Sunlight and Darkness in 'Em and the Big Hoom'

 Sunlight and Darkness in 'Em and the Big Hoom'

- Ahana Srikanth

A lot of people have the wrong idea about Bipolar Disorder: it's not just switching from one mood to another whenever you feel uncomfortable in certain situations. Having Bipolar Disorder is like being on a roller coaster ride. Sometimes you can predict drop-offs while other times, you just need to hang on because the immediate next turn can send you into unexpected spirals. Sometimes you are laughing and then the other times, you are clinging, and simply holding on for your life, screaming at the top of your lungs, having minimal or absolutely no control over your emotions, thoughts and actions. 

Em and the Big Hoom is a coming-of-age and profoundly moving story, written by Jerry Pinto, in contemporary India (Em is short for Imelda, who is married to Augustine, the Big Hoom; they have two children- an unnamed narrator and his sibling, Susan). The story revolves around a Roman Catholic Goan family’s quotidian attempt to keep up with Em’s ever-transforming manic depression from highs that take them from the mother’s brilliance and honesty due to euphoria, to instantaneous lows marked by intense paranoia and attempts to take her own life. They struggle to assuage their own fears, and find peace within their one-bedroom, kitchen apartment in Mahim, Mumbai.

 

Em is an unpredictable figure whose sudden euphoria makes the world of the novel brim with sheer delight; when she’s at the mercy of the disorder, the world seems to change with the unleashed power of her suffering. The weight of her disorder weighs heavily on her family’s shoulders, especially the narrator’s. He is driven by the desire to comprehend the roots of his mother’s bipolar disorder, and so, chronicles his parents’ early life together. He is a troubled and uncertain lad who is constantly mocked by other children for having a ‘mad’ mother and struggles to quell his anxiety of inheriting this illness. Instead of growing up carefree like other children, the narrator and his sister turn into experts in calculating every word that comes out of Em’s mouth for hidden meanings and clues to her state of mind. The kids are vastly aware of what they say and how it might be interpreted and paraphrased, in fear of setting off a chain reaction leading into a depression that can last a long period of time.

The novel is beautifully written, with a child’s perspective of sorrow, madness and mental turmoil, along with gentle, equal doses of humour and worry. Em’s mind-stirring monologues capture the ramblings of the disorder remarkably, but her portrayal as a vulnerable human is preserved. Pinto captures the narrator’s self-conscious guilt: awareness that his mother’s illness coerces him to think and talk about himself and then feel bad about it. She stirs conflicted sentiments. Bitterness. Anxiety. An impossible love. 

The story reads as more experienced than imagined reality, as though Pinto may very well have documented details of his own tragic childhood and adolescence to produce such a fine work. While not a traditional young adult novel, it does have a coming-of-age narrative that is unique in showing an adolescent struggle with his mother's Bipolar Disorder, and provides an awareness of what it is like to have Bipolar Disorder. It is more of a memoir perhaps in the guise of fiction.