Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me is a testament to the one presence that shaped her most — her mother’s rage, searing and indelible.
The writer’s signature ability to capture the nuances of human behaviour shines in this simultaneously touching and shocking portrait of the walking contradiction that was her mother, Mary Roy.
Mary’s rage monumentally improved women’s rights within Kottayam, Kerala – from motivating her to go all the way to the Supreme Court of India to strike down the Travancore Christian Succession Act, which severely limited the amount of property a daughter could inherit from their father, to encouraging young women to earn a living by employing them as teachers in the school she founded.
But this rage, which moved mountains, also shook the household. This book then, whilst memorialising the efforts of a commanding woman, also gives insight into the psychological impact of abuse – where children grow up to believe that “the safest place can be the most dangerous.”
Lacking any sense of belonging, any sense of identification with the community she was brought up in, Arundhati Roy seems to be perpetually unmoored. Her only anchor is her tenuous relationship with her mother (who the writer more often refers to as Mrs Roy), as well as her own anxiety.
Whilst in the second half of the book, the writer is, for the most part, physically away from her mother, Mary Roy’s influence is undeniable. She constantly hovers over her daughter like an “unaffectionate iron angel,” such that it becomes difficult not to draw connections between Arundhati Roy’s early life under the iron rule of her mother and the various successes and the many more controversies she has experienced. It’s extremely telling that moments of criticism in her public life easily segue into a recount of the abuse she faced at the hands of her mother. It is nearly always the latter which stays in the mind.
Case in point, in response to a critic who says that she should never have been born, Roy responds, “Imagine his joy had he known that my own mother might have agreed with him. Imagine his sorrow had he known that I had the equivalent of navy SEAL training on this subject and that his exertions didn’t move my needle even a micromillimetre.”
Roy’s sharp humour and her refusal to take herself seriously ensure that the memoir doesn’t become undermined by self-pity. It is, however, difficult to always be on the same page as the author, especially when she takes great pains to defend Mary Roy. Describing her mother’s challenge to the Travancore Act, she says “she’s actually fighting for the right not to be a perfect mother, for the right not to be a nice, obedient woman…” Mary may be an impressive woman, but her abuse cannot be labelled as mere imperfection.
Those who find themselves at odds with Roy’s political opinions, will likely be put off by the second half of the memoir, which effectively functions as providing a behind-the-scenes look into what can be described as the author’s greatest hits, which include the Booker Prize winning The God of Small Things, her essays on Naxalism, the Sardar Sarovar Dam and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. But even those who find Roy’s views disagreeable would struggle to resist the pull of Mary Roy, who never ceases to surprise.
People often turn to writing as a means to understand the world. Arundhati Roy, however, seems to write with the clarity that Mary Roy (or Mrs Roy) can never be fully understood. Mary rejects labels, definitions and will always simultaneously be her daughter’s “shelter” and “storm.” She will be remembered as eternally, stubbornly, unhinged.
Read more: Book Review: Heart Lamp by Banu Mushtaq
