For some reason I was not sure if I wanted to read this book - but Anjali wanted to buy it and she read it. She liked it, was pretty impacted by it (badly if I may say so) - mother daughter and all that - and I could not resist reading it after that (I do like Anjali's recommendations). And as I read it over a 2-3 week period which is rather long for me, my relationship with A Roy took another turn - for the better. For the record, it started in the 80s when I first saw her in the movie 'In which Annie gives it those ones' and promptly put her in the list of women I would like to meet for a coffee (along with Meryl Streep, Emma Watson and a few others I have added over the years). Then I eagerly awaited her 'God of Small Things' which I thought would be something about the small things in life and how they would show us that that's where God lived. The book, very well written as it was, did not give me that impression and soon she fell off that list (I however read her other books and followed her in the media, loyally). Now, after reading Mother Mary, I feel I understand her better, she's more human in that sense, and she's back on the list.
Mother Mary is about her mother Mary Roy. The book begins sometime when her mother, a Syrian Christian from Kerala, married to a Bengali, Mickey Roy, lives in a tea estate in Assam with their two young kids A Roy and Lalith or LKP Roy, and divorces him - rather early in the marriage. This means it is a difficult life because she has no place to go to as she is some kind of an out caste in the conservative Syrian Christian community and is not welcome at home. Mary Roy is not intimidated by the prospect, moves to Ooty, starts teaching, lives in a small place which was once owned by her grandfather (an entomologist if I remember) and gets on with the journey. The kids bear the brunt of her frustrations and anger, and A Roy says that her brother got the worst of it because she hated men, while her brother feels she got the worst.
Anyway, Mary Roy's brother Isaac and her Mom arrive in Ooty and evict the daughter (Mary Roy) and her two children - and sometime after they shift to their hometown Ayemenem which features heavily in 'The God of Small Things'. Guess who puts them up - Mary Roy's brother. One can clearly see that it was a different and difficult family. Mary Roy starts her school in the Rotary Club with an English woman who, having completed her task, leaves Mary Roy to her destiny and goes away to do another good deed. Mary Roy grows the school into a huge institution over her lifetime. The two kids have no option but to study there of course and they are pretty much traumatised by their mother who runs the ship with an iron hand.
A Roy is still in school when her mother takes the famous architect Laurie Baker into confidence and asks him to design her school on a hill top. When meeting Laurie, A Roy also meets JC (short for Jesus Christ) who is interning with LB and falls in love with both his craft and the person. She decides to study architecture in the School of Planning and gets admission and heads off to Delhi. Sometime during this time her mother goes to the Supreme Court and gets a verdict in her favour that ancestral property must also belong to the daughters and evicts her brother from home.
The relationship with her mother gets worse and she decides not to return to Kerala for a longish period, like seven years. It was during that time that she scrimps through Delhi with JC for support, living in stolen hostel rooms, small shanties with shared toilets, getting by on the minimum. There's a time when JC moves to Goa and she moves with him (they get married in some sort of an unofficial way) and sells cakes to the hippies in Candolim. Something happens and she returns to Delhi, scrimps again, meets new friends like Sanjay, somehow survives until she meets her next husband Pradeep Kishen, who was looking for a new face for his film 'Massey Saheb'. She acts, falls in love with PK, who falls in love with her, gets her to write the screenplay for 'In Which Annie...' gets awards and suddenly life changes for A Roy. There's an abortion that she goes through alone, without anesthesia, with no one around her during the filming of 'Massey Saheb', and makes it back to the film shoot by night. Some of the stuff she has done makes you wonder how she survived at all. Of course, all the while she is aware that her mother never wanted her and tried all kinds of ways to abort her herself - unsuccessfully (Too bad ladies, I am here now). A Roy reminded me of Shantaram, the character, who would do exactly what I wanted him not to do, like going towards danger instead of away from it.
In all this, A Roy finds that she can write literary stuff, and is prodded by PK and she embarks on writing 'God of Small Things' which took four years she says. She talks about the Plymouth car, the images that stayed inside her and how they came out onto the book. (Even how and where she wrote that book is very interesting). As autobiographical as it can get but its a huge success and suddenly, money is raining down on her in royalties, in dollars and Euros, in millions. So much that she is giving it away. I liked what she wrote about the money and how she used it, mostly giving it away and sustaining the projects PK takes up - like his book on 'The Trees of Delhi (It's a beautiful book and Vasu and I referenced it for the trees we had decided to plant two years ago, didn't know it would pop up like this).
Anyway, A Roy becomes a celebrity and returns to Kottayam, Mary Roy organises a book launch in her school.Isaac comes and he seems to love the fact that A Roy wrote (I loved their relationship - in fact the entire family's). Sometime then her father Mickey Roy makes an appearance, he's an alcoholic, has a character that's a bit like Wooster's (generally happy). Her brother has married and moved back to Kottayam and the school is flourishing. Everyone is flourishing actually. Then A Roy gets into her truth telling roles in causes she believes in - be it the nuclear bomb, Phoolan Devi, the Narmada dam, the Naxalites in Dantewada who she visits and stays with for 3 weeks or so, Kashmir - and so on, and each time she takes on the government and the judiciary and the system in general and is called all sorts of names, goes to jail for a day (basically gets more into her Shantaram act). Her friends, the naxals and hunted down, and one scene I will not forget - she mentions how one of the girls who was captured, mostly someone who she spent time with, was dragged by the hair until her scalp came off. A Roy does not drink in her rage like most of us - she let's it out through her writing.
Right from childhood A Roy is worried that her one parent who takes care of her may die with her severe asthma, and leave her alone in this world with her brother. She says she would try to breathe for her mother. And it is this that she does all her life and God knows when she stops doing that, holding her breath for her mother. Her mother eventually succumbs to her ill health. A Roy leads us through those days of her mother in hospital, on a ventilator, then off it, then at home, and how she sees the woman she calls 'her storm, and her shelter' slowly fade away. In those days perhaps their relationship healed a lot more and after Mary Roy is gone A Roy comes up with this lovely idea of having a grove where she is buried. Mickey Roy has left before Mary Roy.
A Roy is back on my list of fav writers and people I want to have a coffee with. There's this thing about her writing where every now and then you go, hey, that's an interesting way to look at that. Like one instance when she shrivels up under her mother's anger, she writes of it like - swirling down a drain in the sink - or something like that. Cant get an image like that out of your head. If course many more like that. It's writing you have to slow down, concentrate and imbibe, which is also why it stays with you in images, in feelings, and does not leave you in a hurry. My friend Sagar tells me of films - that good films (and books I may add) should disturb you. This book does that. I could write a lot more about it but for now, I'll let it be.
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