Name: Em and the Big Hoom
ISBN: 9780143124764

Jerry Pinto

A U.S. release of an award-winning first novel from India follows the observations of a young narrator whose life orbits around that of his beedis smoking, singing mother, a bipolar disorder sufferer whose imbalances trigger monstrous behaviors. Original. A first novel.

A Novel

Em and the Big Hoom

Srijita Sarkar 

I wasn’t sure I would ever be able to deal with the world. It seemed too big and demanding and there wasn’t a fixed syllabus.

‘It’s 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. So I got up and 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.’

Even now, I look in Em’s notebooks not for my mother but for Augustine’s Beloved.

Imelda was too young to understand that love could be an injury.

Was this just how people remembered things, in patches and images, or was this the repression of a painful memory?

‘And thus you were alienated from your labour as well as from your wages.’

‘Only one word of advice,’ said Em. ‘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.’

A well-told lie can heal. Otherwise, what’s fiction?’

And what can mental health mean in a nation that wants an injection to put it back on its feet the next morning?

How could one demand perfect submission from those who are imperfect?

And if God were capricious, then God was imperfect. If God were imperfect, God was not God.

It is difficult to see how detachment and love might fit together but the Greeks had a go with agape. Only, they didn’t use it much, just coined the term and left others to bother about the repercussions of loving someone else with benevolent detachment.

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.

To assimilate the causes and consequences of the battle of Panipat without ever identifying your own enemy because that would mean identifying yourself.

Home was a blood-stained bathroom which, when it was scraped down for repainting, revealed an old suicide note, scrawled in pencil.

‘I want to go home.’ And then I thought as suddenly: ‘I don’t want to go home.’ I remember thinking, ‘If I go on like this, I will go mad.’ I tried not to think too much about home as a concept after that.

There is no such thing as giving the body without giving the soul. Those who think they can be faithful in soul to one another, but unfaithful in body, forget that the two are inseparable. Sex in isolation from personality does not exist! An arm living and gesticulating apart from the living organism is an impossibility. Man has no organic functions isolated from his soul.

‘Fate is a sea without shore,’ they say. ‘Love and Death have dealt shocks,’ they say.

Anything less makes you less. Was that how it was for him as a husband? She had loved him, and he would never forget it; he would be with her and love her in return, always, even if it wasn’t enough.

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.’

What control do mad people have? I don’t know myself. I only know there is some control. Some things you can choose not to say. Some things you can choose not to do. It’s such a mess, that’s why it’s madness. Because even when you say things which are not in your control, you’re saying them because not saying them will mean having to say other things. So you say, “I’ll let this one out of its cage and that should make the other cage stronger.”

It didn’t taste of anything, but it was like finding a chocolate wrapper inside a book and remembering the taste of the chocolate.’

Indeed we did. Not just any old chocolate. Special chocolate. Chocolate from abroad. Chocolate your best friend gave you.’

No, not as a bookmark. As remembrance. That should you never get chocolate again, you would know you had once eaten this bar.’

Ditipriya Acharya

Conversations With Em 

 Love is never enough. Madness is enough. It is complete, sufficient unto itself. 

Early on in this debut novel by Jerry Pinto we learn that Em, of the title, is Imelda and the Big Hoom, named after the sound he makes, is Augustine. Through the point of view of their son, the unnamed narrator of the novel who has a striking resemblance to the author himself, we are taken through the story of a family trying deal with Em’s manic-depression that is a looming presence in their entire lives. The Mendes’s are a Roman Catholic Goan family, who might have been well off under different conditions. At its core, the novel is a love story told through the erratic ramblings of a woman with a mental illness, an addiction to Ganesh Chaap beedis, and who is always accompanied by a cup of tea.

Along with the narrator’s sister, Susan, the family lives in a small one-bedroom apartment in Bombay. The lack of space results in a lack of privacy. They cannot get away from their mother’s illness even if they tried, just like they could not escape it in their lives. Em’s manic-depression is not only a burden for her to bear, as the lives of her family members come to a standstill every time she attempts to commit suicide. Even after living in such close quarters to their mother’s illness, their understanding of it is limited. 

They can only try to help her without actually knowing how she feels.  You’re a tourist; she’s a resident. 

Unlike other children around them, the siblings do not grow up carefree. Instead, they are strapped with the responsibility of caring for their mother, while the roles should have been reversed. This is a reflection of the inability of families with members suffering from mental health problems to shroud them in seclusion. Their privacy is snatched away as the patient reveals their deepest troubles and pain to others.  Those who suffer from mental illness and those who suffer from the mental illness of someone they love grow accustomed to such invasions of their privacy. 

The novel jumps in time and memory as a major chunk of the story is through conversations between the narrator and his mother; and excerpts from her letters and diary entries.  Conversations with Em could be like wandering in a town you had never seen before, where every path you took might change course midway and take you with it. 

 These conversations, while taking the reader through the unique love story between Imelda and Augustine, also give an insight into the relationship that the narrator shares with his mother. Em is brutally honest. She says things with no concern about them hurting those around her. This is evident when she tells the narrator that something broke in her after he was born, ignoring the effect this declaration has on him. Even such a heart-breaking story has moments of mirth and the writing leaves the reader with a feeling of nostalgia. One such moment is when Em introduces her son to the Oedipal Complex leaving the difficult task of explaining the details up to her husband. Throughout the story, Em has many names for all her family members, as quirky as those the children have for their parents.

The Big Hoom is the rock of the family, keeping all of them afloat amidst the scary ocean of their mother’s illness. The novel takes the form of a coming-of-age story, as the narrator attempts to emulate the strength with which his father takes over the reins when his mothers tried to kill herself. As the novel comes to an end there are conflicting feelings of peace and grief as the family lose her to a heart attack instead of the illness that had been part of her for so many years. The same home had changed for them without her.  Home was already a thinner, lighter space. 

I read this book soon after getting the opportunity to interact with the author in my college. I  really  enjoyed it the first time. Then I read it again for my Critical Appreciation class in college and on the second reading, I found brand new things to love. This is definitely a book meant to be read several times in order to find the little details Pinto has cleverly sprinkled into the story.

In a one-bedroom-hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, Imelda Mendes-Em to her children-holds her family in thrall with her flamboyance, her compelling imagination, her unspoken love, her sometimes cruel candour. Through this, her husband, to whom she was once 'buttercup', her son and daughter learn to cope with her mania and her frequent wish to die. A searing and at times darkly funny, study of mental illness, and also a deeply moving story about love and family relationships.

EM and the Big Hoom

Rohit Arondekar

This was a funny book. It was also a heartbreaking book. At many times it was both at the same time. The highlight for me was the writing. The book may not appeal to everybody because of the topic of discussion ― mental health. However, I loved the treatment and how the characters have to deal with a loved one who unwittingly causes harms. You'll know within the first couple of chapters if you'll like the book. I highly recommend you give it a try.

Prashanth Srivatsa

There's unity in fragility here. A Goan family deals with the mother's mental condition through a series of reminiscences and conversations. There's pain and suffering, but also laughter and mockery. Pinto perfectly encapsulates the virtues of family, the lengths to which they are willing to go for the sake of one of theirs, all the while testing their patience and tolerance. That there could ever be a breaking point never occurs to you. Beautiful book.

Jennifer Dieter

I don't know why it took me so long to read this book. Perhaps it was the pain of reading about a family impacted by mental illness or the perfectly crafted passages describing Em's journey. I'd like to go back and read this one again. Much of it hit close to my own life and journey living with someone who has bipolar disorder. Wish I had saved it as a book club pick.

Em and the Big Hoom A Novel