“‘Where are you from?’

‘Who, me? I’m …well… I’m here now.’

The more our world fractures into dagger-shaped shards, the more we club each other to death with our genes, our gods, our flags, our languages, the colour of our skin, the purity of our roots, our histories both true and false - the more my answer to that question remains the same. I’m here now.”

Arundhati Roy’s most recent book, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ starts and ends with the account of Mrs Mary Roy’s funeral. One cannot fault someone who enters this book assuming that it is all about her strained relationship with her authoritarian mother. But no, this book is like a house of mirrors for those who are willing to see. Undeniable truths stare back at us from every angle. For some of us who are near her age, reading this book feels like sisters telling stories through stormy evenings. Stories we knew but still would say again and again and again. It felt like validation. Validating what we remembered, questioning some, and affirming some. This is not to say that Mrs Mary Roy’s role in this book is in any way diminished. She is the pulse of this book. And yet, this book is much more than just about a very unusual, volatile, and intense mother-daughter relationship. 

This young family of three arrives in Ooty from Calcutta - Mary Roy, LKC (the son) and little Arundhati. Mary, a Syrian Christian, had married a Bengali, Micky Roy (taboo) and then divorced him (big, big taboo!). The three now stay at Mary Roy’s late father’s house. Very soon, Mary Roy’s mother and brother came to evict them from this shelter because, as per the Christian Succession Law at the time, daughters had a minimal stake in the family’s wealth. Thankfully, the law was relevant only in Kerala and did not apply in Ooty. Yet this humiliation became the wind beneath Mary Roy’s wings - an insult she tucked within herself till she built herself. And then she went on to not just fight for her share, but to remove the law itself. And succeeded. Arundhati Roy describes how the Syrian Christian community shunned Mary Roy for several years because she fought this law. How and why our women support “traditions” that are surely detrimental to even themselves - is a mystery we may never solve! 

While she narrates about her turbulent young days in Kottayam, punctuated by the banker mother’s eccentric, cruel “mothering,” we see two young children trying to make sense of their turbulent world. They made friends with whoever they made friends with. They received love from the magnanimous Kurussammals of this world, loves that were never defined by caste or religion, but by steadfastness. During these young years, Roy witnesses a moment that defines her impression of marriage. There is an affluent household, and the husband throws the mail to the floor with no thought, and the wife picks it up with perhaps no thought. This becomes the image of a “marriage” in young Arundhati’s mind. 

Her experiences with her mother naturally shape Arundhati’s view of the world and her own place in it. Roy mentioned in an interview that in those years, there was no family, friends, or relatives - it was just the three. In such a small family unit, with the children being so young and vulnerable, Mary Roy’s incredible rudeness was sure to resonate deeply within the psyche of these children. To be called “stupid”, and “ugly” and “pig”, to be mimicked, to be told to fend for themselves with the threat of orphanhood - by all standards, this was nothing less than abuse. And no child should have to undergo this. Having said that, I echo what Roy underlines: “I have seen and written about such sorrow, such systemic deprivation, such unmitigated wickedness, such diverse iterations of hell, that I can only count myself among the most fortunate.” As we read the accounts of the last two decades in the book, we can see Roy evolving, becoming a product of, and yet impervious to, all the cruelty Mary Roy meted out to her and LKC. It is incredible to me how she had the discernment to separate the magnificent, successful Mary Roy from the cruel, angry Mrs Roy, the banker who beat up LKC till the ruler broke. 

And yet, instead of allowing these experiences to crush her, Arundhati Roy gleans wisdom from them: “On the occasions when I am toasted or applauded, I always feel that someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in the other room.” Years later, she (and we) would see this come true as L.K. Advani’s airconditioned rath yatra drives a poisoned road through India’s veins, as the Babri Masjid is destroyed, as a community is burnt, raped and destroyed under the watch of the law keepers, as minorities are lynched and the killing is telecast, as Afzal Guru is hanged; “A man’s life was prescribed as medication to soothe a maddened nation.”

Roy’s memoir is drenched in the political acids of the last many decades. As we relive these events and stories through her lens, we are reminded that none of us are apolitical. Not one of us. There is nothing personal. Everything is political. Even our convenient, comfortable ignorance. If you have followed Indian politics closely over the last few decades, her interactions with the outcast “wanted” revolutionaries and also her accounts of the Narmada Bachao Andolan and the Kashmir militant situation will make you shudder, will make you question your own role in this atrocious madness, because the truth is that none of us can escape this culpability. Please do not expect to read this book without having your heart repeatedly shredded - by Mrs. Roy, by the Indian government, by the helplessness of this huge population, by one’s own comfortable blindness, which is constantly leveraged by the media. 

The book addresses multiple issues - casteism, classism, social injustice, gender dynamics (“This is India, my dear!”), “demon-crazy” democracy, communalism, political manipulations, slut shaming, child abuse, abuse of privilege, of position. And she says the story in a language that she “hunted down like prey, disembowelled, and ate” till it became her writer’s language, coursing through her veins. In an interview years ago, Roy once said that language was like the skin of her thoughts. This reference has stayed with me through the years – to me, it is a gold standard analogy.

In this memoir, we meet a woman who was considered “not Christian enough, not Hindu enough, not communist enough.” She then took long walks through many dangerous terrains to get to know her country, her fish, worms, and comrades. Arundhati Roy, the architect, the writer, the thinker - she has built a tricky house of mirrors with this book. In this huge mirror-house, an old mother is being bathed, and she shamelessly asks, “Would you like to watch your mother being bathed? Why don’t you take a photograph?” 

The writer is a passionate educator and an avid reader who dreams of a John Lennon world.

The views expressed are the author’s own