Imagine an okay High School Tennis player trying to comment usefully, publicly, on Carlos Alcaraz’s play. Or imagine a squirrel made suddenly talkative trying to comment on the life of a lion. Difficult, and I feel like that.

There are many people who are exceptionally smart, witty, funny. Many people who are internally diverse. Such a person channels many. And many people journey into that one person. Then there are some people, I have no idea how many, who are unfathomably complex, courageous, and creative. And then there is Arundhati Roy—and her Mother Mary—or so it seemed to me as I read about their lives.

I met Arundhati, briefly, a couple of times. I found her very impressive, but back then I didn’t perceive multitudes in her one body. But now, Film script writer and film actor. Novelist and essayist. Escape artist and loyalist. Speechifier and activist. I did not earlier see all that. The book reveals all that.

I have read numerous Roy essays, speeches, and interviews, and after doing so I have found her writing quite special. Her prose was inspiring. But I have to admit, even if a bit embarrassed by the fact, that I haven’t read her novels. How trite it seems that I started to do so, but for me they had too many names to follow. Yet, if I had read on, it would have added another dimension to my awareness of her. But I couldn’t manage it. I was deaf to her fiction.

Now I have read her recent book. Hours ago I finished it. Libraries will call it a memoir—she called it Mother Mary Comes to Me. The book seriously stirred my mind. My heart too. I here want to advocate for it as a worthy read. But I don’t want to review it. I did, however, read a bunch of reviews and their composition verified my disinclination to do one. None of them stirred my mind. None did Mother Mary or Arundhati Roy justice. All instead ignored much of what is incandescently present in the book. Maybe by now there is a review that does do the book justice. A review that will inspire potential new readers. But I doubt it. Perhaps Arundhati herself could justly review it, but I even have doubts about that. This kind of book doesn’t welcome a review.

I write quite a lot. Perhaps in sum total I have written more words than Arundhati has written. But if what I do is called writing which is of course a noble and worthy pursuit that all can contribute to—we might need a new word for what Arundhati does. She sees herself as a writer. She likes the word. Perhaps I should let her have the word. I could keep on typing words, of course. I could be inspired by her writing and by others who manage similarly. But I can’t deny that what she does is different. Maybe it would be good to keep calling what I/we do writing, but then we will need a new word for what she does.

Having now read about her life, and her mother’s life, each full of incredible tumult, travail, and achievement, if I could I would ask Arundhati some questions. How do you do this? Do your essays, this book, your other books, flow to the page finished, or nearly so? It feels like they do, like they are effortless, like they are born not only free but complete. Or do you instead go over and over the lines of text that compose what emerges with fits and starts? Do you rewrite, revise, and even renovate? When you address your writing in your new book, you indicate that you spent years on each novel. Okay, but still, is the -final result when you write just spontaneous talent that births immediately well-ordered words, or is it spontaneous talent plus a lot of powerful painful perseverance that orders you words? When they first appear, have you already thought hard on your words? Or do your words just arrive, like a gift from your unconscious, a gift that lands in your fingers from nowhere? Do you channel the words without a conscious thought? I think that is what everyone who writes, indeed what everyone who talks, mostly does, but maybe you diverge. Do you?

I have a memory that was aged when I was young and is moribund now so your memory is beyond my comprehension. And since your words indicate that you see in your mind the scenes from your life and that you hear in your mind the voices from your life, I wonder, how do you keep all those images and sounds of your distant thens from drowning your immediate nows?

Is part of the secret of good, clear, moving, and imaginative writing the way that one sees and hears plentifully? Is it to remember more than others do? To me that is mystery. Is part of worthy story telling an imagination which pops up patterns that mystify like seemingly impossible magic? Maybe that capacity is widespread. Is it something all novelists have? It isn’t in me. I loved reading it.

And I also have, I hesitate to admit, another kind of question I would like to ask Arundhati, if I ever have the opportunity. Given your voice, values, and commitments—which are not a mystery to me since I recognize those—and given your reach, how do you manage to stop yourself from producing new writing every minute you are able to? To share, to affect, to always pursue writing’s activism aspect?

I would ask that, but I may know the answer. Since your novels each took years to complete and their characters lived and even travelled with you during all that time, how could you have done any more? The answer may be, I think, you couldn’t. You are that writer. You do it when you must. To mess with that would morph you into being a different writer and thus not who you are. Goodbye to your ghosts would mean so long to your imagination. To force the words out more often than they want to emerge would reduce the words to lesser quality than those you do generate. Is that the answer? You are you, like Mother Mary was she, and neither you nor she could be other than who you were without losing it all?

Intemperate but curious, I’d ask those questions. And then I’d ask another strange one. Even an amusing one, perhaps. You use the word “lucky” many times. Each time it stands alone. Itself a sentence. Is that a method of your own devising? Was it perhaps inspired by how Vonnegut used the words “so it goes” and “hi ho,” though you use the technique far more frugally than he did? Likewise you occasionally reference earlier scenes from within later scenes. For me, this weaved connections and interconnections. For me, both those techniques worked.

