An Introspective Exploration of the Sublime and the Subtle in the Everyday in Santosh Bakaya’s Din about Chins

-Sanjay Pandita

Santosh Bakaya’s Din about Chins arrives not merely as a literary artifact, but as a living, breathing celebration of the quotidian rendered lyrical through a mother’s gaze. In this luminous and inimitably effervescent collection of vignettes, Bakaya plumbs the layered emotional landscapes of motherhood, daughterhood, and the everyday absurdities that bind them. One might be tempted to categorize it as memoir, humour, or familial reflection—but such reductionism would do disservice to the book’s polyphonic cadence and thematic depth. Din about Chins defies genre the way a free-spirited daughter might defy her mother’s sense of aesthetic decorum—and therein lies its triumph.

Bakaya’s language pirouettes and sashays through the pages, marrying erudition with colloquial grace, interspersing high culture with familial idioms, and linking the domestic with the universal. What the reader encounters is not merely a narration of events or incidents from a maternal diary, but a full-bodied opera of emotions—each anecdote a libretto, each repartee a lyrical aria. She does not just write about motherhood; she embodies its paradoxes, its melancholy, its music, its whimsy, and its wonder.

At the heart of this incandescent narrative lies the richly textured relationship between Bakaya and her daughter, Iha—a relationship marked by a relentless exchange of words, worldviews, and witticisms. The title itself, Din About Chins, is a playful yet poignant invocation of bodily anxieties, filtered through a lens of affection and satire. In this deftly ironic choice, Bakaya captures the undercurrent of a generational paradox: a mother’s concern for her daughter’s health or appearance transforms into a mutual teasing, a shared idiom of intimacy. The ‘chin’, in this context, becomes both symbol and synecdoche—of age, of self-perception, of maternal worry and filial irreverence.

From the first vignette, the narrative seduces with its conversational elasticity. One moment, we find the narrator indulging in linguistic gymnastics, referencing Martin Luther King Jr. and Lewis Carroll; the next, we are immersed in a debate about tattoos, horror movies (“horrel,” in the daughter’s delightfully creative lexicon), or the ethics of giving away new clothes to a maid’s daughter. This genre-bending narrative strategy—this synesthetic intermingling of the serious and the silly—renders Bakaya’s prose uniquely textured, invoking the tradition of literary greats who transformed domesticity into art: Woolf, Munro, Lahiri.

Indeed, Bakaya’s art lies in her ability to elevate the ephemeral. The playful arguments over oxymorons or snowy owls are not merely idiosyncratic dialogues but manifestations of a deeper intellectual and emotional engagement between two fiercely alive individuals. Her daughter, often described as “mercurial,” becomes a mirror to the narrator’s own evolving philosophies. The child who questions why music, the “food of love,” can be attacked for its cultural identity is not merely being precocious—she is channelling a universal ache, asking questions that lie at the heart of our fractured world. The mother, who listens with attentive amusement and restrained awe, becomes a vessel of both generational wisdom and maternal humility.

But to dismiss Din about Chins as a series of charming conversations would be to miss its subterranean currents. Beneath the ebullience and the repartee lies a shimmering melancholy. The spectre of loss hovers delicately—Bakaya writes with aching reverence of her mother, whose death leaves an echoing silence in her life. In a scene of understated devastation, the daughter tenderly celebrates her mother’s birthday shortly after the grandmother’s passing. Such moments are where the book transcends anecdotal charm and becomes something far more elemental: a meditation on continuity, inheritance, and the spectral presences that guide us long after they are gone.

Her prose, deeply evocative and fiercely precise, allows her to pivot seamlessly between registers. A phrase as simple as “dust motes finding their way into our eyes” conjures both literal image and emotional metaphor. Are these motes specks of nostalgia, or are they tears disguised in poetic evasion? Bakaya never tells. She never insists. Instead, she trusts her reader to sense the emotional resonance that lingers between the lines, much like a Chopin prelude that withholds resolution until the final breath.

Throughout, literary allusions are handled not as badges of erudition but as natural extensions of thought. Edgar Allan Poe, Roald Dahl, Scarlett O’Hara, Oliver Twist—they inhabit these pages as co-conspirators in the familial drama. When the daughter plays with Dahlian neologisms like “swatchcollop” or “whoopsysplunkers,” and the mother fires back with “jiggered,” we are not merely witnessing linguistic banter but a symbolic transfer of cultural memory—of the fantastical and the absurd, as interpreted by two generations with shared yet distinct tongues.

The physicality of the book—the act of its writing, its editing, its manifestation—is also lovingly detailed. Bakaya’s acknowledgment section reads like a deeply emotional epilogue, where she traces the manuscript’s journey through time, space, and emotion. Her gratitude is both professional and profoundly personal. Her late father, her ever-encouraging siblings, the friends who opened their homes and hearts—each is invoked with lyrical precision and emotional weight. It becomes clear that this book is not merely a literary undertaking but a deeply lived experience, woven from the threads of remembrance and resilience.

Moreover, the inclusion of illustrations, the carefully chosen cover by Kushal Poddar, and the thoughtful foreword and afterword by fellow writers, mark Din About Chins as a deeply collaborative act of creation. It is not merely the author’s voice that echoes in these pages, but a chorus of voices—familial, artistic, intellectual—interweaving across time and space.

In the final analysis, Din about Chins is a masterclass in literary voice. It is a book that sings, not in high dramatic crescendos but in intimate lullabies and whispered confidences. Bakaya writes with a heart steeped in poetic rhythm and a mind alert to the absurdities and ecstasies of life. Her narrative celebrates not just a mother-daughter relationship but the very act of conversing—of trading words, worldviews, and wonder across the generational divide.

As the great James Baldwin once wrote, “The interior life is a real life, and the intangible dreams of people have a tangible effect on the world.”

Din about Chins embodies this axiom with grace and candour. It invites us not only to laugh and reminisce but also to listen—to the tiny tremors of love that ripple beneath the chatter, to the unsaid, to the ineffable. In doing so, it not only affirms the beauty of language but the sacredness of shared silence.

A book like this does not end; it lingers, like the scent of a familiar perfume or the echo of a beloved voice. It is a daughter’s laugh, a mother’s sigh, a reader’s quiet smile. Scrumdiddlyumptious, indeed.

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Profile: Sanjay Pandita

A versatile writer, academic, and musician with a Postgraduate degree in English. Experienced columnist and literary contributor whose creative works—including poems, stories, articles, and book reviews—frequently appear in reputed English newspapers and magazines. A culturally active personality with notable participation in debates and music competitions, along with performances on TV and radio.

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Setu, April 2025