Volume 40, Number 21 · December 16, 1993
Bringing Up Raja
By Rosemary Dinnage
All the Mothers Are One: Hindu India and the Cultural Reshaping of Psychoanalysis
by Stanley N. Kurtz, foreword by S.J. Tambiah
Columbia University Press, 306 pp., $17.50 (paper)
There was an old man with a boy in the train compartment from Delhi to Jaipur, and a couple with two children. The younger of these was a little boy of about two, beautifully dressed and sucking fitfully on a bottle of fruit juice. The elder, a girl of about seven in sandals and a stained dress, sat by herself in a corner and spoke to no one. The boy—his nickname seemed to be Zuzu—whimpered until he could be taken on his father's lap: 'He always wants Daddy most—unless he wants to sleep, then he goes to mother,' said his father. Was the girl their daughter, I asked? 'No. Attendant.' Was school not compulsory for her? 'But she is poor. The poor don't bother.' The unnamed seven-year-old was called over to massage her mistress, her dark hands against creamy wrists, and later to mind Zuzu.
Review, 2822 words
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