Most of us would remember that famous men's clothing brand ad, which popularised the idea of wearing sleek suits to feel like "the complete man". If you are a woman, you'd probably need more than clothes to feel that way. Bearing children has always been mythicised as completeness. So much so that women, who cannot or do not want to, carry the albatross of being "inadequate", around their neck. It's this mummy mythopoeia that writer and TED speaker Pooja Pande examines in her new book, Momspeak (Penguin India).

Covering a wide spectrum of mothers—from single to queer mums, homemakers, sex worker mothers to corporate bigshots—she discusses the trials and tribulations of being a mother, and why this often, eulogised figure in popular culture is just as human as anybody else. "The idea of this book had been with me for over a decade, which is when my daughter was born," says Pande. "It's also a reflection of my own feminist journey, and the realisation of having made an investment in the world [with a child], and being a stakeholder in it." However, it was only a few years ago, when these ideas crystalised and Pande mindfully began making notes, and reaching out to other mothers, to open up the discourse of child bearing and rearing.