Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me – front cover photo by Carlo Buldrini
The global launch of Suzanna Arundhati Roy’s memoir of her mother, Mother Mary Comes To Me (MMCTM), took place on Sept 2 at Mother Mary Hall of St Teresa’s College in Kochi. Ms Roy came down from New Delhi with a host of friends and admirers, publishers and editors, to ensure that the book would take off on its world-wide exposition from Kochi, her home ground, so to speak. Her last launch from here was of the Malayalam translation of The God of Small Things (TGOST) by Priya A. S. from an open air site on the Marina close by.
Arundhati Roy in green saree and red choli – Feb 3, 2011
On that occasion Ms Roy arrived looking distant and stately in a lovely blue-green saree, the colour of the river Meenachal, wearing a trim red choli with a necklace of black string attached to a pendant of square metal secured to a fragment of nondescript red fabric. On this day, fourteen years later, she arrived in a floppy red top over blue jeans, relaxed and ready to mingle with the crowd gathered to celebrate her literary presence in the city. It was the middle of the Onam season and the roads were crowded but those who wanted to meet her arrived an hour and a half in advance of the slated 6:30 pm event to find the venue three-quarters full. There were more than a thousand attendees, with the overflow from Mother Mary Hall necessitating the setting up of a second hall to accommodate the crowd. Former students of her mother’s Pallikoodam School were there in strength as a special contingent.
Arundhati Roy in red top and blue jeans at Mother Mary Hall, Sep 2, 2025
The audience was a diverse mix of people, young and old, along with friends, family, movie stars, and publishers. It was organised by DC Books and Penguin Random House India. The event bore the typical marks of an Arundhati Roy event, filled with emotion, wit, and political discourse. “Almost everyone that I love is gathered in this room. That’s a pretty dangerous thing, given our government,” laughed Ms Roy.
Arundhati Roy with her mother Mary Roy
Ms Roy identified the origin of the book to a time after her mother’s death on Sept 1, 2022 – “I was walking in London one day with my agent, and I said to him that my mother was my shelter and my storm.” He turned around and said “So when are you writing this book?”
In a way, Ms Roy had been writing this book all her life; whether she was spending her fatherless childhood in Kerala or going to college in Delhi – her mother was an inescapable presence in her mind. She went away at age eighteen and gradually discovered who she could be and flowered in her multitudinous ways far from the critical eye of her mother. But she had been taking notes all the while, as writers do. And here after a difficult journey she was ready to present to public gaze the persona of her mother and her own relationship along with the myriad battles she fought along the way, mirroring several that caught her mother up in a different storm 2,600 kms away.
Israeli airstrikes destroy buildings in the Gaza Strip. Photo: © UNRWA/Ashraf Amra – more than 64,000 Palestinians have been killed, half of them women and children; the total Israeli death toll has risen to nearly 2,000
But Ms Roy noted that the troubles of the world constantly knock on our doors for desperate attention; she made special mention of the horrors of the war in Gaza, linking the ongoing suffering there to the feeling that “someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in another room” when she receives recognition. She emphasised that her awareness of the crisis isn't triggered by guilt but by a genuine understanding of the interconnectedness of suffering: “Wherever you look, things are happening, and you can't just think of your own story,” she said.
Arundhati Roy – Photo by Mayank Austen Soofi on the back cover
A devoted flock of literary fans had assembled on three floors of the Mother Mary Hall totalling a thousand or more. When Ms Roy arrived in the hall, she received an enthusiastic reception with prolonged applause. She was returning to the loyal fans in her home state who wished to lionise their heroine whose words put love in their hearts. It sounded like the reverberations of a monsoon downpour. This was the writer as a global literary superstar. Ms Roy exchanged a warm embrace with her brother Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy, glancing at him with an affectionate look.
The first thing she said was, “I am so overwhelmed by this love from all of you.” Before beginning Ms Roy visited each floor of the Hall to exchange greetings at close range with everyone assembled and acknowledge the enthusiasm of the spill-over crowd. Then she came down to the ground floor where the actual stage was set for the event. She was wearing a floppy red top with blue jeans. The red top had delicate thin white stripes round the neck, sleeves and the lower part of her top. She wore matching red shoes and but hardly any jewellery. Her grey hair belied her youthful beaming looks. Her life’s battles have not subdued her kindly looks and the twinkle in her eyes. She articulates ever so gently but unambiguously; her curly hair no longer stays in place and but nobody cares – she just ‘let it be’ like the song.
