep thoughtfulness is all too evident in the next vignette, ‘I want you to have a good time,’ in which the reader is amused, both by Iha’s antics as much as by the author mother who ends the vignette with the lines. ‘As she left the room, I furtively bent down to salvage my fallen jaw from the ground. No, she did not turn back to see me stooping so.’ Again, in ‘The Inside Story’ we are enchanted by Iha’s glee at her first tattoo and her matter- of- fact attitude at having got a scholarship for her essay. 

Iha, like children do, constantly surprises her mother and teaches her more than she knows.We see the author invariably wondering why she hadn’t thought of something that Iha did, as we see in ‘Is Christmas already around the corner?’  Memories of these lessons learnt may make the author lachrymose as she admits readily but for the reader, it is again a sharp reminder that indeed, the child IS father of the man. In the vignette ‘Injustice’, the author observes about Iha, ‘Injustice anywhere was, of course, a threat to justice everywhere, she has realised that, and could not tolerate belligerence in any form’. Over and over again we see Iha’s generosity as she abundantly gives away her newly bought hoodies in the vignette, ‘Which brand?’

Many of the Vignettes are quirky and end unexpectedly; the title arouses your curiosity and makes you think along a certain direction, but the ending is like a jack in the box, popping up to tickle your funny bone. You will need to read ‘Love never dies’ to understand this observation.

There is a lot of bantering between mother and daughter, sharper because of a shared bond over language and literature. While we see that in many Vignettes, it is pronounced in ‘Theflurry about egg curry.’ We see this even in ‘I am jiggered’, a vignette that shows the camaraderie between the mother and the daughter and the Roald Dahl connect.

There are lessons to be learnt from these Vignettes, Institutions need to be careful  about the mental health of their students, else they may scar children forever.

Language, love, harmony

The vignette, ‘Why are you teaching her Urdu?’ seems a little different at first reading as it foregrounds the perpetuation of hate politics between India and Pakistan and the politicising of language. It is a significant vignette putting into focus the author’s views about cross border conflict and harmony. But it is young Iha’s questions, ‘How can one hate a language, mom?’ or again, ‘Why attack music, is it not the food of love?’ that will haunt the reader. Many of the Vignettes will bring a tear to the eyes of the reader or a lump in the throat as does ‘Yummy mummy anything for a hungry tummy’ while there is poetic strain all along, most evident in such vignettes as ‘The fantastic feat of feisty feet’.   

STORIES EVERYWHERE FOUND

Many of the vignettes have Iha saying that her mother should concentrate on food and not listen in on conversations of others, for food for thought. But it is clear that Santosh Bakaya finds a story everywhere and in everything, be it dins about chins or her daughter, Iha.

And we all love a good storyteller.

(The author is the Professor and Principal, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi)