Mother Mary

| 2 MIN READ | Coming full circle – From an incomplete polemicist to a painfully real human

I receive the book as a gift.  

Loved her in a movie from the late 80s. ‘In which Annie gives it those ones’. It had a natural, colloquial English. Capturing the native authenticity embedded within a westernised generation. No one could inhabit that space as effortlessly as Arundhati. Turning our ordinary adolescent spaces into art. It lived on alone, like an offbeat error, never to be retold.

Then came ‘The God of Small Things’. Could never get through the book. I need to be engulfed by the first few pages. To be swallowed in whole, until it is ready to spit me out.  

Then Narmada, Hindutva, Naxalites, Kashmir. On every burning issue, she had a perspective. Fervent, contrarian, courageous. Yet incomplete.

Centred around the oppressive state and its subaltern victims. Neither of which can be denied. But one that never delves into the full story. Of the victims of the victims, the corroded architecture of statehood, the politics hardwired into religion. Within this ambient vagueness, her lyricism resonated with the heart, but eluded grounded insight or clarity on what inspires and drives us as a collective.

On the battlefield of Kurushetra, Lord Krishna urged Arjuna to act by invoking the transcendent canvas on which our worlds operate. Amidst the inherent absence of enduring resolutions and the inevitability of unintended consequences – act with detachment, in consonance with our station in life, acknowledging that all returns to the eternal flame of transience. We instinctively know this by how we feel our actions – as aligned & calming or off & confusing.

This is the essence of faith – religious or otherwise – a powerful subconscious recognition of what is true that eludes explanation but guides action. It is clarifying. A flickering flame of wisdom transmitted by culture. Hence tribal. Fiercely defended. Vulnerable to weaponization. Without recognizing this ever present abstraction, any debate turns into people talking to each other in alien tongues.  

The rebuilding of a temple at Ram Janmabhoomi, reinstated the centrality of faith in this land while unleashing fissures that undermine the intent of Ram Rajya. Revealed a complicit state, that Roy rightfully critiques. But one that was also the last mediator in a centuries old dispute This is the paradox of existence. There is no neatness. Every hand is dirty with something. Even the path that takes us to the intangible & immutable root of what we are, wanders through the chaos of contradictions.   

Amidst this ambivalence, my own conditioned biases encircling her voice, I read “Mother Mary comes to me”. To honour the gift more than to unwrap Arundhati.

For the next few days, I fall into her world. I carry the book with me everywhere. Page through it late into the night in a dingy Delhi hotel room. Live through the dislocations of her childhood, the enormous presence of her mother and the fractious bond she shared with her. Embracing the raw honesty, playfulness and poetry with which she accepts the shifting flows of her life.

And somewhere along the way I touch her uncertain heart. Unfamiliar with stability and upended by intimacy. Unrelenting in her willingness to be just, kind and giving to those around her. The frictionless simplicity with which she approached her own complicated life – was uplifting.  

I thank my friend for the gift, confess my initial resistance and subsequent immersion.

I dream of a chance encounter with Arundhati. It’s a large public space, people milling around. I tell her how much I loved the book. How it opened me to her shining presence.

The next day, I arrive at the airport. Open the door, step out and turn to pick up my bags. A woman steps out of the Toyota behind us. I sense a glitch in the Matrix. Am instinctively drawn to walk towards her. Fact and fiction collide into each other in this sprawling forecourt of quiet queues. I tell her I dreamt of her last night. Say what I had to. Her smile is gracious and gentle.

 I feel the touch of transcendence. Of dreaming the world into existence.