”I wanted this book to be launched from my home ground,” she said and even her strut seemed to say “This is where I belong, have always belonged.”
The Hall was already packed to three-fourths of its capacity 90 minutes before the even was scheduled at 6:30 pm.
The evening began with an introduction (if such was required for India’s famous writer) by Professor Jisha John of the Department of English at St Teresa’s College. She welcomed Ms Roy, along with her brother, Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy, fondly called LKC by his sister whom he calls Sue because Ms Roy’s full name is Suzanna Arundhati Roy.
Prof. John remarked how intense and how comic were parts the book. She read out some poignant passages that had caught her attention, and expressed her awe on meeting the author of the book The God of Small Things that she had been teaching for so many years! Following the link may help understand why KRG readers opined 12 years ago: “When the eloquent homilies of her political books on power and powerlessness are forgotten, this novel will remain, and be read and studied.”
Arundhati Roy with her brother Lalith Roy at the global launch of her latest book ‘Mother Mary Comes To Me’, in Kochi on Tuesday. The function was held at the Mother Mary Hall of St Teresa’s College Photo - A Sanesh
The next speaker was the Malayalam writer, Ms K.R. Meera. She spoke both in Malayalam and English. And ventured to call Ms Roy an ’urban naxalite’! Which made Ms Roy chortle. Ms Meera said the book Mother Mary Comes To Me wasn’t just about Ms Roy’s mother but tackled the problems of social justice in the India and the world. Ms Roy’s campaign for many causes is a legacy she derives from her own combative mother.
The title of the book comes from a Paul McCartney song, Let It Be, which has the opening lines:
When I find myself in times of trouble,
Mother Mary comes to me
Speaking words of wisdom, let it be
Paul McCartney at The Beatles' famous rooftop gig in Central London, January 1969
The Liverpool legend later explained: “I had a dream in the Sixties where my mum who died came to me in a dream and was reassuring me, saying: 'It's gonna be OK. Just let it be...' ” McCartney's mother was also named Mary, which has been cited as an inspiration for the lyrics.
Ms Roy whose mother was likewise a Mary was the inspiration for the memoir which was being released by coincidence in Mother Mary Hall of St Teresa’s College, Kochi, named for the Blessed Virgin, as Ms Roy noted. LKC, the brother who always stood by her as her strength was on stage. The plaintive refrain ‘Let It Be’ was Ms Roy resurrecting her vivid memories of Mary Roy and letting them all fall in place truthfully, in her blessed memory, now exposed to public gaze in the memoir, which she said she had been writing all her life.
Ms Roy introduced her brother, Lalith Kumar Christopher Roy, or LKC as she calls him. He was invited to sing the song Let It Be. LKC sang McCartney’s song with guitar accompaniment to introduce the evening’s celebration of the book. He sang with another young woman, Raina John, and their rendition won a thunderous applause! It was heart-warming to watch the brother and sister hugging each other on the stage. Ms Roy said that her first novel The God of Small Things was dedicated to her mother, but this one was dedicated to her brother too.
The twin dedication of the book reads –
For LKC
Together we made it to the shore
For Mary Roy
Who never said Let It Be
The relationship between Ms Roy and her brother LKC features in her book. It could be likened to that between the twins Estha and Rahel in The God of Small Things. LKC spoke about his sister, whom he fondly calls Sue.
Manasi Subramaniam, currently serving as Editor-in-Chief and Vice-President at Penguin Random House India, publisher of the book in India, provided some insight into how the book entered the print world. She recalled receiving a phone call from Ms Roy’s literary agent in the UK, saying that Arundhati Roy had something for her. This was the start of a thrilling experience. Ms Subramaniam right away went to meet the author, and after being handed the manuscript with a few comments, was impatient to read it. She found it ‘unputdownable.’ The book revealed a difficult and exceptional mother-daughter relationship that challenged the norms.
She enumerated some of the themes covered in the book and the manner in which Ms Roy had adapted her writing style to the subject, so close to her heart, and laden with so many layers of human psychology and human flaws.
Ms Roy showed the picture of the moth on the card that came with her book, to remind the readers of the incident in The God of Small Things (TGOST) , where Rahel carelessly says something that is insulting to her mother, and the mother reproves her saying that people love you a little less when you insult them. Rahel broods: “You A cold moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel’s heart. Where its icy legs touched her, she got goosebumps. Six goosebumps on her careless heart. A little less her Ammu loved her.” The moth returns when Sophie Mol drowns. For Rahel, it becomes a metaphor for moments of intense emotional fear or dread, often related to love, loss, or guilt .
