The road to Aymanam in Kottayam is well-known to many Malayalis. For me, it was a pilgrimage. I wasn’t merely visiting a backwater village; I was pursuing the legacy of the celebrated author Arundhati Roy — her words that fueled my imagination; her defiance that stirred my conscience; and her silences that unsettled my heart.
Since the late 1990s, when I first read her Booker Prize-winning novel The God of Small Things as a village girl in remote Wayanad, I’ve carried this longing. Roy’s vivid language and profound sorrow struck me like lightning. Her book vividly depicted Kerala’s lush landscapes but also tackled issues of caste, gender, and forbidden love. At that time, visiting Aymanam seemed impossible. Life took me elsewhere, yet the desire lingered like a half-remembered song.
First Encounter with a Rebel
Years later in New Delhi, my obsession met reality. At Jantar Mantar, amidst protestors, I saw her — Arundhati — simple yet radiant. I remained silent, merely observing, sensing both beauty and danger. Soon after, I saw her again in Chennai, and through activist circles, I met others in her sphere, including advocate Prashant Bhushan, filmmaker Sanjay Kak, and activist GN Saibaba.
Eventually, I visited her Delhi home. She opened the door herself, and for me, it was a true fan-girl moment. I was directing a documentary then; she shared her insights and we briefly discussed Mahasweta Devi. What left me in awe was her library — walls lined with books, their spines and margins scribbled upon.
Later, life took me to Dubai. While activism faded, Arundhati’s voice remained. Her essays against war, mining, dams, and surveillance were my constant companions. She ventured into storms others avoided.
The Call of a Mother
When Mother Mary Comes to Me was released, I devoured it. Arundhati wrote about her formidable mother, Mary Roy, who fought for women’s inheritance rights, built schools, and raised her children with stern resilience. The memoir reignited my desire to visit Kottayam, to see the school Mary built, and to touch the river flowing through The God of Small Things. So, on September 10 — three years and nine days after Mary’s passing — I journeyed to the city.
A Looming Shadow
Kottayam is a town of literacy and rebellion, whispering one name to me: Mary Roy. In the 1960s, she challenged the Travancore Christian Succession Act, which denied Syrian Christian women equal inheritance. The Supreme Court’s verdict in her favor changed history, but came at the cost of ostracism. She raised Arundhati and her brother, Lalit Kumar Christopher Roy, in a crucible of rigor and rebellion.
She was no saint. “Shelter and storm,” her daughter described her. Reading the memoir, I felt the weight of that contradiction: a mother who gave her children language and wings, only to clip them with her sternness.
Echoes of Estrangement
In her memoir, Arundhati recalls her mother’s cutting words: “Out from my house, out from my car.” These were not just commands but expulsions that echoed throughout her life. Reading this struck a chord with my own past. During my darkest days of divorce, my father chose society’s gaze over my peace. His words mirrored that rejection, casting me out not with blows, but with the absence of support.
Perhaps that’s why I feel such kinship with Arundhati. Like her, I learned that parents are not infallible beacons of unconditional love. They can be both storm and shelter. I never romanticized parental love — it’s not always tender or forgiving. Parents are human, carrying their own wounds, egos, and flaws. Accepting this truth means ceasing to overthink, ceasing to dress pain in the costume of romance. Estrangement leaves scars, but it also forges a different type of strength — the kind writers often carry into their words.
Walking Through Kottayam
I walked slowly, searching for ghosts. The Meenachil River, languid and brown, carried reflections of history. Here, Velutha and Ammu’s forbidden love, detailed in The God of Small Things, unfolded.
At the former Corpus Christi, now Pallikoodam, the school Mary founded, the walls still echoed with her authoritative presence. Former students recalled her as terrifying, brilliant, and unforgettable.
The town itself had changed. Rubber plantations gave way to gated villas. Old Syrian Christian mansions stood aloof, with carved verandahs. It was in these very households that Mary waged her battles.
Revisiting Old Tales
Every corner in Kottayam felt haunted by Arundhati’s Booker-winning novel. The abandoned house of Ayemenem wasn’t just fiction — it was childhood reimagined. The smell of jackfruit, the buzz of cicadas, the red laterite soil — all came alive.
Kerala is lush, but also brutal. Its greenery conceals inequalities Mary fought against and those her daughter exposed in prose the world could not ignore.
Daughter of Defiance
At her book launches, even while speaking of her mother, Arundhati turned the conversation to Gaza and Palestine. That refusal to indulge in self-celebration is not performance. It is inheritance. From Mary, she drew the courage to be unpopular, to be called difficult, to stand alone for justice.
A Return to Roots
Tracing her footsteps also felt like reclaiming my own roots. My grandparents once lived in Kottayam before migrating to Wayanad. Estrangement from my father, migration away from Kerala, and longing for return — all braided into this journey.
It was not literary tourism. It was a reckoning. To know Arundhati’s Kottayam was also to confront what I had lost and what I still carried.
The Small Things That Remain
The journey left indelible images: Mary’s stern portrait at her school, the hum of the Meenachil at dusk, children reciting in crisp English, the silence of an estate road where fiction became flesh.
Arundhati called her novel The God of Small Things. I understand that more deeply now. History is born not in monuments but in quarrels with parents, in riverside silences, in words spoken in anger. Mary’s lawsuit was monumental, Arundhati’s Booker Prize historic. But the truths that shaped them were small, domestic, intimate.
Chasing Arundhati’s roots was not to find monuments, but to follow the whispers. To stand at the intersection of public rebellion and private pain. To realize that the stories that move the world are born in houses where mothers shout and daughters leave — only to return in sentences. To accept that parents are human, not infallible, that love can be storm and shelter, and that some of the strongest legacies come from surviving their very human flaws.
