Milk Teeth

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It is a coming-of-age novel set against the backdrop of redevelopment, liberalisation, and the 1992 communal riots. Andrews takes aim at the cultural pressures shaping unhealthy ideals of femininity without ever seeming to preach. It is a word that has the ability to ignite a strange mesh of emotions — passion, love, nostalgia, and anger that stems from having no control over one’s own history and as a result, one’s future too. At places, I just felt that it is dragging and even if I skip a paragraph (or a page or two) there is nothing important that will happen. My new friends said things like, 'This park has a bad heart,' or 'the sky is falling down,' and I knew what they meant, lacing my fingers through theirs and running through the lavender dawn, our long coats flying out behind us.

We meet her late into this process, as she grapples with it during the development of a new relationship. I am not the kind of person who lets myself curl up softly in the folds of someone else, but you took my mottled shell in your gentle fingers and I slid out, wanting. Amrita Mahale’s debut novel Milk Teeth explores in arresting detail the Bombay of 90s, and then flitting to an idyllic past wistfully to ruminate on the Bombay that was and would never be again post the liberalisation of the Indian economy. While reading it almost felt like 75% of the text was filler and did not give me a reason to continue investing time into.

I want you to know how integral it has been to the way I move through the world, how I learned to push shame and anger deep into by body and yet speaking about it brings it into the present, when all I want is to leave it behind. The heat of Barcelona and the warmth of the romance and emotions between our two main characters juxtapose so well with the coldness of London and the fear and loneliness felt as well as the sadness, anxiety and negative but entirely overpowering view and perception of food, body image, and eating.

much like its predecessor, milk teeth is a novel that forgoes traditional form structure and all barriers of language.When they both finally meet, they realize they have both always been poles apart just like they are now, yet their childhood together kept them more than connected.