A Complex Legacy

Arundhati Roy talks about her relationship with her mother, the sense of belonging, the language of remembrance, and the pursuit of happiness.

- Words by ANWESH BANERJEE Photographs by KARAN KUMAR SACHDEV

Does remembrance have a language? For Booker winning novelist, essayist and activist Arundhati Roy, the answer is a resounding yes. On the 78th anniversary of our national independence, we connect over Zoom from Roy's New Delhi home to discuss the imminent release of her much anticipated memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me. Her first major work since the publication of her second novel Ministry of Utmost Happiness in 2017, I catch Roy in her study—books and sheets of paper spooling onto a divan behind, as her face stands lit by the amber glow of a table lamp.

“Everybody recalls memories in an internal language which involves visuals, music, the olfactory senses, perhaps a sense of fear, or pleasure, among other things,” she says. “Depending on what you do, that is if you’re a painter, or a musician, or an architect, I think these things express themselves differently.” Her words immediately take me back to my now-lost-to-time summer vacation as a ninth grader, when the woven tapestry of her passages transported me every noon for a week to the damp, humid, fever dream of Ayemenem with twins Esthappen Yako and Rahel Ipe for company.

I somehow string a few words to tell Roy how I have spent my last few nights (and many subway journeys) reading her latest literary offering. A searing “reportage” of the life of educator, and women's rights activist Mary Roy—and the author's mother. In uncharacteristically spare prose, the most tender sense of humour, and a grievous pathos that is as moving as it is shocking, Roy barely leaves any sea-secrets about the most fractured and fulfilling relationship of her life. And by the askance glow of her lamp, and the fluttering din of my table fan, we spend the next half-hour chatting as she tells Bazaar India about everything—from writing and remembering to AI and happiness.

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