Em and The Big Hoom

In a one-bedroom hall-kitchen in Mahim, Bombay, during the last decades of the twentieth century, four love-battered Mendeses lived: mother, father, son and daughter. Between Em, the mother—who was frequently driven to the hospital after her failed suicide attempts—and The Big Hoom, the father—who tried to hold things together as best he could—they tried to be a family.