Motherhood and Writing: An oxymoron?

There’s no glorifying it: writing, in practical terms, appears inimical to parenthood. When it comes to efficiency, concentration, guilt-free blocks of time — it’s a pipe-dream. Toss into the mix, a pandemic— two years gone and most of us are ready to throw in the towel. P. G. Wodehouse’s endearingly honest dedication in The Heart of a Goof, validates the juxtaposition poetically: to “my daughter Leonora, without whose never-failing sympathy and encouragement this book would have been finished in half the time.”

I, too, have been simultaneously experiencing my writing and motherhood journey, listening to an orchestra of conflicting voices, at grating volume since. Admittedly, I wasn’t a stranger to writing before I got to parenthood (or rather, it to me); the occasional, speedy Op-Ed, flash-off-the-pan verses, auto-ethnography musings in between; gradually, I built a trove of stories, without planning to do so. But oddly, it took the switch to motherhood, the birth of our almost Irish twin girls — in other words, for my world to be turned completely on its head — to catalyse what was going to become my debut novel. Sounds like a joke, which didn’t land, except it wasn’t.

There had been moments I dreamt about being a writer — stumbling upon my labour of love on a bookstore display, a dazzling signature for author copies, open mics with live, electric audiences. Amidst those stimulating instances, there was one luminous morning, just weeks after giving birth, which unanimously sealed the desire for storytelling within me.

I was listening to a guest speaker (the headmaster of a school in England), offering our students a rehashed version of Thoreau’s words: “Most men and women lead lives of quiet desperation and go to the grave with the song still in them. What’s your song? he asked. Take five minutes to scribble your song on a piece of paper; then share it with the person next to you.” It felt daunting, unreasonable almost, to conjure up a song — one which might accompany you through life — in a matter of minutes. Yet, his titanic ask compelled me to confront stubborn procrastination — what was my song?

That morning, for the first time, I fully registered that storytelling was my song. It made a powerful billboard tagline, coaxing possibility, offering home for potential, which was true to my value system; but in reality, my longing to be a thoughtful, attentive mother, was beginning to overshadow my curdling ambition. The two seemed at odds.

As a girl growing up in South Asia, I was conditioned to chase motherhood martyrdom, believe creating something, anything and raising kids were mismatched pursuits. Normative expectations propositioned self-effacement as a virtue, inching you closer to the desi mother pedestal — each time a mother forfeited her dreams, vitality, hope, there was reason to celebrate.

It wasn’t going to be easy to shed, so quickly, the social desirability to be a good, omnipresent mother. It demanded steep unlearning and I could only try. I decided to stick to stories, for the time being at least, less out of choice, more out of necessity.