DIDDI: My Mother's Voice

By Ira Pande

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• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0143033468
• ISBN13: 9780143033462
• Release Date: April 2005
• Publisher: Penguin Books India
• Length: 216 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.2" x 7.8"

Customer Reviews

An interesting read.

"Diddi"(which means "Older Sister" in Hindi) makes for an interesting read and is a biography written in an innovative way. This book is a daugther's attempt to understand her enermously talented and enignmatic mother, who was a well-known Hindi writer. Ira Pande the daughter of Shivani, whose real name was Gaura Pant, tries to understand her mother via her writings. Growing up, Pande confesses that she and her siblings took their mother's writing talent for granted. The children addressed their mother as "diddi" or older sister, and Pande says that their mother was like an older sister to them. After reading the book I knew a little bit more about Shivani, her childhood and upbringing, but was left with a nagging feeling that there was something missing in the book. The portrait of Shivani is incomplete and this stems from the fact that certain parts of the portrait are more detailed than the others. For instance, we never get to know more about Shivani's writing process, or how she managed to juggle her priorities of raising a family and writing. Who were the people who helped her in her writing process? Also an illustrated family tree would have helped keep track of the different members of the family. Probably what many readers will find interesting is the Kumaoni background and lifestyle that Pande describes in her book. Being a tightly knit community there is very little that is known about the Kumaoni community to the rest of the world. Shivani was a familiar name in our house since my parents were big fans of her and devoured her books and essays. My parents' eagerness to read her writings also stemmed from the fact that Shivani wrote extensively about Kumaon and the Kumaoni community. Her writings helped my parents maintain a tenuous link to Kumaon where they grew up, but had to leave reluctantly to pursue better economic opportunities in the South. Unfortunately since my fluency in Hindi was limited I was unable to read her works in the original, but have read English translations of her work and have throughly enjoyed reading them. In a way this book provided me with an opportunity to read some of Shivani's essays and short stories, which are otherwise not available. An excellent companion to the current volume would have been an extended selection of Shivani's writings in English. While the book does include some of Shivani's writings, they are limited to a few selections. An extended selection of Shivani's writings gives the non-Hindi speaking people an opportunity to read her works. Shivani was a skillful storyteller who conjured up some fantastic tales.