Botanical images and metaphors are central to Anita Rau Badami’s novel, Asha in Her Garden. Through the vital garden, trees, and flowers, Badami lays out the life of her protagonist, Asha Mohan, whom the readers meet on the occasion of her seventieth birthday, when a maple tree in her Montreal garden must be cut down. Using the felling of the tree as a device to launch into the protagonist’s reflections, the novel unspools into an intergenerational family tale that moves between India and Montreal. The novel is divided into four sections; the first opens in 2003, in Montreal, with the felling of Asha’s tree. The second part moves between Montreal and Bangalore, stretching from 1960 to 1996. Then, in the third section, the readers return to 2003 Montreal. The final section details Asha’s party in her garden, following the felling of the maple tree in 2023. 

Asha’s Montreal garden, and the tree-lined house ringed by cascading roses in Bangalore, work well as a botanical theme that brings together Asha’s different lives. Badami’s writing shines when she describes the Bangalore house, specifically when she imbues the house with its own lore, describing how the rose bushes were infected by her great-grandmother’s unhappiness, destroying their flowers. Through these touches, the novel builds a vivid and evocative picture of Asha’s childhood in a house with green verandahs and mango trees.

Botanical metaphors in the novel also play into the central tension that animates its protagonist, the contradictory desire to be rooted while being curious to leave one’s “roots” behind, as Asha does when she makes the decision to move to Montreal. In fact, when Asha purchases her house in Montreal, one of the first things she does is to envision the garden space with tropical flowers, a callback to what she had left behind. Badami excels at bringing Asha to life in the novel; one can clearly see Asha’s flaws and how they affect the various relationships in her life, including with her husband and children. While the writing in the novel conveys Asha’s struggles perfectly well through dialogue and action, in some places Badami externalizes the same emotional struggles into a secondary character named the hag. Explained as a childhood manifestation of anxiety, at times the hag takes away from the momentum of the narrative.

The different sections in the novel allow Badami to build her settings through imagery. Some of those images, specifically the ones about India, feel slightly stuck in the past, such as goddesses in bottles. Through Asha’s husband Suresh, who works as a journalist, Badami balances the former representation of India with a more contemporary one in which critics of the government are being disappeared. Badami accurately captures the western side of representation through Asha’s landlady, who assumes that Asha must have led a horrible life back home after having seen news about a flood in India.

 Overall, Asha in Her Garden is an extremely readable novel, which ultimately speaks to the power of art and representation. As the novel draws to a close, Asha reflects on her life, looking at her daughter’s paintings inspired by her family. Asha’s closing thoughts are the kernel of the novel; art holds the potential to elevate even the simplest of family histories.mRb