麻豆社

This is the first memoir by the acclaimed Indian writer and political activist Arundhati Roy, best-known for her Booker-prize-winning novel The God of Small Things. It is the account of a remarkable and difficult childhood which was dominated by Arundhati鈥檚 formidable mother, Mary Roy.

This was a time in South India when women had very proscribed roles, and Mary Roy challenged them profoundly:
鈥業n that conservative, stifling little South Indian town, where, in those days, women were only allowed the option of cloying virtue 鈥� or its affectation 鈥� my mother conducted herself with the edginess of a gangster.鈥�

Mary Roy鈥檚 achievements are extraordinary - she founded a co-educational school which challenged sexist gender roles, and she brought a legal challenge which gave South Indian women equal inheritance rights with men. But at home, as Arundhati reveals, she鈥檚 cruel and bullying; she hits her children and belittles them constantly. At 18, Arundhati left home and didn鈥檛 see or speak to her mother for seven years. But when Mary Roy died in 2022, Arundhati was distraught, and even a 鈥榣ittle ashamed鈥� at the intensity of her loss. In an attempt to make sense of their relationship, she began to write Mother Mary Comes to Me.

In this second episode, Arundhati Roy tells the story of how her mother, who had left her alcoholic husband and is now homeless and penniless, manages to start a school, in two small halls belonging to the local Rotary Club. Arundhati and her brother become her pupils. The curriculum is somewhat eccentric:
鈥楳rs Roy taught me Shakespeare, Kipling and A. A. Milne. She read me parts of The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich. And the opening passage of Lolita. She would slash through my compositions, mark me three out of ten, and write comments like 鈥淗orrible. Nonsense.鈥� She taught me to write and resented the author I became.鈥�

Read by Shaheen Khan

Produced and abridged by Elizabeth Burke

Studio Production and Sound Design by Jon Calver

Executive Producer: Sara Davies

Photo courtesy of Arundhati Roy

A Loftus Media production for 麻豆社 Radio 4

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