And now, reader, don’t get the wrong idea. Roy’s “memoir” is not just incredibly effective prose. It is also highly readable. It is rich but it is not obscure. It requires no higher learning. I doubt there is a page that doesn’t have a moving and memorable phrase or sentence. Every word fits. Arundhati’s memoir—is that even what it is?—if so, maybe many of us need to find a new word for “memoirs” that we have written. Or maybe it would be better to use a different word for Mother Mary Comes to Me. It is personal history but it is also wit, humor, history, and social commentary. It is specific local daily life but it is also general large scale political insight.

The reviewers all say Mother Mary Comes to Me is built around Arundhati’s Mother, Mrs Roy, and around Arundhati’s experiences of her mother. And Mother Mary is plenty present, for sure. And Mother Mary matters to what occurs, absolutely. But I don’t buy that the book is about Mother Mary, even though it certainly is about Mother Mary. Nor do I buy that it is about Arundhati Roy, even though it certainly is about Arundhati Roy. I read it. I don’t know her mother other than that she was for many an abominable person to be around while for others a saving grace to know, to learn from, and to enjoy. Talk about one being many.

In contrast, about Arundhati I know lots, at least now, even though I suspect there is likely much more to know. Then again there being more to know is always true of everyone, isn’t it? This book is about life and life only, ma. But life and life only is in turn about everything. That’s how the book felt to me. And that would be another question I would like to ask. When you wrote it, Arundhati, did you have readers in mind? Do you have something you want your readers to gain from your book, or were you only trying to tell what happened like it happened, to tell it for yourself and for whoever else might tag along? Is that another feature of remarkable writing? To report and not to try to convince? I can’t comprehend that. Here, I am trying to convince whoever reads this to read the book.

Mother Mary Comes To Me? Has no one noticed that the title is plagiarized in the best possible way from Beatle Paul McCartney’s song, Let It Be which he dedicated to his mother, who was also named Mary?

When I find myself in times of trouble, Mother Mary comes to me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be And in my hour of darkness she is standing right in front of me Speaking words of wisdom, let it be.

I admit, I don’t like that message, “let it be,” however much I like the song. Que Sera, Sera is not for me. Not for Arundhati either, I think. Most of the time. So finally, what do the reviewers leave out even though they try to describe what’s there? The only way to decide is to read the book. I did and I spewed more laughs and dripped more tears doing so than I have done for any other book I can call to mind. Okay, I will report, the reviewers leave out life. The reviewers leave out struggle.

Even so, even as I want to avoid that failing, I feel strange offering an excerpt. To pull a piece from any whole tapestry so as to convey a feeling for the whole tapestry rarely makes much sense. Most often a fragment misleads. But to not offer any piece at all, that  seems incomplete. An excerpt might motivate another potential new reader to read it all. So here are two excerpts. But note, intersperced before, between, and after these two, nearly every page has a potential excerpt that is comparably or more worthy. Indeed, if I wanted to levy a criticism, I might even suggest that there may be too many memorable words and lines.

From early in the book: “I have a vivid memory of one of those journeys. It was a clear, beautiful night. We passed a buffalo cart with a lantern tied behind it for a taillight. The driver of the cart was lying on his back, singing to the stars, confident that his buffalo would take him home. I remember feeling jealous of him. I remember thinking that no matter how long and hard we fought, in India no woman of any religion, class, caste, or creed would ever feel safe enough to sing to the stars on a lonely highway while her buffalo took her home.” Beautiful depiction, as she saw it, but one hopes, also wrong.

From late in the book:

We were well into the dark years of Hindu nationalist hell: public lynching of Muslims, videos of public lynching, public floggings, videos of public floggings, mass murder, videos of mass murder and sword-wielding mobs marching through our streets calling openly for the genocide of Muslims. A group of students in Jawaharlal Nehru University in Delhi decided to hold a protest to mark the third anniversary of the hanging of Afzal Guru. It was another of those moments of mainstream media hysteria. Screaming anchors on television channels aired doctored videos with fake soundtracks. They singled out students one by one, hounded them, lied about them, and called them Pakistani agents. They reserved a special brand of hysterics for Muslims, particularly Kashmiris. The police entered the campus and made arrests. One anchor took to addressing me directly on his prime-time news show, looking straight into the camera: ‘Arundhati Roy, we think you are disgusting.’ Night after night he would rave, ‘Why has she not been arrested? Why is she free?’

By then I was only weeks away from finishing The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. The thought of going to prison at that particular moment was devastating. An almost-complete manuscript can make a writer paranoid and fearful. I felt responsible for Anjum and all the other characters in the book. If I went to prison, they would be locked up with me. I thought it was my duty to usher them into the world, to make sure that their chatter mingled with other conversations on living bookshelves. To protect them I did what I never thought I ever would. I fled. I bought a ticket to London. I have never felt worse about myself. I woke up in a horrible hotel room with racist paintings of African dancers with real straw for skirts. I sat in the breakfast room and cried for myself, for my country, for everything that was going up in flames. Within a day I knew I had to return. Because I was a tree in Anjum’s graveyard. If I was transplanted in another forest, my leaves would fall. I was back home within a week. Why was I not arrested while so many others were? Who knows. Maybe my readers protected me. Maybe my iron angel did.” Can one convey more content in so few words?

Whoever or whatever protected Arundhati Roy—thanks go to you. And now I have to return to my own writing, not put off but spurred on by Arundhati Roy’s incredible mastery of the form.

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