Preeta Chag

Pub by: Penguin Random House

“Perhaps what I am about to write is a betrayal of my younger self by the person I have become.”

The betrayal is raw, searing, honest, and tempestuous. Of children growing up in the shade of a fiery, intense and volatile mother. 

‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ is a haunting melody … the author digging deep into personal crevices, writing to make sense of her thoughts and feelings… totally unfiltered and brutally outspoken.

The first chapter, ‘Gangster’, is tantalizing … weaving an expectation of the tale to come. … “fish hooks that still catch on soft tissue as my blood makes its way to and from my heart-is why I write this book. It is as hard to write as it is not to.” (page 7-8)

Arundhati Roy’s mother, Mary Roy, walked out of her marriage with her two children, alone without any support and went on to become a leading educationist and social rights activist, establishing a prestigious school in the district of Kottayam and winning a landmark Supreme Court case and securing rights of inheritance for Syrian Christian women. 

The book is actually a dual memoir of the author and her mother. Both are strong, fiery and passionate. The mother committed to her thoughts can be cruel to her children. The daughter committed to her ideals can be obstinate and strong-headed. Fiery she was. And fiery is her daughter, too. 

“Real life is a trap.” (page 85)

Arundhati Roy’s last day at home (page 99) is not about relief or pain. In fact, it a kind of dull acceptance, an inevitable fate leading to paths to be walked upon, explored and embraced. 

Her early years in Delhi are pages of struggles. The desolate, lonely, frugal existence before finding her feet.  What must it have been to lead such a life… on the move, running away from home, desperate to find an existence, which could be labeled ‘life’?

But she does not dramatise her financial struggle, neither glorifies her financial success. In fact, she is quite apologetic about her success, all throughout. Her whole life is a drama. From childhood to college to social activism to her rebellious essays, causing uproar.

 But my favourite description in the book is on page 145 when she describes the process of becoming a writer.  “…the language was outside me…….I needed to hunt it down like prey…. And when I did, I knew that language, my language would ease the way blood flowed through my body.”

 “The freedom I craved (apart from the freedom of having my buffalo take me home while I lay in my cart singing to the stars) was the freedom to live and write on my own terms.” Beckoning to a world of pure freedom, being one with the universe, no worries, no cares.

The book is a journey of her self-evolution. Her journey riddled with stones and pebbles biting into her soles, giving pain along with endurance. A rough, tumultuous, rocky terrain, but surely going ahead.

“In truth I am constructed from its debris.” (page 360)

“What chance do I have at anything that vaguely resembles normality?” (page  326). This statement defines her entire existence, her difficult relationship with her mother and her life.

‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’ is a treat to read. For the words flowing from her pen and for the story she has lived and is living.