Mother Mine: A Novel by Sheeba Shah

Priya. Breathtakingly beautiful, impetuous, ambitious. Her dream of becoming a movie star drives her to do the impossible: abandon an 8-yearold daughter, a good husband and a luxurious life in Kathmandu and follow Rohit, a film producer on the make, to Mumbai—a megacity where dreams bite the dust and harsh reality strikes swiftly. As Priya soon discovers as her life spirals downwards from broken promises, to sleazy casting couches and penury—plunging her into a world where only drugs and alcohol can see her through from one hazy dawn to the next.

Enter Medha, the daughter she abandoned 20 years ago, who tracks her down to her shambolic apartment in Goa, where she has started a ‘new life’—no longer an actress but a waitress, still an alcoholic. Medha sets out to save the mother whose love she craves—but struggles to keep afloat in the chaos in which she finds herself. Falling in love with the devastatingly handsome Pritesh and finding herself part of a bizarre triangle, doesn’t help.

As the lives of mother and daughter coalesce, the story moves towards an inevitable yet inconceivable denouement.

In Mother Mine, Sheeba Shah gives us a story that is irresistibly compelling, drawing us into its depths by the sheer force of its telling.