Mother Mary Comes to Me – Arundhati Roy
Bridget Impey: Greyton Books
Roy’s memoir is a beautiful account of a life shaped by activism, Indian history, and complex relationships, primarily her relationship with her mother, Mary Roy.
Mary walked out of her marriage with little more than a degree in education. In 1967, she founded a renowned school in a former Rotary Club hall in Kerala’s Kottayam district and later won a landmark Supreme Court case securing inheritance rights for Christian women. Brilliant and deeply loved by the community of Kerala, she touched many people’s lives.
Her two children, however, were not so lucky at home. Mary could be savage — dishing out punishments and constantly belittling them.
Her relationship with Arundhati was complex and often cruel. She taught her daughter how to be a strong feminist while undermining her at every turn; she was both “a terror and a wonder to behold.”
“It has taken me years to come to terms with the fact that I was a middle child, one of three siblings, not two. My older sibling was a boy, and my younger sibling was a school. There was never any doubt about who our mother’s favourite child was. She loved, fought for and protected her youngest child with everything she had. That kind of focused, ferocious love, regardless of what it may choose as its object, is a blessed love. The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch love pass us by, is to learn from it, marvel at it, and not grow bitter and incapable of love ourselves.”
“I left my mother not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her.”
The memoir leaves Kerala when Arundhati secures a place to study architecture in New Delhi. There she meets her future husband, documentary filmmaker Pradip Krishen. She acts in films and goes on to write screenplays. She also reconnects with her father, Micky Roy, in a passage that is both very funny and deeply moving.
What follows is the story of her career and her fight to preserve the India she loves. She won the Booker Prize in 1997 for The God of Small Things. Arundhati’s life story becomes, in many ways, the story of modern India and of life as an activist.
As Mary becomes ill, the book circles back to her mother and the last years of her life. An asthmatic who has taken to her bed, Mary forges a slightly easier relationship with her daughter and is immensely proud of her achievements.
The early part of the book provides insight into some of the origins of The God of Small Things, and this memoir, beautifully written, contains some of the same whimsy and magic in its characters. I immediately had to go back and reread The God of Small Things, and I’m so glad I did.