The moth stands for inherited trauma in a family. TGOST is to a large extent Ms Roy’s family history wrapped as fiction with elements of magical realism. This moth was the one for whose discovery Rahel’s grandfather (Pappachi in the book), the Imperial Entomologist, was denied credit; he went into such a rage that it scarred their family for life.
Moth card embedded in the book Mother Mary Comes To Me
Ms Subramaniam asked Ms Roy whether she had found it difficult to write this book. She answered that writing it was easy because it was already a part of her. What she found difficult was deciding whether she should write about her mother at all. If she did, then what genre would it fall into? How would it be different from any other memoir? She realised if she was to write a memoir she would have to dredge all her memories and put it out, for it would not serve any purpose if she revealed only half – it would not work.
Ms Subramaniam casually asked what Ms Roy thought of men. She replied, “Oh, I love men,” sending the audience into a burst of laughter! Somewhere else Ms Roy has stated that feminism does not mean hating men, but treating men and women with equal respect.
One wonders why she chose a cover page with her smoking a beedi at age 21 (taken by Italian photographer Carlo Buldrini). It’s only after listening to her that one understood. She had run away from her house in Kerala at the age of 16 and landed up in Delhi – it was a culture-shock. She was used to being in Ayemenem where everyone knew her family and where her relatives lived. When she approached an auto driver to take her to the place of her aunt, Ms Joseph, she just said the name and told him to take her there. The auto driver smoked his beedi and gave her a long bored look. And then she said, ”Soon enough I too learned to smoke a beedi and give a bored look to others.” So the beedi was symbolic of a culture-shock. That being said, her grasp is wrong – she is holding a beedi fashionably between forefinger and middle-finger, whereas beedi habitués hold it between the middlefinger and thumb generally.
When Ms Subramaniam asked why she moved from acting, wining a Booker Prize, publishing essays of social protest, novels, and scriptwriting, to now being a memoirist, Ms Roy answered, ”Well, it’s like flying. When you start flying, you cannot stop in mid-air, you have to move on. Besides, winning can never be the end.”
The author says the idea of the memoir had always been with her but she got down to writing it only when her mother died in 2022. There is no doubt the act of writing was a tribute to her mother, who had been a feisty woman all her life and treated her children with ‘tough love.’ The lonely fight to support her family as a single mother, combined with health problems, made her constitutionally unable to treat her own children indulgently, or even gently. LKC wondered how his sister put up with the hard side of their mother, which Ms Roy has described as follows: “That was the constant thing that you had to manage, that something would tear you up and then stitch you back together, then tear you up, then stitch you back together.” This is explored at length in the memoir; readers MUST buy the book for one reason alone: she writes with a combination of truth, love and tender reflection that erases all boundaries – and how she writes! Once she asked her mother why her sister, Mrs Joseph, was so much thinner than her. Her mother turned on Ms Roy in a rage until “I felt myself shrinking from my own skin and draining away, swirling like water down a sink until I was gone.” She had touched a nerve.
Although Ms Roy regards Kochi as her home, it is not because she lives here – her brother LKC does, however, and she has any number of friends and admirers in this city. Therefore it is only fair she decided to make Kochi the global launch point of her memoir; except that she did have an earlier presentation to a select audience in the Oddbird Foundation Theatre in New Delhi with an intimate group of her friends, including her cousin on her father’s side, Prannoy Roy and wife Radhika.
Prannoy Roy and wife Radhika with Arundhati Roy at the gathering in the Oddbird Foundation Theatre in New Delhi.
They were also present in Kochi for the Sept 2 global launch along with Roy’s literary agent David Godwin; her publisher was represented by Simon Prosser, Publishing Director of Hamish Hamilton, UK, and Nan Graham in charge of Scribner, the literary imprint of Simon and Schuster, USA.
The New Indian Express reports of the Delhi gathering that “the room was full of her ‘beloveds.’ Filmmaker and naturalist Pradip Krishen, documentary filmmaker Sanjay Kak –– some of the beautiful passages of the book dwell on these two friendships and relationships –– were there, along with Mira Nair as part of the audience, as were old friends from Ms Roy’s student days at The Delhi School of Planning and Architecture, besides colleagues from the Narmada Bachao Andolan and other civil-society movements. Historian Romila Thapar, actor Sharmila Tagore, writer and publisher Urvashi Butalia were also spotted.”
