Secret Daughter

“Maybe this is nature's way of telling her something. Maybe I'm just not meant to be a mother.” 

Somer’s struggle with infertility plants the seed of doubt in her mind that she is not destined to be a mother. This doubt is so powerful that it takes the entire book—a lifetime, really—for Somer to overcome it. The path to motherhood, as evidenced through both Somer’s and Kavita’s stories, is not always straightforward, and biology doesn’t necessarily define “family.” 

“Usha is Kavita’s choice alone, a secret name for her secret daughter. The thought brings a smile to her face.” 

Names and naming are a motif throughout Secret Daughter. Bestowing a name upon another person, place, or thing confers power in the entity giving that name. In Chapter 5, while Kavita may be forced to give her daughter up for adoption, due to cultural forces beyond her control (including the necessity of her submission to her Jasu), she is able to exert some agency in the situation by giving her daughter a name. 

“Rupa asks the chaat-wallah for directions to Shanti Orphanage, but he simply shakes his head as he takes in the two women with their conspicuous bare feet and rural garb.” 

When Kavita and her sister Rupa arrive in Bombay to deposit Asha at the Shanti Orphanage, they are immediately pegged as “rural” folks and therefore looked down upon by the city dwellers. In this scene, we see a chaat-wallah snubbing the two women, refusing to help them find their way to the orphanage. The contrast between rural and city life is one of the many dichotomies the book explores. 

“But most of all, when Somer closes her eyes, she imagines the moment she will hold her baby for the first time. She keeps Asha’s photo in her pocket and looks at it often. That one photo vaporized her doubts and made everything come to life. She lay awake at night, picturing her daughter’s sweet face.” 

Secret Daughter explores the bond between mother and daughter, particularly the specific nature of the bond in families with adopted children. While Somer and Asha have their troubles, Somer loves Asha deeply. Even before Somer meets Asha, she regards her as her daughter.

“She reaches out her arms to hold Asha, but the baby turns in clings tightly to Kris’s neck like a koala.” 

In this scene, Asha meets Somer and Kris after they’ve finalized the adoption papers. At just a year old, Asha takes to Kris immediately and “clings” to him, even when Somer attempts to hold her. This foreshadows the dynamic in their relationship, as Asha grows into a young woman; Asha will have a natural bond with Kris, and Somer will always feel excluded.

“They must go away—from the crop fields that signal his failure as a man, from the family he can't seem to forgive, from this house they share with his parents, his childhood home in which he can't be contained any longer.” 

Chapter 20 is from Jasu’s perspective. The reader learns, more clearly, about the pressures associated with being a man in India, particularly in impoverished rural communities. The failure of their crops indicates Jasu’s “failure as a man,” as he is supposed to be the provider for the family. This chapter reveals, given the gender binary so deeply rooted in Indian culture, the conditions and norms put upon men in society. 

“Her thick black ponytail is peeking out from the back of her pale blue ladybug helmet. Somer looks at her daughter, who looks nothing like her daughter.” 

Somer observes Asha playing on the playground in Chapter 30, and she views her, contradictorily, as her daughter who “looks nothing like her daughter.” The tension that arises from the difference in Somer’s and Asha’s physical appearances belies a deeper fear experienced by Somer. Somer, at her core, is afraid that Asha will reject her love and affection; that Asha will abandon Somer if she is allowed to be in touch with her Indian heritage. 

“By the end of the weekend, Krishnan was enamored with everything he had seen: the beautiful house, the sprawling yard, the pretty blonde girl. He wanted it all. He had fallen in love with the American Dream.” 

Kris—who, tellingly, is referred to by his full Indian name in this chapter—reflects back on how when he first moved to the United States to attend medical school, one of his classmates invited him to Boston for a weekend visit. There, Kris was in awe of the trappings of American life. In this chapter, however, Kris is coming to realize that the American Dream is not all that it appears. Even though he has the “pretty blond” as his wife and achieved much success in his career, he and Somer encounter problems related to Somer’s indifference to his culture.

