MUNCHIES

I thought this dispatch was going to be largely about reading Arundhati Roy's memoir Mother Mary Comes To Me, but then two reviews made that unnecessary. I'll tell you my feelings about it instead.

I read it quickly over a few days, long after the hype had died down. I borrowed a copy from a friend, who had found it too depressing, and was letting it sit on ice. I had a rather troubled childhood so I didn't find it depressing so much as incredibly true to the ways in which parents can hurt their children and each other. I was also reading journalist Susan Orlean's memoir Joyride and she said of her parents: 'They hurt each others feelings till the day they died'.

Oof. Sometimes it do be like that. Being a kid is tough, being a parent is tougher(?). Between the two states of being, a lot of feelings can get hurt. Many desi kids from my generation, and Roy's generation grew up in messy homes with difficult families. Most of those kids did not grow up to be writers, let alone one as successful as Roy. This is one of the few Indian memoirs I can think of that capture the ordinariness and fact of that happening. It's the only Indian memoir I can think of that dips into the rhythm of days and family-life in the manner of someone like Deborah Levy or Rachel Cusk. Across the border you might want to try Sara Suleri's book Meatless Days.

If you think Roy is a writer worth reading, you will probably enjoy this book. It's flashes of her life as if seen through a moving car window. Indistinct impressions, a few images that follow you. We hear about what's happened of course -- her unwedding-wedding and her friendships, writing The Novel, and tensions that arise from its massive success in her personal life But we see none of this up close. It's all summary. It offers close ups of her mother in lieu of exposing close-ups of herself -- both the indignities and tendernesses of being a person, except perhaps in childhood. Child Arundhati or Suzanna is a longago creature so those things can be said.

The confessions and elisions of the book made me think about how revelatory I can or should be in my own memoir or essay writing. I have (as other writers have) lost a few relationships over writing (among other things), and it's a perennial question for a writer: what can you write about when it involves other people? What is ethical when you are the one with the louder voice, the readership, the person whose view of events is recorded for posterity. I still don't have a very good answer to this. Janet Malcolm famously described journalists as a kind of confidence-man, betraying their subjects in the end. This also reminds me of a reported feature I did on Auroville, where the photographer and I ran into a philosophical disagreement. He thought we should have fidelity to Auroville and its people. I said that my fidelity was to telling the truth and to the reader. That is to say, the story.

When I write fiction I scavenge and remix bits of dialogue, personality traits, tics from myself, my friends, my partners, my family, people I have known in the past and people I encounter in my daily life. These real tidbits are what make the text come alive so often -- because you're drawing on personalities, decisions, perspectives and habits of people other than yourself. It makes the writing good. But it might be indefensible what we do as writers. I guess our loved ones have to make some kind of peace with it, and what we include or don't has to involve an ongoing negotiation with people we want to keep in our lives. You may be ethically clear on using a story that involves someone else in your writing, but you might also be an asshole. That's what.

This is Saadullah's review of the memoir.

dunyadigital.co

Navigating Arundhati Roy’s Retractions

Arundhati Roy’s latest offering, Mother Mary Comes To Me, is an unflinching look at a difficult childhood and a fraught mother-daughter relationship, and its effects on a life lived in service of truth and justice. But, the author wonders if this memoir is a “safe” version of a trailblazing, resistant life.

This is Supriya's.

www.himalmag.com

The memoir that changes how we read Arundhati Roy

ALMOST EVERY EDITOR of an English-language publication in India today grew up on British and American rock music from the 1960s and 70s. As a former member of t

What have I been up to? I started November in Dharamshala at the Film Festival. I have a long dispatch on the state of film and the blurring of lines between fiction and non fiction as new media embraces the hybrid format. But I've been rather blue in the last few months -- it's cold, I discovered I have various deficiencies (physical in this case, not moral) and an aggressive bacteria in my stomach. (I told Yoshi about the H. pylori and she said sounds cunty). It's cold and polluted and most recently there's the terrible news of director Rob Reiner's death. He directed one of my (and the world's) favourite movies, When Harry Met Sally. As a teenager, I had the big declarative new years eve speech Harry makes to Sally memorized long before I ever saw the movie. "When you realize you want to spend the rest of your life with somebody, you want the rest of your life to start as soon as possible." This still echoes in my idea of longterm love. Here's to you Rob, thank you for the laughs, the stories and the hope.

SO I thought we could all do with some curling up and cheering and cosying. I am going to push the intellectual films dispatch to the next newsletter and send us off this end of year, with munchies. You know -- that great satisfied feeling when you're stoned but not too much. Everything is nicer and easier. Good food is more foody, films are richer, tenser, funnier. You want to keep that good feeling going so you bring out something to snack on -- preferably a solid with a semisolid (look out for my treatise on dips) -- and huddle up snug and smug. I'm going to give you some comfort food with one line letters of rec. They're highly specific to my taste and you have to Just Trust Me Bro.

Presenting MUNCHIES 🥡🍵🥧🫕🍕🧦🔥🧣🧥❄️📺🛌🌙🎁

READING

• The Guest by Emma Cline: the book I recommend most frequently to get over a reading-slump because the pleasurable anxiety won't let you put it down.

• Heartburn by Nora Ephron: if you haven't had the good fortune to encounter it yet, tarry no longer to meet the funniest divorce/break up book for literary women who love to eat.

• The Ten Year Affair by Erin Somers: new it book of the season, full of actually sexy sex scenes and the specific alternate reality fantasies that plague knowledge economy job-doers in their late thirties, who like to banter.

Want to read more?

Subscribe to riddhidastidar.com to keep reading this exclusive post.

Subscribe Now