21

Nov

MY BOOKSHELF

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A Bit About Us

A new initiative to warm up the chilly winters which you can enjoy in your cosy bed with your favourite cuppa, without the risk of venturing out in the polluted city.

Beginning this November, Media Map News introduces a Book Review Column appearing every First and Third Friday of the month to make for a leisure reading after a hectic week. 

This will be bilingual (till we find translators in other languages) where we pick up the trending books as far as possible, to inform readers about whither the wind is blowing in literature, politics, cinema and other subjects including of course AI.

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A bit about our first author 

Arundhati Roy, also known as Suzzana Arundhati Roy, born on November 24. 1961(Oh, this review could be a Birthday gift for her) is an Indian author best known for her novel God of small things which won the Booker prize for fiction in 1977 which has been translated in more than 20 international languages. A political activist also involved in human rights and environment issues she also won the PEN Printer Prize in 2024.

 

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Book Review

Mother Mary Comes to me

Author          -Arundhati Roy

Publishers    -Penguin

Pages             -374

Price              -Rs.899

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What could be better than beginning with Arundhati Roy’s what Penguin calls her ‘first work of memoir’ a book about her mother Mary Roy whom she calls “my mother, my gangster who was my shelter and my storm”.

The contradiction in that statement is obvious from the very beginning itself and colour every contour of her journey from a young victim of her mother's anger to a rebellious writer and activist.

She writes about her mother,” As a child I loved her irrationally, helplessly, fearfully, completely as children do. As an adult I tried to love her cooly, rationally, and from a safe distance. I often failed. Sometimes miserably. I wrote versions of her in my books, but I never wrote HER.”

This review introduces Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me, published by Penguin, which reflects on the complex and turbulent relationship between Roy and her mother, Mary Roy. Known for her fierce independence, Mary left her alcoholic husband and built a school and hostel through sheer determination, often displaying anger and strictness toward her children.
My Bookshelf
By Amitabh Srivastava
Roy describes loving her mother both fearfully as a child and cautiously as an adult, struggling to understand her contradictions. The memoir also recounts Mary Roy’s landmark legal battle in the Supreme Court that secured property rights for Christian daughters. Alongside her mother’s story, the book traces Arundhati Roy’s own journey—from architecture school and early film work to her rise as a celebrated writer and activist, culminating in the global success of The God of Small Things and her continued social engagement.

But it's basically the story of a mother, her struggles after she had left her alcoholic husband while Arundhati was 2, to create her own school and a hostel where she was the King, (because she did not behave like a Queen) preparing her own empire brick by brick.

Reading the book till the last page one is not sure whether her asthma attacks triggered her anger or her uncompromising nature that refused to tolerate a drunkard husband.

And she did not pretend to be what she was not. When she got angry she would shout and physically hit both Arundhati and her brother who was few years elder.

At one place Arundhati writes that her mother had three children- herself, her sibling brother and the school of which she loved and protected the school the most.

So much so that the two children started calling her Mrs.Roy like her other employees, instead of mother.

“The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch love pass by, is to learn from it, marvel at it, and not grow bitter and incapable of love ourselves.”

Arundhati left her mother’s home at the age of 18 when she was selected to join the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture she had decided never to go back to her permanently.

A recurring picture that emerges from her account is that of a mother who would tell her children to get out of the car which was extended to her home as she would tell people to get out of her house.

But the Mother Mary was a fighter at a time when no one thought of fighting for the rights of women. When she was evicted from the house of her father whom she describes as an Imperial Entomologist where she as well her mother were also beaten up, she takes the battle to the Supreme Court to challenge the Travancore Christian Succession Act which barred daughters from having a right in the father's property, which she finally won.

Meanwhile as Mary Roy was becoming a sort of local Hero by her acts of kindness and supporting orphans and women in trouble in Aymanam in Kerala Arundhati was experimenting with her life, her choices and passions as a student at the Delhi School of Planning and Architecture.

Her journey includes getting photographed in a marriage costume in a Church only to get a house on rent in Delhi, travelling all the way to Goa to live with the architect husband, did not like the city with the marriage felling apart. 

In her early days she worked with TV and films and starring in ‘Massey Sahib’ in 1985 and later in two films’ In which Anime Gives those ones’ and ‘The electric moon’ both directed by her new husband Pradip Kishen.

A restless soul, after this she started writing independent articles in magazines like Outlook without compromising with others in script writing for cinema and this was also the beginning of her literary career.

With her liberal background and a mother like Mary it is no surprise that she took strong exception to the film ‘Bandit Queen’ made by Shekhar Kapoor on the life of Phoolan Devi which went on win several awards.

She condemned Shekhar Kapoor for exploiting the travails of a female Mallah who turned dacoit to avenge her gang rape by Thakurs in Uttar Pradesh.

Along with famous lawyer Indira Jai Singh she went to the Supreme Court to protest against the exhibition of the film which was an exhibition of multiple rapes of a woman without her permission. They could not stop the show because the alleged husband of Phoolan Devi had taken money from them on her behalf.

The crown of fame of course was her novel ‘The crown of small things’ an autobiographical film about childhood in Kerala that went on to get her the Booker Prize in 1997 and is said to have been published in 40 languages across the world.

Her literary writings and her fighting civil cases have continued since then and in September 2025 came this book which has been discussed and quoted in various talk shows for it's acerbic comments and plain speaking.

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