Arundhati Roy’s memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me launched in Kochi

“Terrible things are happening. I cannot forget what is going on in the world today,” acclaimed writer Arundhati Roy said as she launched her memoir Mother Mary Comes to Me. The global launch of Arundhati Ms. Roy’s memoir, which has been making momentous ripples in the literary circuit even before its official launch, was held at Mother Mary Hall at St. Teresa’s College in Kochi.

“While this book is coming out, it is written in the time of one of the most horrible genocides happening 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. It is a matter of shame for 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,” she said. “As I prepared to come on stage, the High Court has once again denied bail to Umar Khalid and to many of my friends who have been in prison for five years,” she added.

The event was organised jointly by Penguin and DC Books. The event saw discussions on her new book, how it came to be and touched on the childhood events that shaped the writer.

Writer K.R. Meera also shared her thoughts on the book. Noting that she could relate to the experiences that the author has had in her life, Ms. Meera said that the book reminded her of the need to write a memoir on her own mother. “To introduce Arundhati, you need to invent another language,” she said.

Ms. Roy first greeted and addressed the attendees on the first floor of the building as they could not find space in the hall. Following this, she made her way to the hall where she was greeted with much enthusiasm. “Almost everybody I love is gathered in this room. For a normal person this would be her wedding or a funeral, but thank God I am not normal. I am a writer; it is a book launch,” said a visibly elated Roy. She further added, “There are many Mother Marys here, one is the blessed virgin whom this hall is named after, one is Paul McCartney’s Mother Mary who is in the song, and the third one is ours, and she isn’t either of them,” she said, as the crowd chuckled.

Ms. Roy also introduced her brother L.K.C. Roy to the crowd, who elated the crowd with the song Let It Be by The Beatles, a song which inspired Ms. Roy in naming her book.

On how she could see her mother wholly, with the ‘good’, ‘bad’ and ‘great’ things she had done, Arundhati said that she got to do that after seeing the world and how much people suffered. “Once I saw the world, the suffering of the people, I didn’t become the point of my own story or the centre of my own narrative. I tried to always translate what was going on. I was constantly turning something that terribly happened into a funny story. I was drafting this book...,” she said. She shared her views on the difficult times that we are living in and noted that the book was being released at a time when a genocide was going on.

The session also saw her talk about her childhood, her writing process, and how the book came to be.

After Roy’s evocative reading of the first chapter of the book called ‘Gangster’, a discussion and question-answer session about the book was held. Manasi Subramaniam, editorial member of Penguin Random House in India, who is also the editor of the book, moderated the session with the author.