First Darling of the Morning: Selected Memories of an Indian Childhood

by: Thrity Umrigar

Published by: Harper Perennial

Reviewed by Beth Cummings

(Published in India 2004 by HarperCollins Publishers India)

Thrity Umrigar, author of best selling novels, The Space Between Us and I Today Be Sweet, is a Parsi who was born and raised in the Hindu city of Bombay (Mumbai), India. Parsis are Indians of Persian decent whose ancestors migrated to India from Iran over 1000 years ago. In this memoir she takes a reflective look at her own childhood and upbringing – from her earliest memories until she left home for grad school in the United States at twenty-one.

Thrity’s family, like most of the Parsi families she knew in the 1960s and 1970s, were educated and middle-class. She was sent to a Catholic girls school run by nuns. As she notes at the beginning of her memoir, she is of a generation of Indians who were more familiar with the songs from “The Sound of Music” than with the traditional sitar music of their country. Yet she has friends and acquaintances from a variety of Indian backgrounds, Hindu, Muslin, Anglo-Indian, Christian/Catholic and atheists. It provided a rich tapestry of culture.

On the other hand, Thrity was an only child whose mother was often harsh and unstable. She also shared her home with her father’s sister who was always kind and loving, a father who was often too busy at work to pay much attention to home life, and her father’s brother’s family (uncle, aunt and cousin) who lived just across the hall in their building. She is very candid about her relationships with each of these relatives, often revealing familial information that is frequently difficult to share.

During much of her adolescence, Thrity rebelled in a variety of ways – getting into trouble at school and becoming involved in political demonstrations. She was known in her school as the “mad Parsi” – a title she purposely cultivated by acting out in a somewhat wild manner. I met Thrity Umrigar at a reading at a book festival and it was often hard to imagine that the soft-spoken college professor/author had been the person she was describing.

I enjoyed this memoir immensely. I have read her other books and this one is equally engrossing. The fact that the stories here are true makes it that much better.

Armchair Interviews says: This is a story of personal growth and the changes occurring in India at the same time.

Author’s Web site: http://www.Umrigar.com