Mother Mary Comes to Me

Mary Roy is the author’s mother. She is characterized in large part through the tension between her public and private personae. In public, she is an important pillar of her community. She founds a highly regarded school in Kerala during an era in which elite educational institutions were still run and operated by white administrators and teachers. She pioneers novel pedagogical methods in her classes and becomes a beloved figure in the lives of generations of students, who see her as a caring and supportive figure. She values equality and teaches her students to resist India’s rigid patriarchal structures. She instills in her male students a respect for women’s intellect and equality between the sexes and teaches her female students that they can be more than mothers and wives. She is on the vanguard of various equality movements in India and leaves a legacy of activism behind.

However, she is also abusive and emotionally volatile. She is highly critical of her children and finds constant fault with them. She is emotionally, verbally, and at times physically abusive and does not show her children the care and respect she does her students. She berates Arundhati for not being poised and well-spoken at all times, and holds LKC personally responsible for India’s sexism. Even as she ages and develops genuine respect for her children’s chosen paths in life, she remains privately critical and her conversations with Arundhati and LKC are always insult-laced.

Despite her mother’s abusive behavior, Arundhati finds much to admire about her and ultimately arrives at a place of both forgiveness and love. Arundhati forgives Mary in large part for the way that Mary rejects patriarchal social norms and fights for her own rights and the rights of Indian women. She survives an abusive childhood and leaves an unhealthy marriage. She pursues a career. Arundhati observes that, during an era in which “women were only allowed the option of cloying virtue,” Mary conducted herself with “the edginess of a gangster” (4).

Mary successfully petitions the Indian courts to alter their sexist inheritance laws, ensuring future generations of women will inherit a fair share of their parents’ estates, alongside their male siblings. She fights a life-long battle with asthma and a series of other, related health issues and works relentlessly in education and activism in spite of serious, debilitating chronic pain. She emerges as a figure of strength, resilience, and feminism, and Arundhati is proud to have been her daughter.

LKC is Arundhati’s older brother. Like Arundhati, he struggles in his relationship with Mary because of her abuse. Arundhati remembers that: “He was a quiet boy. He never cried” (12), but she acknowledges that in spite of his stoicism, his childhood was even more difficult than hers.

Since he is older than Arundhati, LKC remembers life with his father. Mickey was, in spite of his faults, a kind and loving presence in his children’s lives, especially in contrast to Mary. LKC misses his father and would have preferred to grow up in an intact family. LKC is additionally burdened by Mary’s abuse because she makes him the target of more of her anger. Mary deeply values gender equality and spends much of her life fighting for women’s rights in India. She treats LKC with greater disregard than his sister because he is male, and Arundhati recalls her mother often calling him, even when he was a child, a “chauvinist pig.”

Although Arundhati will grow up to forgive her mother because she will become moved by her mother’s activism, LKC does not. At the time of Mary’s death, he remains resentful and questions the sincerity of Arundhati’s grief, given Mary’s history of abuse. As an adult, LKC follows in his uncle’s footsteps and becomes a successful, respected businessman. Like Arundhati in her early adulthood, he values independence and does his best to build a life that does not include his mother.

G. Isaac is Mary Roy’s brother. He was “one of India’s first Rhodes scholars,” and shares his keen intellect with his siblings (16). He, Mary, and Mary’s sisters were raised in an abusive household by a man whom Arundhati nicknames the “Imperial Entomologist” for his career and collaborative role with the British colonial government. The Imperial Entomologist’s abusive parenting impacted all of his children, and even as adults their relationships are marked by emotional volatility and rancor.

G. Isaac and Mary are especially embittered because Mary objects to G. Isaac having inherited their father’s house and the bulk of his estate. In India at that time, women’s ability to inherit their parents’ property was severely limited, and Mary and her sisters received only a small amount of money. Mary successfully petitions the Indian courts to reverse this law and eventually evicts G. Isaac from their father’s home. Arundhati Roy’s depiction of Mary and G. Isaac’s relationship helps her to paint a more accurate portrait of Mary, in that it highlights both Mary’s fight for gender equality and tenacity: She is perfectly willing to retroactively disinherit her own brother.

G. Isaac is also characterized by his relationship and career choices. He takes over the family’s struggling business and renovates its dated factories. He marries a woman considered beneath his caste, and in doing so incurs the ire of his more traditional family members. Although he and Mary argue bitterly and are often at odds, in a broader sense they are both engaged in social justice battles: Mary focuses mainly on gender equality, and G. Isaac becomes a champion for class equality.

He is also important in Arundhati and LKC’s lives for his status as a role model and, at times, surrogate father figure. He has a good relationship with both Arundhati and LKC and provides them with some of the family support that they do not receive from their mother. He encourages Arundhati’s writing career and mentors LKC when LKC enters the world of business.

