The Burden of Memory

A heartbreakingly beautiful, brutally honest book that unsettles as much as it moves. Arundhati Roy remains a masterful storyteller.

By Beena Vijayalakshmy, Toronto

This past year, most of my reading has revolved around management books and work-related material. But when I learned that Arundhati Roy was releasing a memoir, I made an exception, in more ways than one, and greedily devoured it in a little over a day.

Roy has always been a writer I admired. Like many, I was captivated by her debut novel and, for years, hesitated to read anything else, fearing she might never match it. Like Harper Lee, I liked to think of her as a one-book wonder. I didn’t want to spoil the magic of her debut, because for me it was personal.

When I first met Estha and Rahel in The God of Small Things, I instantly saw my late brother and myself in them. We, too, were a unit-partners in mischief and everything else. Like Roy and her brother, our early years were spent in the Nilgiris, the Blue Mountains of Ooty. Like them, we were never considered Keralite enough whenever we visited Kerala, despite both our parents hailing from central Travancore. And like her, I too had a river I loved, replete with monsoon rains, insects, and reflections of the moon.

Years later, when I tragically lost my brother, the book would, at once, come to haunt me and provide solace. Inexplicably. "Everything can indeed change in a day", I repeated to myself often.

"Always be prepared."

Roy was a sensation after her debut, instantly catapulted into literary stardom. What set her apart, though, was that she did not remain cloistered in the world of literature. She immersed herself in causes like the Narmada Bachao Andolan, Kashmir, and the struggles of the Naxalites. She cared deeply, and she used her voice where it mattered most.

I nearly idolized her for that courage, for refusing to separate art from politics, or beauty from conscience. I followed her work and activism with admiration, even when I didn’t always agree with her politics. So when I heard of her memoir, it felt like a return to the Roy I first fell in love with -- a storyteller of luminous detail and unflinching honesty. And so, I made an exception and picked up one of her books again.

At its heart, Mother Mary Comes To Me is about a daughter’s longing for her mother’s love -- a longing that begins in childhood and lingers into adulthood. Roy’s depictions of that ache are some of the most powerful passages in the book. The way she writes about absence, about craving affection, about trying to love and protect a mother who could be both brilliant and cruel, is heartbreaking.

In these moments, the book feels painfully true.

Still, the reading experience left me unsettled. Memoirs are ethically complex, especially when it involves family and friends. How does one share their truth without pulling others into the narrative, sometimes unwillingly? How does a writer avoid making loved ones feel exposed, misrepresented, or claimed without consent? (Consent that, for example, Shekhar Kapur reportedly did not seek from Phoolan Devi when making Bandit Queen and claiming it to be her true story.) Roy herself acknowledges that her mother greatly worried about what might be said or written about her.

In the book, Roy acknowledges her mother’s greatness, but in choosing to reveal so much of her darkness after her death, the memoir sometimes feels less like an act of love. A writer of her calibre would surely have anticipated the chatter it would generate, and the picture it might paint to the Western world -- a litany of victimization. I also wondered about her brother, who had long put the pain of childhood behind him and gone on to become a successful seafood tycoon. Reopening that chapter would surely drag him back into it, no?

Or her uncle, whom she says she loved to the end, and yet portrays in ways that do not garner a lot of sympathy for him. To unleash all this after her mother and uncle had both passed away seemed, at times, almost intrusive. Was this the price of her healing? Could it not have been done more privately? Did it need to be monetized?

True to her mother's spirit, I feel Roy has taken her turn at tearing apart her mother’s image, even as she attempts to venerate her. About her father ("The Nothing Man"), she makes no attempt to disguise how she feels about him.

The result is a paradox. A heartbreakingly beautiful, brutally honest book that unsettles as much as it moves. Roy remains a masterful storyteller. Her prose so lyrical it tugs at your heartstrings. Yet, I’m still troubled by the ethics of it all. Perhaps this was her way of stitching herself back together after years of being torn apart. For readers, it’s both a gift and a provocation, a reminder that truth-telling can heal, but it can also wound.

Arundhati Roy at the book launch in Toronto.

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Beena Vijayalakshmy is a writer and translator with roots in Kerala, now based in Toronto. An avid reader and lover of literature, she has edited two poetry anthologies -- Bards of a Feather, Volumes 1 and 2, and curates a literary page on her social-media handle that showcases the work of poets, writers, and artists from around the world for a growing global audience. By profession a management consultant, she balances her corporate career with a lifelong commitment to literature and the arts. In keeping with her philosophy of lifelong learning, she is currently pursuing a degree in management at the Rotman School of Management, University of Toronto. By her own admission, she prefers to remain on the sidelines in the quiet spaces between prints.

Photos: Beena Vijayalakshmy

Editor's Note: The views expressed in this review are solely that of the writer and do not necessarily reflect the editorial position of independentink.in