By Shevlin Sebastian
It was only 5 p.m. on September 2, yet the Mother Mary Hall at St. Teresa’s College, Kochi was three-quarters full for the 6 p.m. show. It was a mix of young, middle-aged, and elderly people. All of them had looks of anticipation on their faces for the worldwide book release of Arundhati Roy’s searing memoir of her mother, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me.’ The rush was so much that the organisers, DC Books and Penguin Random House India, set up another hall on the first floor where the event could be watched on a large screen.
In the front seats of the main hall were TV legend Prannoy Roy (a cousin of Arundhati from her father’s side) and his wife Radhika, well-known journalist Saba Naqvi, as well as Arundhati’s international publishers, like Simon Prosser, publishing director of Hamish Hamilton, UK, Nan Graham, Senior Vice President, Publisher‑at‑Large, and Editor at Scribner, the literary imprint of Simon & Schuster (USA), as well as Arundhati’s literary agents, David Godwin, Aparna Kumar and Rebecca Wehrmuth.
There was also Malayalam superstar Prithviraj’s producer wife, Supriya, actress Parvathy and Rima Kallingal, and many others from the art and cultural spheres in Kerala.
Arundhati’s relatives from her village of Aymanam were there, apart from her paternal relatives from Bengal. The staff and students of Palikoodam School, which Mary Roy founded in 1967, were also present. People had come from other parts of Kerala as well as Bangalore and Chennai.
When Arundhati arrived in the hall, she received thunderous applause. It sounded like a bounteous monsoon rainfall. This was the writer as a global literary superstar. This may be rare in future as attention spans decline and so too will reading.
Arundhati exchanged a warm embrace with her brother Lalit Kumar Christopher Roy, sharing a warm, affectionate look. Apart from her mother, she has dedicated the book to him. Arundhati, who has a mop of curly grey hair, wore a red top – to match the book cover – over bootcut jeans and red shoes.
In the introduction, award-winning Malayalam author K.R. Meera said, “To read ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ is to hug a porcupine. Be also ready to take medicine for sadness. It’s very difficult to describe Arundhati. She is as unpredictable as her works are. I would say that she is the only writer in India that all fascist governments in the world listen to.”
(The hall erupted in generous applause at this statement.)
Meera continued, with a smile, “She is the true Indian international writer. When Arundhati says something, it becomes her news, her headline. And she is the only writer who is known from Kashmir to Tamil Nadu.”
In response, Arundhati said, “My God, almost everybody that I love is gathered in this one room. Except for a few people who aren't in the country. That is a pretty dangerous thing given our government.” The hall again broke into loud applause. “Anyway, I said, for a normal person this would be her wedding or her funeral. But thank God, I am not normal. I am a writer. It’s a book launch.”
She continued, “I want to say that there are many Mother Marys here. One is the Blessed Virgin, for whom this hall is named after. Another is Paul McCartney's Mother Mary, who is in the song [Let It Be]. The third one is ours and she is neither of them. I am actually here to do an introduction to a person who has been my support from the time I was three years old. A man who I love beyond measure. This is my brother LKC Roy, who is going to sing ‘Let It Be’.”
When Arundhati speaks, there is tremulousness at the core of her voice. It sounds like a woman who has suffered much, but has overcome her pain with a sweet smile.
Lalit, who plays the guitar with his left hand, sang a rousing rendition of ‘Let It Be’ accompanied by a young and talented singer, Raina John.
Arundhati then read from the first chapter, titled 'Gangster’. Here is the opening paragraph:
‘She chose September, that most excellent month, to make her move. The monsoon had receded, leaving Kerala gleaming like an emerald strip between the mountains and the sea. As the plane banked to land, and the earth rose to greet us, I couldn’t believe that topography could cause such palpable, physical pain. I had never known that beloved landscape, never imagined it, never evoked it, without her being part of it. I couldn’t think of those hills and trees, the green rivers, the shrinking, cemented-over rice fields with giant billboards rising out of them advertising awful wedding saris and even worse jewellery, without thinking of her. She was woven through it all, taller in my mind than any billboard, more perilous than any river in spate, more relentless than the rain, more present than the sea itself. How could this have happened? How? She checked out with no advance notice. Typically unpredictable.’
Manasi Subramaniam, Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President of Penguin Random House India, who edited the book, gave her view:
“This is a book about freedom,” she said. “Not the kind flattened into slogans or repackaged as lifestyle. This is a messier, more volatile kind. Freedom as exposure, as rupture, as a series of deliberate choices made in full view of power. The freedom to speak, to dissent, to withdraw, to make and unmake and remake a life.
She took a breath and continued, “These are the freedoms that Arundhati Roy insists upon. And they are never theoretical. They are lived, contested, refused, reclaimed. None of it unfolds in isolation. These are not private gestures. These are public acts with consequences. They take shape inside systems that reward obedience and punish deviation. Where language itself is a site of conflict. And yet, she does not cede ground.”
She paused and said forcefully, “This book will outlast us all. It will outlast you. It will outlast me. It will outlast its author.”
Manasi then had a conversation with Arundhati.
Arundhati struck a sombre note when she said, “I do want us to remember that while this book is coming out, it is written in the time of one of the most horrible genocides of the 21st century in Gaza. In full public view. It is easier for us to reach for images of children being starved in Gaza than it is for a glass of water at night. And it is the shame of all of us that we appear to be helpless to stop it because there is a schism now between governments and people, not just in our country, but everywhere.
“I also want to say that today, just as I got ready to come up on stage, the High Court has once again denied bail to [PhD scholar in history at JNU] Umar Khalid and to many of my friends who have been in prison for five years, just like they kept my friend, [Professor GN] Sai Baba in prison for ten years before he was declared innocent and acquitted and he came out and died [on October 12, 2024]. So, yes, I mean, these are terrible things that happen even while literature is and must be written and we must keep on insisting there are other ways of thinking, not just about public things, but also about private things.”
And during the course of this conversation, Arundhati gave a full description of her mother: “In that conservative, stifling little South Indian town where in those days women were only allowed the option of flowing virtue or its affectation, my mother conducted herself with the edginess of a gangster. I watched her unleash all of herself — her genius, her eccentricity, her radical kindness, her militant courage, her ruthlessness, her generosity, her cruelty, her bullying, her hyper-brittleness, and her wild, unpredictable temper — with complete abandon on our tiny, insular, Syrian Christian society which, because of its education and relative wealth, was sequestered from the swirling violence and debilitating poverty in the rest of the country.”
In the end, this was a soaring evening that sent hearts aflutter and for a few brief moments we tasted the breath of pure freedom that has been missing in this country for the past several years.
(Published in rediff.com)
