Negotiating writerly relationship between mother and daughter

How exactly is the writerly relationship between an author and her writer mother? Are the barriers of intimate relationships such as these too difficult to transcend? Actor and author Nandana Dev Sen speaks about her relationship with her writer mother Nabaneeta Dev Sen, an award-winning poet and academic, and the nuances they share while dealing with the depths of literature and human emotions.Accompanying her was publisher and writer Urvashi Butalia at the Times Lit Fest.
The evening appeared nearly magical as the birds traced their way back home in the evening sky and Sen read aloud evocative verses at the Silver Oak lawns at the India Habitat Centre.
Sen spoke about how her mother and she likes to spring surprises for each other. “I was on the phone with my mother once while I was on my way to visit her. But she did not know. Another time, I surprised her with a cake on her birthday as she lay in the hospital. I translated 75 of her poems and gifted her an anthology on her 75th birthday later.”
Butalia asked how the actor managed to translate her mother’s anthology while she was holidaying in Spain during her honeymoon. Sen said she felt closer to her mother and understood how “poetry was a coping mechanism for my mother. I was very far away from her but felt extremely close”.
The actor then went on to elaborate how the relation between two writers may not always be comfortable but added that “my mother and I do not get unsettled by conflict.”
In the audience was also Sen’s niece who was the inspiration behind her children’s book . Sen said that she was astounded to see how her sister spent hours trying to put her niece to sleep but the child would find some way or the other to postpone it.
“The little things that used to annoy me about my mother are the same ones that I do now as I grow older,” she said.
Sen rounded off her session with an animated reading of a poem.