Book review: Lifequake by Tarini Mohan

The long way back

 She was young, all of twenty-three, 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.

Mohan goes into a coma for a brief while but slowly comes to,  eventually. 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 languished on her by her family and close friends.

Primarily though, what gets Tarini Mohan through it all  is her own 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. Some time later, she is back in the United States, at 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 up to the considerable odds stacked against her after the horrendous accident, then plans and strategizes 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. How she undergoes less than satisfactory acupuncture treatment in India, 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.

Reclaiming a dream

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 finish her complete her MBA, 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 internalized ableism, doubts that she may not be able to regain her whip-smart intellectual prowess back, 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 stood on a different level after her accident.

Tarini takes the reader through her trajectory, tells us about Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI) , shows us how it is far more difficult to live with a disability in Inda rather than the West, keeps checking her privilege by informing us how she received access to very good neurosurgeon care in a country like Uganda which struggles with education, healthcare, poverty, all the things needed to live a decent life. How she experienced life under the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 which 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 privileges of 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 a deeply moving personal account of tragedy and triumph that cannot but move the selfsame reader.

https://www.deccanherald.com/features/books/a-punch-to-the-gut-3623952

Lifequake by Tarini Mohan. Juggernaut Books. 280 pages. Rs 799.

This appeared in the Deccan Herald of 13 July 2025.