Arundhati Roy’s Memoir is a Complex, Searing Tale of Volatility and Brilliance, Of Human Failings and Cruelty
- I am a fan of her craft and art. Would that make me write a review that would be unbiased and objective? Probably not.
I finished reading Arundhati Roy’s memoir, “Mother Mary Comes To Me” – in three days. Reading it was like a drug, a habit that I couldn’t and wouldn’t shake off. I am a fan of her writing. Even her acting. I met her as a very young adult when she had come to Bhopal for the launch of her film “Messey Sahib.” I met her, director Pradip Krishen and her co-star Raghubir Yadav. She had come for the launch wearing her character from the film and I remember thinking – what a stunningly gorgeous woman. I have followed her journey as an actor, writer and an activist. So, yes, I am a fan of her craft and art. Would that make me write a review that would be unbiased and objective? Probably not. But when you know a writer like Roy pens something new, it must be top-notch, a grabber of your senses and emotions, warts, et all. This book is a fierce and unflinching look at love and loss, of identity and gender, as well as a remarkable reflection of today’s India – beautiful, full of contradictions of its cruelty and hate and of its ability of keep reinventing itself.
It is also ironic that I started reading this book, a day after I came back from India, visiting and caring for my very sick mother who had a stroke and was hospital bound. In a strange way, Roy’s and my world collided – as women with varying experiences of their childhood and transitioning into adulthood. Roy’s Mother Mary is brilliant, a feminist, daring, darling when she wants to be, and an extremely cruel, who probably shouldn’t have had a family to raise. She raised countless children, year after year through her pioneering school in the tiny town called Ayemenom, Kerala. But she also managed to raise her own two children in contempt, in loathing and with fear.
The trauma of childhood remains with us all into adulthood. The words have an emotional turmoil and impact, well after you grow up, emotionally, physically and psychologically. Roy is honest of her feelings, and of her mother’s – “She was my gangster…my shelter and my storm,” Roy writes. And when Mary dies, Roy goes through those depths of grief and despair – “I was wrecked, heart-smashed” and she was puzzled “and more than a little ashamed by the intensity of my response,” so much so that her brother exclaims, “I don’t understand your reaction. She treated nobody as badly as she treated you.” Welcome to dysfunctional family dynamics.
Roy is honest of her feelings, and of her mother’s – “She was my gangster…my shelter and my storm,” Roy writes. And when Mary dies, Roy goes through those depths of grief and despair.
Like Roy’s mother Mary, my mother has battled chronic asthma for years, like her she gained weight because of the countless steroids pumped into her for years. Like her, my mother was a teacher who raised her three children, twin boys and a girl, minus a husband who physically may not have been present, but was a huge, larger than life figure in our lives and whom my mother worshiped – his genius, his philosophy, his bohemian-ness and his brilliant mind as a writer and literary critic. Our dad was always “present” even when absent, thanks largely to our mother who, unlike Mother Mary, was not a textbook feminist but in her own, gentle but firm way managed to live a life as a working woman within a joint family structure, with conviction and love.
That’s where the two mothers differ – one in her brilliance and defiance of societal norms chose to love or not love those in her life; the other never really knew she was her own person because of the ginormous tree that was my father; but who loved everyone that came into her life – the neighbors’ children, her school kids who were so poor that she paid their fees from her own paltry salary, the rickshaw-wallah who dropped her off in the hot May afternoon after school, and who was given water and asked to rest up in shade before she let him go. Those are the memories I am bequeathed with growing up, unlike my author, Roy.
Roy’s memoir is a complex, searing tale of volatility and brilliance, of human failings and cruelty, of a gale-force wind that is mother Mary to the fierce, broken on the inside and equally brilliant daughter Arundhati who lays bare her emotions and her scars given to her as a child by her mother, knowingly and unknowingly, for the world to see and read. If her mother Mary was a formidable force of a feminist who challenged India’s supreme Court against the Indian Syrian Christian Heredity Law in favor of the sons, and won, Roy too is a formidable voice of an activist writer who has challenged the corrupt land grab and displacement of an entire people in the name of development – the Narmada Bachao Andolan under the feisty Gandhian Medha Phatkar benefited by Roy lending her own voice to the issue, her seminal essays on India’s social and religious mores, her voice of reason targeting sitting governments that openly call for segregation and subjugation of minority rights and so much more.
From winning the prestigious Booker literary award for her very first book “God of Small Things” to “In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones” and more, Roy could do all that and more only after “I left my mother not because I didn’t love her, but to be able to continue to love her.” But like that perfect looking fruit that is bruised badly from the inside by being shaken and dropped to the ground, Roy continues to face those demons – through her relationships, her life choices – some that literally shake you up to the core. I cannot get it out of my head reading the pages about her choice to leave Madhya Pradesh in the middle of the night from a film shoot, get on a train, arrive in New Delhi to get an procedure and then hop back to Madhya Pradesh village via trains, busses and in deep, deep scare of a mob that recognized her fledgling celebrity status. I kept thinking of her bleeding profusely, in pain and trauma of the act, traveling alone, and then being scared for her very life! This is not an easy read. But it does shed light on how her mother’s journey as a single parent who challenged authority and society, lived on in young Arundhati – to be able to be her own person, yet tied down by parental trauma.
Roy’s memoir is a complex portrait of her formidable yet flawed mother, that also addresses how those characteristics shaped her and her brother’s life – in similar yet different ways. Like memory, the narrative is fragmented, it flints from the past to the present, and from the personal to the political and beyond. Everything is tied up and strung together beautifully in Roy’s lyrical prose, her printed words that act like visuals to a great drama being unfolded before our very eyes.
And finally, Roy’s world conjures up the Delhi that I grew up in as a young adult, full of starry-eyed naivete and a belief in oneself to do something, make something of my own life in this beautiful city of greenery, of louts and leering men, of stately homes and gardens and of filth and despair. I loved Delhi, as Roy still does. A must read for those who have loved Roy.
Kuhu Singh is a writer with interest in social justice, cultural and political matters, in the U.S., India, and beyond.