The passion of the scribe

How Arundhati Roy changed my life, and why I can no longer be silent

- ANIYLY MATHAI

I WAS 10 YEARS OLD when Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize for The God of Small Things. It had a special significance for me because I studied in the school founded by her mother, and where she herself had studied. In a way, I felt like I had a claim over her. She was mine before she was the world’s. As a kid, Roy was my idol. If I couldn’t be her, I wanted to be like her. I wanted to dress like her, walk like her, talk like her…. Most of all I wanted to write like her. I tried to make my words pirouette on the page like she did and to mine profundity out of them. Her words were like shards of glass that reflected the world in new and wondrous ways. Mine, however, creaked and groaned like an unoiled door hinge.

Still, I had been Arundhati-ed, once and for all. She had bent my life out of shape, and now, like a faulty safety pin, it could not be straightened back. I wonder if she ever guessed at how she inspired a small-town girl from the back of beyond to become a writer. How, without knowing, she had cast a stone whose ripples would be felt far and wide in my life. In my childhood, wanting to follow in her footsteps was not a desire; it was a cold, hard ache. Today, however, if I were to follow her, I might very well be walking into jail.