You need some time to warm up to Sonali Prasad’s Glass Bottom. It may be a short book, and you may mistake it for a breezy read, but it is a book that demands attention. And, rightfully so, because once you plunge into it, you realise how carefully the author has chosen each word. Each word has a purpose. Each word evokes an emotion only it can. Take for instance the way she describes something as innocuous as a braid: “…her braid adorned with a weave of chilli peppers.
Two long sections of jute string folded and knotted together at the top to form four strands. A pepper placed horizontally over the two middle strings and under the outer strands….another pepper added under, the strings dropped to the outside. The tight pattern repeating in a delicate dance of fingers.”
The story revolves around two sets of mother-daughter duos: Gul and Arth, and Luni and Himmo. As Prasad goes on to unravel each of their lives, following a chapter worth of a brief introduction for each, you are bound to see yourselves in these women.
Following a storm that hit their sea side town, sending their lives topsy turvy, they are brought face to face with their erstwhile carefully-tucked-away hopes and dreams, even as they deal with the devil that is development.
Interestingly, all we find out about the backdrop is that it is set against the shores of the Arabian Sea, and it is the lack of the specificity—whether it is a town, a fort or a film—that makes the story relatable. It is the protagonists’ tale, but it could very well be mine and yours.
Prasad is an observer, and she wants her reader to observe too—the envy, adoration and dread in passers by, the moistened tip of a thread right before being needles, a concrete mixer’s purring, the feeling of sand caving under one’s feet, frenzied clattering of bills, and everything else that we often deem unworthy of our attention.
As one progresses through the book, there is a sense that while documenting the lives of the four women at the centre of the story, Prasad wanted to highlight the need for documenting all things, and emotions, that comprise the quotidian. She wants, it seems, to show why every ordinary life, from some perspective.
It is clear that Glass Bottom intended to be a climate fiction, but somehow, the author hovers around the core topic. The thrust on everything else, including a lyrical and meditative poetry-like-prose, seems to, as journalists would say, bury the lead. That is where the story sinks.