Mrs. Joseph and Mrs. Kurien are Mary Roy’s sisters. Although their role in Mother Mary Comes to Me is limited, each remains an important part of the broader narrative of place and family that the memoir constructs.

Mrs. Joseph is traditional in both her life choices and her relationships. Mary Roy’s decision to end her unhappy marriage and raise her children alone is deeply taboo during an era in which marriage is sacrosanct and family is the seat of tradition. Her choice scandalizes her family, but becomes a model for Arundhati as she navigates her own complex relationships in adulthood. Mrs. Joseph, by contrast, places a high value on traditional marriage and judges her sister harshly even as she levels criticism against Mickey Roy.

Arundhati notes Mrs. Joseph “succeeded where her siblings failed” in that she had a “proper” husband and house and guided both her servants and children with an iron fist. Mrs. Joseph provides Arundhati with a different kind of model, a rubric for the type of relationship that she doesn’t want. Although Mrs. Joseph has impeccable manners and even hosts Arundhati at her home when she is in Delhi, she represents (to Arundhati) the limitations that Indian society places on its women.

Miss Kurien is Mary Roy’s other sister. “Far ahead of most women of her time” (14), she holds an MA in English literature and teaches at a college in Sri Lanka (then known as Ceylon). Arundhati recalls the respect she felt for her aunt as a young girl and details the way that respect grows as she ages and better understands how difficult it is to get (and make use of) an education in deeply patriarchal India. Like Mary, Miss Kurien is keenly intelligent and does not allow sexism to dictate her life choices. She becomes for Arundhati, like Mary, an example of what is still possible for women who are driven and hardworking.

Miss Kurien, like Mary, is a survivor of childhood abuse and, also like Mary, is emotionally volatile. She thus comes to represent the enduring impact of generational trauma and the complex nature of family bonds. Since she combines intractability with career success, she also helps Arundhati to better understand her relationship with Mary: Arundhati comes to realize that a woman can have markedly different public and private personae and still have a positive impact on the young women around her.

“JC” (short for Jesus Christ, because of their physical resemblance) is the nickname that Arundhati gives to her first long-term boyfriend. When she meets him, Arundhati is still in high school, and he is an architectural student. She is drawn to him initially because he is shirtless, wearing sandals, and has long hair. Their first meeting is Arundhati’s earliest memory of experiencing sexual desire, and she is thrilled when they reconnect a short time later, when she too is an architectural student in Delhi. Also noteworthy is JC’s casual confirmation of Mary Roy’s complex, intractable personality: He casually refers to Mary as “that crazy mother of yours” (66), becoming one of the first people outside of Arundhati’s family to affirm Arundhati’s experience of Mary.

Arundhati and JC begin a romantic relationship that becomes a key part of Arundhati’s early adulthood. Their time together is formative for Arundhati in part because of the gender politics of their relationship. JC respects Arundhati’s intelligence and sees her as an equal. During an era in which Indian society remains staunchly patriarchal, JC’s treatment of Arundhati is noteworthy. Her relationship with Pradip will also follow this model, and it is evident from Arundhati’s account of her romance with JC that she developed much of her ideas of what it means to be in a romantic relationship during her time with JC.

Their relationship is also non-traditional in that they move in together without marrying first, a practice that is still taboo in India at the time. While their cohabitation will garner criticism from many in Arundhati’s family, it will free her from traditional relationship models and allow her to set her own terms when she meets and begins a relationship with Pradip. Their relationship’s ending will also help her to clarify her views on romance and gender roles: In spite of his initial support for her, when Arundhati sees JC interact with his family she realizes that he is a traditionalist at heart. Not wanting to remain in a relationship that shows signs of becoming that of the “typical” Indian couple, she chooses to follow in her mother’s footsteps by choosing independence.

Mickey Roy is Arundhati’s father. Like Mary Roy, he comes from a background of relative privilege and, in the early days of his marriage, has a managerial position on a tea estate. His bourgeois upbringing and career choices will eventually help Arundhati to think critically about the role of class and caste in India, realizing that she herself has benefitted from privileges that are out of reach for many.

Mickey Roy, in spite of his early career success, has a serious alcohol dependency. Unlike his wife, however, Mickey has a genial disposition and his “rascally spirit” makes him popular even when he is in dire straits because of his substance use disorder. Whereas Mary is well-respected by her peers and fellow community members, Mickey is well-liked even by people who recognize how problematic his life choices are. He is always cheerful and kind to his friends, neighbors, and children.

Thanks to his kindness, Mickey becomes a counter-force to Mary’s abuse in the lives of his children, and although their contact with him is sporadic, they maintain a good relationship with their father. Both Arundhati and LKC do their best to care for Mickey in his times of need, and both come to his aid when it is clear that he is dying. He is not as formative a force in Arundhati’s life as her mother, but she still grieves him after his death and reflects on the impact he had on her as a father.