Even after I was too grown-up to play that game and too grown-up to tell my mother that I loved her, I still believed I was the best daughter. Didn’t I run all the way up to the terrace to check on the drying mango pickles whenever she asked?

　　As I entered my teens, it seemed that I was becoming an even better, more loving daughter. Didn’t I drop whatever I was doing each afternoon to go to the corner grocery to pick up any spices my mother had run out of?

　　My mother, on the other hand, seemed more and more unloving to me. Some days she positively resembled a witch as she threatened to pack me off to my second uncle’s home in provincial Barddhaman — a fate worse than death to a cool Calcutta girl like me — if my grades didn’t improve. Other days she would sit me down and tell me about “Girls Who Brought Shame to Their Families”. There were apparently, a million ways in which one could do this, and my mother was determined that I should be cautioned against every one of them. On principle, she disapproved of everything I wanted to do, from going to study in America to perming my hair, and her favorite phrase was “over my dead body.” It was clear that I loved her far more than she loved me — that is, if she loved me at all.

　　After I finished graduate school in America and got married, my relationship with my mother improved a great deal. Though occasionally dubious about my choice of a writing career, overall she thought I’d shaped up nicely. I thought the same about her. We established a rhythm: She’d write from India and give me all the gossip and send care packages with my favorite kind of mango pickle; I’d call her from the United States and tell her all the things I’d been up to and send care packages with instant vanilla pudding, for which she’d developed a great fondness. We loved each other equally — or so I believed until my first son, Anand, was born.

　　My son’s birth shook up my neat, organized, in-control adult existence in ways I hadn’t imagined. I went through six weeks of being shrouded in an exhausted fog of postpartum depression. As my husband and I walked our wailing baby up and down through the night, and I seriously contemplated going AWOL, I wondered if I was cut out to be a mother at all. And mother love — what was that all about?

　　Then one morning, as I was changing yet another diaper, Anand grinned up at me with his toothless gums. Hmm, I thought. This little brown scrawny thing is kind of cute after all. Things progressed rapidly from there. Before I knew it, I’d moved the extra bed into the baby’s room and was spending many nights on it, bonding with my son.

　　參考答案：

　　即使我長(zhǎng)大些，不再適合做這樣的游戲，不再對(duì)母親說(shuō)我愛(ài)她，我仍然相信自己是世上最好的女兒。難道不是嗎?每當(dāng)母親吩咐，我不是總一路跑著到陽(yáng)臺(tái)去查看曬在那兒的腌芒果?

　　當(dāng)我步入少年，我好像變成了一個(gè)更乖更可愛(ài)的女兒。難道不是嗎?每天下午，當(dāng)媽媽需要新的調(diào)料，我不是總放下手頭的工作去街角的雜貨店幫她買?

　　另一方面，我的母親對(duì)我的愛(ài)卻好像越來(lái)越少。有時(shí)她活像個(gè)巫婆，因?yàn)樗�威脅如果我的學(xué)習(xí)成績(jī)還沒(méi)有起色，就要把我送到遠(yuǎn)在巴哈馬鄉(xiāng)下的二叔家——這對(duì)于像我這樣心高氣奧德加爾各答女孩而言，將是比死亡更悲慘的命運(yùn)。有時(shí)她又會(huì)讓我坐著聽(tīng)她講有關(guān)“帶給家庭恥辱的女孩”的故事。顯然一個(gè)人會(huì)面對(duì)許多變壞的可能，因此母親決心讓我對(duì)每個(gè)可能都保持警惕�；�本上，她對(duì)我想做的每一件事都持反對(duì)意見(jiàn)，從去美國(guó)學(xué)習(xí)到燙頭發(fā)。她的口頭禪是“除非我死了”。很明顯，我對(duì)母親的愛(ài)遠(yuǎn)遠(yuǎn)超過(guò)了她對(duì)我的愛(ài)——如果她愛(ài)我的話。

　　當(dāng)我結(jié)束了在美國(guó)的研究生學(xué)習(xí)并結(jié)了婚，我和母親的關(guān)系改善了許多。雖然偶爾她還對(duì)我的當(dāng)作家的選擇表示懷疑，但總的來(lái)說(shuō)她認(rèn)為我做的事情還算不錯(cuò)。對(duì)于她我也這樣認(rèn)為。我們之間建立起一種循環(huán)：她從印度寫信給我，告訴我各種趣聞，并寄來(lái)我最喜歡的腌芒果;我從美國(guó)打電話給她，告訴她我都忙了些什么事情，并寄去她最喜歡的香草布丁。我們的愛(ài)是對(duì)等的——至少在我的兒子阿南德出生前，我是這樣認(rèn)為的。

　　兒子的降生一下子打亂了我的平靜、規(guī)律、有秩序的生活，使我措手不及。出院后的六周里，我一直被產(chǎn)后抑郁癥的陰影包圍著。 當(dāng)夜里我和我的丈夫抱著哭鬧不止的兒子，走來(lái)走去哄他睡覺(jué)，我開(kāi)始認(rèn)真考慮是否要“撤退”。我懷疑自己是否適合做母親。母愛(ài)——究竟是什么?