Visceral Observations

Our book club chose to read Arundhati Roy’s Mother Mary Comes to Me. Unexpectedly, the book turned out to be one of the most contentious that we read this year. And it was the same for the rest of the Indians. It dawned on me that several of these gushes of praises and brickbats were simply based on which side of political views you flaunted. Roy had always gone out of the way to let her left leanings be well known. While some in Amrit Kaal might insist, it’s akin to a crime, it isn’t but then it’s hard to reason with the right-wing proletariat. 

A friend of mine told me that in her social media post about the book, someone commented, It’s shameful that you even read the book. As if reading is a criminal activity or this was a banned book. The fervour Roy inspires is not only because she is not only a Booker-prize winning successful writer but also she is a woman and a left-leaning liberal.

I am pretty sure Arundhati Roy doesn’t care and she has always written what she wanted to write. But not everyone has the privilege of Roy to be able to say what they want to say. Often lesser authors first face pushback from the gatekeepers such as agents, publishers, etc and then by modern, irate readers. It’s absolutely common these days for an illiterate right wing brigade to suddenly discover some “disrespectful” , “obscene” or “blasphemous” stuff written by an illustrious writer of whom they had never even heard of until the moment of discovery. Distressed, Tamil writer Perumal Murugan was famously forced to declare himself “dead” as an author in 2015 due to protests against his novel Madhorubhagan (One Part Woman). His book had been out for 4 years and been translated in English for about 2 years before it was discovered by the miscreants. 

But lot of vapid yet hateful criticism for Roy’s book has also come from so-called literate and liberal readers who, I believe, don’t burn the books usually. These voices pretty much seemed to be questioning why she even wrote it. However, exact triggers this group had to the book/Roy revealed who they are. There emerged hidden misogyny, patriarchy, repressed emotions, internalized conflict, and so on amongst the so-called woke people. In short, how you reacted to the book was nothing to do with Arundhati but with who you are. As someone who can always see both sides of the argument, it mainly led me to wonder that while readers have ALL the right to criticize the books as they please, do they have any moral or cultural right to tell a writer what they should write, how they should write and when they should write. 

Irony is this book is Roy’s memoir, her own story. Morally she is the only person who has the right to tell her own story in her own way. You may not like it but that’s her undisputed right. And there is nothing “disrespectful” or “obscene” or “blasphemous” to tell your own story. Having an opinion, I re-assert, is fine. But when it goes to asking why you write or when you should write, then I think the opinions are open to scrutiny, introspection and criticism too. Fair deal, isn’t it?

All criticism that I’ve come across from urban populace fall into the following three categories: (I’ve chosen to ignore the ones related to politics.)

1. Her book is so sensational or pretentious or tawdry.

This particular bit of criticism came largely from men and women who had internalized misogyny and patriarchy themselves. Before reading the book, I was given the impression that Roy was apparently sharing too many sensuous details of her life , perhaps even in graphic detail, of her loves, hot nights and affairs. One of the comments was a revealing, Freudian slip: Roy’s self-joke “Hooker gets a Book” in the book has a smidgeon of truth in it. My mistake was that I believed in that judgement. So, I was naturally very surprised when I didn’t find a single word of promised sensational details. All Roy had narrated facts of her life and her two relationships. I would think that if you were writing a personal memoir, it would be basic to mention your key relationships in life. If there is anyone who has the right to talk about tawdry details of their life, it’s the writer herself. And yet Arundhati, she didn’t do tawdry merely told the facts of her story with love and gratitude. Is the judgement because of internalized misogyny for having had a relationship with more than one man or that there was pre-marital sex that resulted in pregnancy. Frankly, you need to grow up and check your biases. Because no men has encountered such criticism for kissing and telling their tawdry tales. 

2. She is washing dirty laundry in the air by talking about her mother. Why did she write the book after her mother’s death?

This is the most interesting one. Readers actually feel entitled to tell the author what they should write about and when. Wow. 

On closer look, however, the reasons they feel so entitled vary because of their own internalized trauma, psychological masochism, and inability to accept someone else’s story without judgment. Frankly, in Roy’s generation and generations before in India, it has been a norm for Indian parents to beat up their children badly. Also, would Mrs Roy be the only parent in the world to criticize and manipulate and scorn her children? I only need to knock a few doors in my neighbourhood to find stories of bad parenting that has led to inter-generational trauma. Ask the therapists! 