Mary Roy as a young woman – photo from onmanorama.com Sept 2, 2022
She began that reading with a passage “My mother conducted herself with the edginess of a gangster. In these pages, my mother, my gangster shall live: she was my shelter and my storm.” That gathering was a ‘soft release’ pending the far larger one kicked off on Sept 2 in Kochi, which is prelude to a world tour by her embracing USA and Canada first.
Ms Roy has inhabited the literary world for more than two decades ever since she won a Booker Prize in 1997 for her novel The God of Small Things. Her books, even fiction have a strong political angle that can’t be missed. “Every word in this book is doing emotional, intellectual and political work”, said the editor, Manasi Subramaniam. She has suffered imprisonment for her support of Naxal demands and was criticised for her support of movements for autonomy in Indian-held Kashmir. Her political activism has never come in the way of her literary pursuits and the two combine in her personality in an indivisible way. She is a friend to all who are oppressed or denied the freedom to speak out.
Roy in 2002 after being released from Tihar Jail.Credit...Manish Swarup
At this gathering too she began by remarking that one could not ignore the ‘terrible things that are happening in the world.’ She mentioned the ongoing genocide in Gaza, and the news that bail had been denied once agin to JNU research scholars Umar Khalid and Sharjeel Imam now spending their fifth year in Tihar Jail without trial. Ms Roy protested the Centre’s actions to suppress freedom of expression and to delay trials indefinitely while denying bail – this was wholly unjust punishment without conviction, which should never happen in a democratic society.
Thunderous clapping and cheering overwhelmed Ms Roy when she walked up and stood on the dais, a diminutive, smiling and beloved figure for all those gathered. How winsome Ms Roy looked despite the floppy red top she wore over her jeans. Her firm voice, her still youthful mien, her captivating smile crowned by greying curls – all gave witness to an intrepid woman ready to take on the world.
Only after Mary Roy’s death three years ago did her daughter realise the enormity of the grief that overwhelmed her. She had always felt that her mother, in a game of one-upmanship, would outlive her, but her passing changed the course of Ms Roy’s life. The Pallikoodam school she built was closed only days after her death, and a formal tribute by her school children would no longer be possible. But we now hear the school has reopened.
What then would be a fitting tribute to Mary Roy, the mother who had always been there for her in the most difficult times, yet stood apart in life’s intimacies, a person with whom she shared a uniquely difficult relationship? Thus the seeds of the memoir were sown.
Roy in the film ‘In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones.’ Credit...Pankaj Rakesh
A runaway child, Ms Roy left home at 16 to get away from being smothered by her mother in order make her own way in the world, even as her mother had. They were not in touch for seven years. She wondered how her brother LKC, the meek one, endured their mother’s violent outbursts and how he remained unfazed by the rough treatment. The fissures were there even as the three built their lives separately from each other, the brother and sister keeping in touch and watching from afar their mother living on her own terms in the conservative Christian village of Ayemenem.
Mary Roy was fighting a protracted legal battle against the male monopoly of inheritance in her community, demanding an equal share of property for daughters in a Syrian Christian household. She began a school called Pallikoodam near Kottayam, with a radically different curriculum stressing learning based on experience, doing things to learn instead of just sitting with books and learning by rote.
Mary Roy – feminist who fought for women's inheritance and founder of Pallikoodam school
She blossomed into the formidable matriarch of a broken family, and her daughter won the spectacular Booker Prize for her maiden novel, The God Of Small Things. On its publication in 1996, Ms Roy said her mother had admitted herself to a hospital in order to “read the book” because she was sure she had been portrayed in a negative light. Finally, she sighed in relief that after all, the character of Ammu, shaped in part by her, was not a bad one! By then LKC had become a successful businessman, Ms Roy had blossomed into an acclaimed writer, and Mary Roy had established herself as a mother shaping the lives of a generation of children who came within the ambit of her influence at Pallikoodam. Reading Thomas Zachariah’s article linked above will give an account of her presence within the school, as seen by a past student.
If one thing united the family, it was discord.
Though mentioned in passing by Prof. John while introducing the book, it is worth reflecting on some affecting passages in the book. Ms Roy refers to the way her mother was inseparable from the tapestry of Kerala’s landscape: “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.” It is as though she had slid back thirty years in time to the writing of TGOST in which Meenachal River and Ayemenem village were major influences.
