Between a Mother and Her Daughter

Mother Mary comes to Me:  Arundhati Roy, Penguin Random House India, Price MRP Rs. 899, pages 374, 2025

Arundhati Roy is the most talked about writer in India today, as her recently published memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me, is causing ripples in the contemporary literary world of English fiction.  Arundhati Roy authored her well-known debut book in 1996. The book God of Small things won her the Booker Prize in 1997, one year after the publication of the novel. She became a celebrity in literary circles overnight with the success of the novel. Later in 2017 her second novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was longlisted for Man booker Prize. Her life in Delhi and her association with the problems and struggles of the marginalised in society as also the struggles of the Hijras, the transgenders, in Delhi and the persecution and cruelty meted out to the people of Kashmir valley and the resultant political unrest form the subject of this narrative.

Now comes her third literary work Mother Mary Comes to Me, a memoir, in 2025. Rest her of writing was non-fiction and non literary which is predominantly about the people movements in India like Narmada Bachao Andolan, lending her voice to its displaced and dislocated people, the Adivasis rendered homeless by the major dams in Narmada valley and in various parts of the country, and last but not the least India’s nuclear tests are the subjects of her non- literary writing.

Out of these three books first one was perceived as semi- autobiographical and the third one now was a memoir about her mother her love-hate relationship with her. But one’s appreciation and understanding of the recent book enhances as one when goes back recalling the events, issues and characters she created in God of Small Things. One can identify many similarities between the two and on a closer observation one can appreciate the evolution of Arundhati as a writer.

Rahel the protagonist of the narrative was returning to her village Ayamenem in Kerala after she comes to know of her brother Estha’s return to their village home a after a long time. Her mind goes back to the events and the trauma she and her twin brother had to suffer when they were kids.

Arundhati tells the story through the perspective of a young seven-year-old Rahel. Ayamenem was a small ancestral village in the Southern state of Kerala in India. Earlier, her mother Ammu comes back to live with her mother Ammachi and uncle Chacko and Baby Kochamma her aunt after her marriage breaks up. Ammu was married to Mr. Roy, a tea estate owner and she lived with her husband and two children in Assam. But she had to leave her husband and return to her parental home as her husband was giving her a tough life beating her regularly in a drunken state and when he tries to force her to sleep with his boss, she could not take it anymore. Chacko and Baby Kochamma resent Ammu’a return to the house. As the story unravels in her mind, Rahel’s mind goes to the time they were all going to the airport to receive Chacko’s first wife Margaret, an American and their daughter Sophie Mol. Margaret was visiting Chacko as his second wife died just then. They are a well to do family in the village and run a pickle factory. Rahel and Estha lead a free life as they did not have any control over their wanderings in the village. They were neglected and in the initial years did not go to any school spending their time visiting pickle factory playing with Velutha, a low-class worker in their factory.

Ammu who silently suffers the neglect and resentment of her family leads a lonely life and gets attracted to Velutha whom her children love and play with. Velutha’s father a loyal servant of the family informs Mamachi of the growing attraction between his son and the daughter of the family. Everyone in the family was upset and angry. They confine Ammu to a room in the house and Baby Kochama implicates Velutha in a theft case to get rid of him. Meanwhile the children while playing, go on boating with Sophie Mol. The boat overturns and they meet with an accident and cousin Sophie Mol dies. The scared children see Ammu and Velutha in a deserted house on the other side of the river. The blame is placed on Valutha again and he was arrested and beaten badly in the police station. Baby Kochama threatens Estha that unless he testifies against Valutha they would send their mother away. Scared Estha testified against him and was traumatized.  Ammu is sent away and Estha and Rahel were sent to separate boarding schools. Rahel goes through an insecure childhood and Estha forgets to speak after the death of Velutha in jail. Rahel was coming back to this Ayamenem and her brother with whom she tries to rebuild her childhood attachment.

God of Small Things comes to mind after reading Mother Mary Comes to Me for a number of reasons. Arundhati herself affirms so after the publication of these novels that one was semi- autobiographical and the other is autobiographical as it was written as a memoir for her mother. The first novel has predominant fictional elements- while in the novel Rahel and Estha were twins and in life Arundhati and her brother were not. The mother left her husband early in life due to ill treatment and chose to come back to her parental house suffering stigma and loneliness in the semi-autobiographical narrative forms a prequel to the now autobiographical Mother Mary Comes to Me. The book which reads like a novel we see Arundhati’s mother’s characterisation true to her life appears as a consequence of her treatment in God Of Small Things.

