KOCHI: The illustrious daughter returned home. Truly. The international launch of prolific writer Arundhati Roy’s latest work, a memoir titled Mother Mary Comes To Me, held in Kochi was a moment the people of the southernmost state in India were eagerly awaiting. For this was the first time a book by the iconic writer was being launched from her home turf of Kerala, in front of her own people.
The crowd was made up of her kith and kin, friends, former students of Pallikoodam School in Kottayam, and renowned publishers from around the globe. “This is my home,” she said during the launch, an event where not just the author but the children of Mary Roy shone throughout.
However, in each breath, each exhale, and each strum of the guitar, and in every question, “Mrs Roy” stood tall, towering over the public on Tuesday evening. An inimitable presence, who went to the Supreme Court and won the right for Christian women to inherit ancestral property. She went on to build a school, Pallikoodam, in her village.
The grand launch, organised jointly by Penguin Random House and DC Books, was held at the St Teresa’s College auditorium and, coincidentally, the ‘Mother Mary’ hall. The memoir is about her revolutionary mother, Mrs Roy, the daughter-turned-writer and her beloved brother Lalit Roy, also known as LKC.
“Mrs Roy, our mother, emerges as a shining superstar in the book, who was both mother and father to us. Imagine a Booker Prize winner rebuked to the end, but Sue (Arundhati) would retaliate with a joke,” quipped Lalit, who recalled the tumultuous but special relationship he and his sister shared with Mrs Roy.
He soon whipped out his guitar and crooned the Beatles’ song, Let It Be, which inspired the title of the book.
Most of the writer’s family, the close relatives fictionally featured in her Booker-winning The God of Small Things, from Ayemenem in Kottayam to her distant relatives from West Bengal, including famed journalists Prannoy Roy and Radhika Roy, were among the ones gathered.
Writer K R Meera introduced the book.
“The book felt like a fulfilment of a memoir that I would write myself years later. She is the only writer in India whom all fascist governments in the world keenly listen to, a true Indian writer. The book is a political history of the author’s life and the most honest reply to the government that banned her book,” Meera said.
Publisher and editor-in-chief of Penguin Random House India, Manasi Subramanyam, explained the process of bringing out the book to a crowd that filled up two halls. The choice of Kochi as the city for the global launch was special as it was the process of “taking the book from her home to the world”.
Arundhati addressed the gathering with her memories of Mary Roy, her childhood in Kerala, and her bond with her mother, something that breaks the norms of a traditional mother-daughter relationship. But her speech began with a call-out for Palestine.
“As I am officiated and applauded as now, I am always conscious that someone quiet is being beaten up in the other room. Now, I am very aware that this book is coming out when the most horrific genocide in the 21st century is being carried out in Gaza. It is easier for us to reach the images of dying Palestinian children than getting a glass of water at night,” Arundhati said.
“It is a shame for all of us that we appear to be helpless to stop it. Because there is a schism now between governments and the people, not just in our country, but everywhere,” she added.