Essential to the memoir are the inconsistencies, if not contradictions, in the way her mother behaved. When Ms Roy says her mother was her shelter and her storm, we recognise that Mary Roy was not a a comfortable person to be with for any length of time, even by those whom she clearly wanted to safeguard the most, her own children. When her beloved brother LKC is chastised for being “stupid” Ms Roy has to contend with a lifelong sense of guilt: “Since then, all personal achievement comes with a sense of foreboding. On the occasions when I am toasted or applauded, I always feel that someone else, someone quiet, is being beaten in another room.”
The author is punning when she writes: “One half of me was taking the hit and the other half of me was taking notes.” What else does a writer, especially a novelist do, other than store all those random events to set them down as revelatory insights in future writing? That she can write with a sense of detachment is what enables her to render an account that is at once distressing and heartbreaking, as well as a celebration of the spirit of resilience.
Roy in the film, ‘Massey Sahib.’ Credit...Sanjeev Saith
Ms Roy characterises her leaving home at age 16 as an escape from the tyranny of her mother. She needed space to grow and become herself, without the creative person’s curse of being the offspring of a famous scandalous parent. “I ran from her not because I didn’t love her, but in order to be able to continue to love her,” she writes. The central element of love is forgiveness, even of grievous faults, because you comprehend and then see the entire person. Knowing that karma is a given, you do not wish to be part of the retribution, but part of the healing. It is this quality of Ms Roy that is outstanding in a book that can be praised for much else.
Despite their tumultuous relationship, Roy expresses a love that transcends conflict: “I didn’t want my mother to destroy me, but I didn’t want to destroy her either.” When Mary Roy declined into senility in later years Ms Roy met her with tenderness, underscoring the memoir's theme of “thorny love and savage grace.”
Ms Roy honours her mother’s indomitable work in confronting her church and her own traditional family, to win a Supreme Court victory for inheritance rights among Christian women. “She won a landmark Supreme Court case securing inheritance rights for Christian women.” But those women are still being sidelined by male dominance that threatens the women who ask for their rights with societal ostracism. It is not different in kind from the unofficial caste-based khap panchayats operating in parts of N India outside the Indian legal system; they are notorious for subjugating women.
Ms Roy realises as an author that intellectual truth and rigour in thought form the armour in one’s battle with the messy world; therefore, she could neither leave things unsaid nor sugarcoat the reality of what happened as far as she could recall it. She is fully aware how memories play false, and how memories get recreated in a fiction writer’s mind (TGOST is the best example). However, she has gone into her mother’s life and relationship with her with a surgeon’s scalpel and a confessor’s deep sympathy.
Meenachal River by whose banks a young Ms Roy went swimming and fishing
Fortunately for the reader Ms Roy preserves all the vividness and lyrical qualities of her TGOST writing. She paints her childhood in Kerala with phrases like ‘the humid, river-bound village” and “shadows that collected in the deep hollows near her collarbones like a confederation of jeering skulls.” Echoing her best fiction, this makes the memoir memorable and appealing.
Of course, Ms Roy cannot forget the politics of the problems around her that she has written about. And here too the problem of patriarchy and feminism are there to ponder.
The memoir, like much of her fiction writing, is not boringly linear. Anecdotes, observations, and thoughts are spread throughout and form a ‘maze’ or ‘labyrinth.’ Ms Roy uses striking metaphors to convey emotional truths, such as comparing herself to “one of her mother’s valiant organs” or describing grief as “little floaters in my bloodstream – fishhooks that catch on soft tissue.” This structure mirrors the complexity of memory and identity.
There is humour also to relieve the tension. Ms Roy infuses the narrative with wit and absurdity. She recalls eccentric characters, like the dentist who “examined my teeth in public, at social gatherings, like a cattle-owner,” and her mother’s dramatic flair for brandishing her asthma inhaler on occasion “like a crown or sceptre.”
Ms Roy’s style in this memoir is a testament to her ability to transform personal trauma into a universal ode to “freedom, thorny love, and savage grace.” By refusing to simplify her mother’s legacy or her own complicity, she has created a work that is as politically urgent as it as emotionally resonant – a work that will challenge readers to confront the tangled threads of their own families.
In the spirit of fun that often breaks through Ms Roy’s most serious talks I venture a rhyme here:
If Mother Mary ever came to me
I’d probably take a knee
But if it were Mary Roy
I think I’d be rather coy –
With her reputation of a tyrant
She’d likely have a warrant
For my behaving with her daughter
In manner far from proper
When I went to Pallikoodam
And spoke to her in Malayalam
About going fishing with me
And showing the scars on her knee …
(I gratefully acknowledge my debt to notes taken by Priya Sharma and Pamela John, fellow readers of the Kochi Reading Group.)
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