New Delhi, July 11 -- Manil Suri's memoir, A Room in Bombay, is dedicated to "Prem". It becomes clear in the first few pages that it refers to his late mother, Prem Suri nee Bindra. The decision to refer to her by her formal name is revealing. Instead of instinctively reaching out for a more intimate form of address, Suri seems to want to distance himself from this primal filial bond, which, as is evident from his account, was an all-consuming force in his life. While he wants to dedicate his life's story to the "Mummy" he adored, at times with a fiercely disturbing intensity, he also wants to acknowledge the unique person behind that figure who pushed him to discover aspects of himself he would probably not have done, left to his own dev...