“She removes the lid and takes out several pieces of folded stationary. The paper is thin and worn at the creases, from having been unfolded and re-folded so many times. Underneath all the papers, at the bottom of the box, she picks up the thin silver bangle. It is bent and tarnished.” 

After a fight with Somer, Asha retreats to her room and examines the contents of a small box that contains the only remnants of Kavita: A slip of paper and the silver bangle. The paper is “thin and worn at the creases” from Asha examining it so frequently. It becomes abundantly apparent in this chapter that Asha is obsessed—and has been, for years—with knowing more about her birth parents. While Part 1 of the novel focuses on Somer’s and Kavita’s journey to motherhood, Asha’s needs and desires rise to the surface by the end of Part 2 and are fully realized in Parts III and IV. 

“Her mother slides a wrapped box tied with a large yellow satin ribbon across the table toward her. Asha puts down her orange juice and looks back and forth between her mother's beaming face and her father's natural expression […] Asha unwraps the box to reveal a new handheld video camera.” 

In the previous chapter, Asha examines Kavita gave her: A “tarnished” silver bangle. In Chapter 27, the reader cannot help but notice the disparity between that and the gift her adoptive mother gives her, an expensive handheld video camera. This scene also underscores how Somer never quite understands what Asha wants or needs, as Asha had asked for a recorder meaning an audio recorder, not a video one. Somer has a pattern of misinterpreting Asha’s needs, suggesting she misunderstands Asha’s desire to explore her biological heritage.  

“The concept of simply passing time is almost as strange to Kavita as the idea that they can now afford to go to the movie theater on a whim.” 

At the opening of Part 3, in Chapter 29, Kavita and Jasu experience a sudden turn of fortune, which is unexplained to the reader: They are uplifted from impoverishment, and they now have enough money so that they are able to do recreational activities. Kavita is even taken aback by their recent good fortune, and the reader later learns that their unexpected wealth is the result of Vijay’s illicit drug trade. This moment underscores how difficult Kavita and Jasu’s lives have been due to the extreme nature of their poverty. 

“She still worries about Vijay spending so much time with his partner Pulin, the strange hours he keeps, the wads of cash, and various other things that enter her mind at dark times. As the elevator jolts into movement, she wonders if she will ever stop worrying about her son.” 

This passage foreshadows the next major turning point in the plot: Kavita is suspicious about Vijay’s messenger business. Their newfound wealth does not sit right with Kavita; she remains skeptical of the means by which Vijay has come by this money, while Jasu turns a blind eye. Kavita’s suspicion foreshadows a downfall of their prosperity. Also, that Kavita’s worry for Vijay is never-ending emphasizes themes about the unbreakable bond of motherhood. 

“Asha looks around at a sea of brown faces: some lighter, some darker than her own, but these variations are insignificant in light of the realization she has never been around so many Indians before.” 

It is only when Asha arrives in India that she realizes that she has never before been part of the majority. In America, Asha is part of a small, non-white minority; often, offensively and reductively, her peers treat her as “exotic.” As soon as she sets foot in India, she has the profound experience of being among people who look just like her. 

“Bhai-Ben? […] Brother and sister. That's what we all are.”

Priya, Asha’s cousin, speaks the above words. When Asha asks what “bhai-ben” means, Priya explains that it means “brother and sister,” and it is how Asha should refer to anyone she meets at the large, extended family luncheon that Sarla is having in honor of Asha’s arrival in India. In this moment, we see how the traditional Indian conception of family includes a vast extended network of people, especially when compared to Asha’s very insular, nuclear family back in the United States. 

“She reads in disbelief about young brides who are doused with gasoline and burned alive when their dowries are deemed insufficient. She turns to another story, about a member of the Untouchable caste who intentionally crippled his own children to foster sympathy and increase their begging earnings.” 

Soon after arriving in India and beginning work for the Times of India, Asha quickly learns that there is a huge disparity in the culture, between rich/poor and male/female, among many other dichotomies. Asha learns about how young women from poor families are killed if they do not provide sufficient dowry and, while Asha does not realize it at the moment, this could have been her fate. One of Jasu’s main reasons for not being able to keep a girl child was the issue with having to come up with a dowry. 

