Even after I was too grown-up to play that game and too grown-up to tell my mother that I loved her, I still believed I was the best daughter. Didn’t I run all the way up to the terrace to check on the drying mango pickles whenever she asked?

　　As I entered my teens, it seemed that I was becoming an even better, more loving daughter. Didn’t I drop whatever I was doing each afternoon to go to the corner grocery to pick up any spices my mother had run out of?

　　My mother, on the other hand, seemed more and more unloving to me. Some days she positively resembled a witch as she threatened to pack me off to my second uncle’s home in provincial Barddhaman — a fate worse than death to a cool Calcutta girl like me — if my grades didn’t improve. Other days she would sit me down and tell me about “Girls Who Brought Shame to Their Families”. There were apparently, a million ways in which one could do this, and my mother was determined that I should be cautioned against every one of them. On principle, she disapproved of everything I wanted to do, from going to study in America to perming my hair, and her favorite phrase was “over my dead body.” It was clear that I loved her far more than she loved me — that is, if she loved me at all.

　　After I finished graduate school in America and got married, my relationship with my mother improved a great deal. Though occasionally dubious about my choice of a writing career, overall she thought I’d shaped up nicely. I thought the same about her. We established a rhythm: She’d write from India and give me all the gossip and send care packages with my favorite kind of mango pickle; I’d call her from the United States and tell her all the things I’d been up to and send care packages with instant vanilla pudding, for which she’d developed a great fondness. We loved each other equally — or so I believed until my first son, Anand, was born.

　　My son’s birth shook up my neat, organized, in-control adult existence in ways I hadn’t imagined. I went through six weeks of being shrouded in an exhausted fog of postpartum depression. As my husband and I walked our wailing baby up and down through the night, and I seriously contemplated going AWOL, I wondered if I was cut out to be a mother at all. And mother love — what was that all about?

　　Then one morning, as I was changing yet another diaper, Anand grinned up at me with his toothless gums. Hmm, I thought. This little brown scrawny thing is kind of cute after all. Things progressed rapidly from there. Before I knew it, I’d moved the extra bed into the baby’s room and was spending many nights on it, bonding with my son.

　　参考答案：

　　即使我长大些，不再适合做这样的游戏，不再对母亲说我爱她，我仍然相信自己是世上最好的女儿。难道不是吗?每当母亲吩咐，我不是总一路跑着到阳台去查看晒在那儿的腌芒果?

　　当我步入少年，我好像变成了一个更乖更可爱的女儿。难道不是吗?每天下午，当妈妈需要新的调料，我不是总放下手头的工作去街角的杂货店帮她买?

　　另一方面，我的母亲对我的爱却好像越来越少。有时她活像个巫婆，因为她威胁如果我的学习成绩还没有起色，就要把我送到远在巴哈马乡下的二叔家——这对于像我这样心高气奥德加尔各答女孩而言，将是比死亡更悲惨的命运。有时她又会让我坐着听她讲有关“带给家庭耻辱的女孩”的故事。显然一个人会面对许多变坏的可能，因此母亲决心让我对每个可能都保持警惕。基本上，她对我想做的每一件事都持反对意见，从去美国学习到烫头发。她的口头禅是“除非我死了”。很明显，我对母亲的爱远远超过了她对我的爱——如果她爱我的话。

　　当我结束了在美国的研究生学习并结了婚，我和母亲的关系改善了许多。虽然偶尔她还对我的当作家的选择表示怀疑，但总的来说她认为我做的事情还算不错。对于她我也这样认为。我们之间建立起一种循环：她从印度写信给我，告诉我各种趣闻，并寄来我最喜欢的腌芒果;我从美国打电话给她，告诉她我都忙了些什么事情，并寄去她最喜欢的香草布丁。我们的爱是对等的——至少在我的儿子阿南德出生前，我是这样认为的。

　　儿子的降生一下子打乱了我的平静、规律、有秩序的生活，使我措手不及。出院后的六周里，我一直被产后抑郁症的阴影包围着。 当夜里我和我的丈夫抱着哭闹不止的儿子，走来走去哄他睡觉，我开始认真考虑是否要“撤退”。我怀疑自己是否适合做母亲。母爱——究竟是什么?

（编辑：何莹莹）