Parental abuse is complex; it follows us in adulthood and shows up in every respect of our life: our ability to attract healthy relationships, our ability to keep jobs that work for us, our ability to live healthy without debilitating anxiety, phobias and other mental health disorders. It’s the most damaging kind of abuse where the one who is supposed to protect you is the one abusing you. If it is the single parent who abuses you, and there is no other adult to protect you ever, it’s the most terrifying thing imaginable for the child. 

Once you point this out, scores of these critics will start explaining how their own parents were critical of them, and yes, they did bash them sometimes, stories pour out. My response is Bingo! What triggers you is a mirror into your inner self. Just because you endured abuse and accepted it or coped with it in your own way, doesn’t mean it is the only way someone else should cope. Telling your story is cathartic, and everyone has a right to tell their own. Roy was actually very very fair to draw a very just portrait of Mrs Roy. She described her mother to be a visionary and how she got out of the dumps and created a legacy. How she was a victim of violence herself. But to her own children, she was a terror. It comes across so many passages that despite this Roy loved her mother and yet knew that she was the source of that moth fluttering in her heart. 

The last argument is oh, but she should have given her mother a chance to respond. I believe this judgement doesn’t come out of empathy. Most abuse victims, especially those abused as children, never actually confront their abuser their whole lives. If it’s a parent, where love and psychological warfare is involved, it’s the hardest thing to do. There are conflicting feelings about shaming your parents in public, or worse you might fall apart again in the public confrontation. You tell your story when it is safe.

So, if you judge someone because they talked about parental abuse, please check your inner trauma and get help. It’s never too late. If you think, the book should have been written when Mrs Roy was alive: a) it’s not your call; no one cares. b) you lack basic empathy for the victims. This is victim blaming with implication the victim is lying. Or, making a demand that “perpetrator” should be given a chance to explain. Victims can choose when they tell their stories. That’s what we told the #MeToo victims that it is okay to tell their stories when they are ready. Even if decades after the crime.

3. Oh her book is full of lies. They were not poor. Roy did not earn that much to pay for her husband and step daughters. Her mother isn’t like that; she was great.

I am not a fact checker. Frankly I don’t care. Of course, I did wonder if authors, even best selling ones, ever earn that much. Memoirs can often be embellishments. It is okay as there are many sides to every story. A memoir is an author’s version. Also, don’t we all embellish a little every time we tell our stories? But, there is an essence of every story. I felt I was able to capture that for myself in this book despite any embellishments. Roy is a complex person, and inspires complex feelings. It is okay to feel whatever but if you feel compelled to call it all lies without material evidence, then check your bias. Your love or hate is a reflection of your own inner self. 

I found it a bit heartbreaking that so many pithy things Roy said in her memoir didn’t get the attention they deserved in book reviews or discussions. Imagine the pain of a girl looked down by a whole community just because her father abandoned them, imagine a parent trying to fleece his own love-deprived children of little money they had for his drinks, passages in the book that tell a story of persistent sexual harassment in our society, how Bandit Queen shattered a woman on large screen under the guise of feminism, how parental abuse can cause inter-generational trauma, and so on. None of these stories were discussed. 

There wasn’t even any research or attempt at genuine criticisms or clarifications: Did Roy think her activism actually helped? There are unflattering mentions of Roy’s time on sets of her movies in Leela Naidu’s memoir. Did she really think she was self-made or was there privileges she enjoyed for her caste/mother’s later status in society? Was it meaningful being such a provocateur that you got booked in court for contempt? I could ask many more. 

I enjoyed the book very much for its writing. Do I like all of it? I don’t. For example, the political activism part of the book was quite uninspiring to me. But I don’t have to trash someone or their book because they talked about childhood trauma and relationships. If you do for merely these reasons, I repeat, look inside. 

P.S: It is also ignorance to assume that Roy is first one to “shame” her parents. There is long healthy history and sub-genre of book about traumatic childhood and bad parenting even in India. But, I assure you, I have never heard anyone as much as Roy getting hate for the same.

P.P.S: This is one of the most humane reviews of the book that I have comes across, written by a student of Mrs Roy. To my mind, this complements the Mrs Roy’s personality we read in her daughter’s book. That rage, dictatorship (even benevolent), and the fear she inspired sounds like same person. How such people full of rage behave in their private life is only anyone’s guess. Only thing that this review gets wrong is that no one owes their abuser (even if abuser thinks it wasn’t intended) any opportunity to explain. Only thing an abuse victim owes is recovery and hope for themselves. So, here’s to humanity and faith!