A punch to the gut

She was young, all of 23, standing on the threshold of a new life in Uganda, in a new job, having made new friends. Then, one evening, she gets onto a boda, a motorcycle taxi, along with a friend. The boda is violently rear-ended by a vehicle, and the driver, the author and her friend all hit the tarmac road with sickening force. After which, life is not the same again for Tarini Mohan.

Her memoir is like a punch to the reader's gut, highlighting the unpredictability of life. How everything that sparkles one minute can be cloaked in heavy grey the next minute; how all the promises of life are ephemeral.

Tarini goes into a coma for a brief while but slowly comes to. Her body is broken, her speech is incomprehensible, and she faces a lifetime of physical, mental and emotional rehabilitation. What gets her through these lowest of lows is the love and care lavished on her by her family and close friends.

Primarily, though, what gets Tarini Mohan through it all is her indomitable spirit, her determination not to collapse, to rise and soar above it all. While the reader marvels at her unflagging self-discipline, Tarini herself informs us that it was a carefully crafted veneer of purpose.

After a short stint in the Kampala hospital, she is moved to Delhi for a spell of recuperation and therapy. Sometime later, she is back in the United States, in New Haven, Connecticut, where her father teaches at Yale University. Recovery becomes an excruciatingly slow journey, first emerging from a comatose condition, then regaining some sensation in her body, then years of gruelling physical, occupational and speech therapy.

Lifequake is a moving memoir of how the author first faces the considerable odds stacked against her after the horrendous accident, then her plans and strategies for how best to pick up the pieces and move on. There is much looking back without irony: on how bodas were frequently involved in disastrous collisions, sometimes resulting in grave injuries and death. How that night, she had climbed onto the boda without wearing a helmet. She undergoes less than satisfactory acupuncture treatment in India and less than satisfactory speech therapy classes, again in India. She doffs a hat to the immense and immensely arduous task of caregiving, even as she is honest about how irksome it is to be back under her parents' wing, to share a room with her mother, managing her personhood even while balancing the needs of her caregivers. She talks about how her home country, India, is blind to the dignity of people with disabilities.

In her case, moving on meant a level higher: it was to do her management at Yale University, no less. Here, the memoir shows us how the Ivy League institution goes out on a limb to ensure a student with disabilities is given all the help she can possibly need and hope for. They allow her double the time to complete her MBA, and they craft a schedule that would let her finish her physiotherapy before heading to classes. It wasn’t just an education, it was a form of liberation, says the author.

Step by slow, tentative step, Tarini Mohan sets out to reclaim as much of her former dreams and aspirations as she possibly can. Constantly battling internalised ableism and doubts that she may not be able to regain her whip-smart intellectual prowess, at first, she declines her admission. Yale then communicates to her that they are prepared to hold her seat for her, so of course, she has to pick up the gauntlet.  

Part of letting go of erstwhile normal things meant also ending a long-term relationship with her boyfriend, fully understanding that everything was different after her accident.

Tarini tells us about Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), shows us how it is far more difficult to live with a disability in India than in the West and keeps checking her privilege by informing us how she received access to a very good neurosurgeon in a country like Uganda, which struggles with education, healthcare, and poverty. How the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 made life so much easier for her. How despite the 'uncompromising limitations' to her autonomy in India, she was still able to be comfortable because of her household help. How she now lives with chronic pain.

There is no trace of anything maudlin in this memoir, though the reader cannot help but flinch at all the author goes through. It is instead a deeply moving personal account of tragedy and triumph.