Some books arrive at the right moment; others wait patiently until life prepares us to read them. I began working on this piece in early April, but a tragedy that struck our family later that month forced me to leave it unfinished. Honestly, I was gone blank. Every time I opened my laptop with the intention of completing the draft, I found myself unable to write. I simply did not have the courage. The person around whom our lives revolved is no longer with us, and the silence left behind made every word feel unbearably heavy. Today, however, I gathered some strength to return to my desk and continue where I had left off. With a heart still carrying grief, I write about Mother Mary Comes to me- a bittersweet mother­-daughter tale.

It was a rainy afternoon back in 2018 when one friend handed me the copy of ‘The God of Small Things’ by Arundhati Roy, when after a brief hiatus we met over a delicious cup of coffee to have our usual discourse on art and literature going. When I first cracked open ‘The God of Small Things’ I felt like stepping into Keralam’s sultry monsoon-humid, tangled and alive with secrets. It wasn’t just a novel it was a dream where the air hummed with the scent of old river water and forbidden love. The novel pulled me under its spell and opened a new horizon where I embraced the words of Roy like a surgeon’s scalpel. It remains one of the most heart wrenching and memorable books I have ever read. It left me gasping for breath. It opened a new world for me and soon after I finished reading all of her works.

Recently it was a privilege to get to read her newly published memoir, ‘Mother Mary Comes to Me’- an........

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