MATCHBOX

Everyone who is part of a family carries a different version of it within themselves– the hidden currents beneath still waters, the silent languages spoken between siblings, the unexplained absences that shape a child’s understanding of the world. This delicate balance of knowing and not-knowing is central to Bhavika Govil’s stunning, devastating debut novel Hot Water. The novel draws us slowly into the intimate world of a family bound by love yet forced to tiptoeing around unspoken truths and secrets. 

With dazzling energy and insight, Govil immerses us in the unconventional lives of nine-year-old Mira, fourteen-year-old Ashu, and their enigmatic mother Leela as they navigate one long, sweltering summer that threatens to dissolve the careful boundaries they’ve constructed around themselves. As Arundhati Roy once wrote, “Perhaps it’s true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes” – and indeed, this summer becomes the crucible in which this family’s future will be forged anew.

Leela is felt by the reader as a figure of fascinating contradictions; headstrong and deeply urban, a woman for whom motherhood arrived unexpectedly. She moves through the pages in cycles of presence and absence, described through Mira’s eyes as alternating between “Butterfly Days” of frenetic energy and “Moth Days” of profound withdrawal. In these vivid characterizations, we glimpse a woman struggling to reconcile her identity with the demands of single parenthood in a small town far from her Delhi origins. Full of delirious stories and exaggerated narratives, Leela creates a mythology around their family that both shelters and confines her children. Govil has developed in Leela a fully realized woman character with all her urban complexities and desires intact – neither saint nor villain, but gloriously, frustratingly human.

Most compelling is Ashu, a boy of few words drowning in his sister’s love while starving for his mother’s attention. Govil captures his adolescent yearning with devastating precision – his tentative exploration of forbidden desire for his friend, his quiet assumption of responsibility during his mother’s retreats, his insistence on carving out an existence on his own terms despite the family’s mounting crisis. When he makes cheese sandwiches with corners cut precisely as his sister likes during their mother’s depressive episodes, the gesture speaks volumes about the burdens and grace of familial love. Though narrated in third person, the perspective reveals things about Ashu that he himself hasn’t yet figured out, creating a poignant portrait of adolescence on the precipice of self-discovery.

The novel quietly observes the bond between mother and daughter with remarkable sensitivity. Mira and Leela share a mysterious understanding that feels authentic to the complex ways women relate across generations. Through Mira’s curiosity and profound sense of belongingness, Govil compels readers to remember what it was to be a child – the strange logic, the absorption of adult tensions without fully comprehending them, the creation of personal mythologies to explain the inexplicable. Mira’s narrative voice, storing secrets “deep down in her stomach, where cake and other bad feelings reside,” is a masterful achievement that illuminates the gap between what children witness and what they comprehend.

The narrative flows between perspectives like water itself – primarily Mira’s, but with crucial sections from Leela’s point of view that reveal her thoughts and past. Swimming lessons become both literal activity and metaphor, as each character learns to breathe amid the suffocating weight of family history. Throughout the novel, an uneasiness permeates the text like a disease passed through generations, suggesting patterns that repeat despite our best intentions to break them.

Though nameless men appear scarcely throughout the book, they prove integral to both the creation and preservation of the family’s secrets. The mystery of their father’s absence, carefully maintained by Leela’s selective silence, threatens to upend their precarious equilibrium. Yet even as their carefully constructed world begins to dissolve, Ashu stands tall in his insistence on surviving, on claiming life on his own terms.

If the novel falters, it is in its final act, where the careful pacing of earlier chapters gives way to a somewhat rushed denouement. As secrets unravel one by one in quick succession, the narrative momentum that Govil so masterfully established earlier threatens to outrun the emotional depth these revelations deserve. The book leaves several threads tantalizingly unresolved – particularly aspects of Leela’s past and consequences of certain events the children are involved that might have benefited from further exploration. The abruptness of the ending, while perhaps mirroring the sudden way in which life can change direction, leaves readers with lingering questions. 

Govil’s prose is deceptively simple, concealing profound emotional depths beneath its clear surface. The book concerns itself with motherhood as much as it explores what it means to be a child in a family, examining both perspectives with compassion and insight. Perhaps most surprising is the subtle strain of humor that runs throughout the narrative – not broad comedy, but the kind of wry observations and absurd juxtapositions that make even difficult truths bearable. This undercurrent of humor makes the reading experience deeply compelling, allowing readers to navigate heavy themes without being drowned by them.

Drawing inevitable comparisons to Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things in its lyrical portrayal of childhood perspective and family complexity, Hot Water nevertheless charts its own course through the treacherous currents of belonging, desire, and identity. Like Roy’s work, Govil’s novel employs a cyclical storytelling technique, moving fluidly between past and present. Mira’s clarity and warmth feels reminiscent of Roy’s Rachel, both characters observing their worlds with unflinching honesty.

On a personal level, Hot Water affected me deeply, reaching into memories long forgotten. The vivid rendering of childhood, with all its joys and uncertainties transported me back to my own early years, when the world was smaller and more forgiving. The experience prompted me to excavate my personal history and family dynamics, illuminating patterns I had never fully articulated before. I found myself inhabiting the characters’ emotional landscapes—their grief, suffocation, anger, instability and love, too. Despite the heaviness of these emotions, the book remained an irresistible read, pulling me forward with its conviction and deeply human characterizations.

Bhavika Govil handles intricate topics with remarkable ease and mastery, never allowing themes to overwhelm the essential humanity of her characters. In this remarkable debut, she meditates on how we learn to breathe,  and survive – in the depths of those we love most.