“And although it is her husband who will be boarding the plane to fly away, just as their daughter did months ago, Somer cannot help wondering if she's the one who drove them to do so. If she, in fact, left them first.” 

The growing divide between Somer and Kris reaches a pinnacle point in Chapter 40. When Kris decides to leave for India to visit Asha, without Somer accompanying him, they make their separation official. Here, we see Somer blaming herself for the growing rift within her family, which is an overall major motivation for her character.

“After one week of their morning walks, Dadima began to speak about her family's migration during Partition, the division of the country into India and Pakistan that accompanied its independence from the British Empire in 1947. Dadima’s family had lived in Karachi, capital of the northern Indian state of Sindh […] All of it, they had to leave behind when they were forced to move.” 

The country’s history of colonialism has shaped Indian society and culture. In this passage, Dadima explains to Asha how the country’s colonialist history directly impacted their family, when as a young girl, Dadima’s family was forced to move, very suddenly, from their home in Karachi to Bombay. Note that Bombay was re-named Mumbai in 1995 by the ruling Indian party at the time to further distance the city from its British colonialist roots. 

“Or does she still come here simply because it's become a habit, like a scar etched onto her body, one that she can't help but think about, scratch at, pick at, all the while hoping it will miraculously heal one day?” 

Even in 2005, x years after depositing Asha there, Kavita still visits the Shanti Orphanage—for reasons that she does not even fully understand herself. Time and time again, Kavita will pass by and look through the bars of the front gate. In this passage, she compares the obsessive desire to visit the orphanage to a scab that refuses to heal, pointing to the pain that still haunts her to the present day. 

“Whether it's the time apart, the distance of Asha, or the scare of the biopsy, it feels as if a bright light is now shining on them, exposing everything they have suppressed for years. And just as it is on his operating table, while those truths might be unpleasant, seeing them clearly is the first step toward healing.” 

Kris uses an analogy from medicine to describe why it is that he and Somer’s relationship is on the road to recovery. After burying their issues for so long, those issues festered and grow like a cancer. Now that they have exposed the major problems—now that they can see the problem, as a doctor might examine a cancer on the operating table before extracting it—their relationship can truly heal.

“The silence that follows is broken by Rupa. Hers are small cries at first and grow louder until her whole body is shaking with them. Kavita wraps one arm around her sister, then another, holding her while she weeps. They watch together until the last remnants of their mother's body have vanished below the surface.” 

In this pivotal moment in the book, Kavita and Rupa say their final goodbyes to their mother, who has just died. They scatter their mother’s ashes in this scene, letting it set in that she is truly deceased. This passage emphasizes the importance of family—particularly familial bonds between women, as between mother and daughter and between sisters. 

“It's a little overwhelming to think about all the things people have done for me over the years, most of which I didn't even know about, still don't know about. I'm a product of all of that—all those efforts, all these people who loved me, even before they really knew me.” 

Asha is the speaker of these words. In her final days in India before she returns back to the United States, she meets with her friend Sanjay for lunch, where she expresses these feelings about her family: How extraordinary it is that she is bonded with them, despite never having known them. In this passage, the idea that “family” can include people one has not even met even further extends the overarching theme that the concept of “family” is not a singular thing. 

“Perhaps it is that she has come here alone: not to visit her in laws, not to show Vijay his childhood home, but by herself.” 

After her mother’s funeral in Dahanu, Kavita visits the house where she and Jasu first lived. Kavita has lived a life in the service of others, but in this moment, she is doing something purely for herself—a turning point for Kavita’s character. She reports that she has “never felt this way,” as she takes stock of her feelings while observing the old home.

“A slow smile spreads across her face. The first time she came to India, it was for Asha. This time was for Krishnan. Perhaps next time will be for her.” 

Somer, now that she is a yoga enthusiast, considers the possibility of returning to India for a yoga retreat. Mirroring Kavita coming into a newly found sense of self in Chapter 57, Somer realizes that, if she does embark on that trip, it will be purely for her. Her previous two trips to India—the first, to collect Asha when she was adopted, and the second, to accompany Kris for the funeral of his father—were for others.