Mrs. Roy comes out as a fighter and as well as a hysteric, wild and abusive mother to her children. Her constant harassment and resultant loneliness turned her into an irritable, angry and oppressive person in her later life in this narrative. While one cannot say definitely if the attachment she had with Velutha is fact or fiction, her struggles continue in this narrative and emerge out of an actual life and a more controversial and complex bond emerges between her and her children. They love each other and at the same time become victims of her abuse as she would not leave a chance to order them out of her car, her house and her life. They struggle to live with her and both of them leave her when they can no longer put up with her anger. She repeatedly screams at them and reminds them that all her troubles were the result of their presence in her life.

Arundhati leaves the house and away from her for number of years, tries to live without her despite her constant presence in her psyche. She is starved of and craves for her affection, attention, love, and as simple as daily food too. Her mother gives her neglect, constant taunts and naggings and hatred. One wonders at the nature of their relationship. How can a mother show animosity to that extent and also as a daughter how can Arundhati write with such open disregard, devoid of any affection for her mother put them all in the public domain. Her sincerity and traumatic yet dramatic narration give the book its depth and grip to the narration.

The book opens with Arundhati going to her mother’s house after hearing of her death. The book through her flashback reveals how she mends her relationship with her brother when she travels back to Ayamenem to meet him after decades of separation. Here she talks of her unusual relationship with her mother as she goes to Kottayam after hearing of her death. The story is about what caused the separation initially.  Her mother Mary Roy comes to us fully alive after her death in Arundhati’s narration.  She negotiates herself and her mother’s illness all the while highlighting her mother’s life as a fighter, constantly struggling to fight lonely battles.

Her fights were not just for self but for the causes she believed in. She fought for equal inheritance rights for women in her community of Syrian Christians right up to the supreme court and more importantly won the battle. In the process her battle turns out to be with her brother to have her share of the parental house as well. The brother G. Isac (uncle Chacko of God of Small Things) who could not stand her for the way she fought her inheritance battle appears in her last days with all the affection naturally surfacing when she was on her death bed.

Mary Roy had to move away from her village Ayamenem to Kottayam and start a small school of her own for a living and in the initial years she had to rent a few rooms of the Rotary club as he had refused to have her in their parental home and she had practically no place to live. She gradually turns it into a stable and well-established school. It was also well recognised school transforming the lives of hundreds of children. She proved herself, though during the process she had to alienate her own children. Her asthma too gave her relentless trouble and she blamed it on the stress the responsibilities she had to shoulder as a single parent to her children. The relationship soured to such an extent that Arundharti had to leave her mother and what she called home to pursue studies in Architecture in Delhi and she took years to patch up with her mother. She struggled for survival and lived on the goodwill of her friends and supported herself doing odd jobs.

Arundhati throughout stood by her mother in all her battles though not openly acknowledging it to her. Mother too did not at any time to display any natural affection and the way she was living life on her own terms.

A Telugu literary critic in a recent article on writers and their characters made interesting comments on “The Bond Between the Writer and His Characters.” (Papineni Sivasankar, Andhrajyothy, Vividha, Monday literary supplement 17^th November,2025) Writers always maintain a secret bond with their characters, he says. In fiction while characters are products of authors imagination but reader is well aware that many a times these characters may have taken shape from someone known to the writer amongst his circle. In this case a semi-autobiographical narrative can have both fictional and real-life characters and incidents. The writer camouflages himself or people closely known to him while narrating his/her story. This would be done mainly to protect the privacy of the people or to protect him/her self from controversies. The characters chosen by the writer often display a bond they have with the writer or midway through the narration refuse to follow the writer and declare their independence and mould themselves not obeying their creator.

In biographies or autobiographies, the more honest and transparent the writer is the more the book has a chance of becoming a timeless classic. Mahatma Gandhi’s My Experiments with Truth can be cited as a good example here. One cannot but admire his honest and self-critical account as that is what gave the book its classic status.  Arundhati comes through as an outspoken and true to herself narrator when she talks of her mother and her influence on her life. ’She was my shelter and my storm’ so aptly said describes her attachment. After all it is not unusual for mothers and daughters to have quarrels during their growing up years but their relationship stays firm most of the times. Not so for Arundhati in this narrative. Though uncommon, this love-hate bond lends the story its gripping quality.

If there is one thing that stands out in her novels irrespective of the genre, is her unique style. The arresting language and expressions like ‘a hole in the universe called Arundhati’ has the power to stop the reader from reading to admire her style. The way she admires her mother’s grit and fighting spirit, her father’s harmless yet difficult lifestyle as even with all her reservations about the way he spends her money and she could never say no to her father whenever he asked her for money, for buying a tv for himself or for buying alcohol.

Her transparent narrative style comes as refreshing air to the reader. The vulnerabilities of both her parents made her a strong and independent woman who could give up her personal choices for the sake of her beliefs and shaped her as a force to reckon with, as a writer in our times. The causes she stood for and the controversies she lived with, the relationships she travelled through in her life made her an uncompromising writer with a rare courage of conviction, at times effecting her precious attachments with friends and partners unsettling her perpetually restless life.

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