I just finished reading Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. Earlier, when I read and reviewed her novel Utmost (I’d once seen a humbug mock it), I had noted that her writing spilled over with anger and intensity. Now, in this memoir, she lists the reasons for that anger. She shows that her sarcasm springs from both deep rage and complete helplessness—yet, like all intelligent writers, she remains unapologetic.
What she explains feels like a backlash against how the Indian male world (both political and cultural) treated her. In this one matter, mother Roy and daughter Roy think alike. Their truths sit well with them, and almost always, they are indeed right. Indian society, even now, lacks the breadth to fully accommodate her kind of female intellectual voice.
Even if one disagrees with her, look at how many like the two Roys—who fought against the system—actually succeeded or even managed to shake it (privilege plays a role, but that too they fought for and won). Among our contemporary writers, how many can step away from mere emotion and safe-zone wordplay, and instead approach issues with true intellectual rigor?
In every country, intellectual material becomes the source from which writers and cultural icons emerge—but in our society, it seems we are destined to put up with fools. Just look at the ongoing poetry debates: some people try to shut down intelligent observations with nothing more than mockery and sentimentality.
Back when I used to criticize such people, I was accused of sneering and committing character assassination. The refrain hasn’t changed even now. Which only means then, as now, there’s no real answer, to the questioned posed. Roy is a hundred times more sophisticated. She waits for no one’s validation. Recognition and stature—like being admired by figures such as John Berger—come to her instead.
Her clarity (in some matters) is astonishing. At the same time, knowingly or unknowingly, her flaws seep through as well—that’s the distinctive quality of this book. But it’s also true that there isn’t a single writer or thinker in our country today who matches her sharpness of thought and writing. Had she written in Malayalam, she would likely have been forced into a diminished existence as “just abother woman writer.” Remember Madhavikutty (Kamala Das)? But she had a “reality distortion field” around her, Roy doesn’t—but still, they seemed to have understood each other.
It wouldn’t be wrong to call this book the political version of Ente Katha (My Story). Like Annie Ernaux, Roy writes about undergoing an abortion—but immediately after, on the very same day, she barely escapes two potential rape attempts. It’s there that you realize how unlikely Ernaux was to face such an experience, and you also see the roots of Roy’s peculiarities and raging anger.
That’s the only angle from which I can read this book.