A House for Happy Mothers by Amulya Malladi

In A House for Happy Mothers, Amulya Malladi tackles some of the moral and ethical issues surrounding surrogacy programs in India. Priya, an American born half-Indian, and her native Indian husband Madu, are living the perfect life in Silicon Valley, save a child or two. After several miscarriages, and considerable strain to their relationship, they try one last time, via a surrogate in India. The baby is genetically theirs, but growing inside the womb of Asha, a poor but proud mother of two. Asha has been coerced into this by her family as a way to help secure their financial future and provide a better education for their gifted son, but struggles to remain detached from the life growing inside her.

This book explores all of the questions that surrogacy in a poor country raises. Yes, it’s providing a large sum of money to someone who probably lives on $2 a day, but at what cost? There is a lot of shame associated with this practice, and the women must pretend it never happened. They must go through all the toils and discomforts of pregnancy and labor, without the gift of a child at the end. We also see some characters coming back for a second or third time, as either the money was squandered initially or because for a poor person, there is never enough really. 

While there is a very hopeful and uplifting message to this book, having just read and watched A Handmaid’s Tale and its forced surrogacy program, it’s hard not to see some parallels. Apparently there are more laws in place now to help protect the surrogates, and efforts have been made to eliminate some of the worst offending “baby mills,” but it’s easy to see how this is a situation still ripe for exploitation.   

Finally, I listened to the audio version of this book, and it is wonderful! The narrator, Deepa Samuel, does an amazing job with literally dozens of different characters voices. She manages to create a unique Indian accent for each one, and her performance was truly stunning. This is definitely a book worth listening to.