Arundhati Roy: "How could I continue loving my mother without her destroying me?"

BarcelonaAt 35, and thanks to the immediate success of the novel The God of Small Things (1996; in Catalan, by Amsterdam), the writer and activist Arundhati Roy (Shillong, 1961) achieved "financial independence". Since then, her trajectory has continued with a single motto, which she lets out with a mischievous smile: "I do whatever I want".

This positioning has meant that Roy did not write another novel for two decades—she broke the silence with The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (2017; in Catalan, by Anagrama)—and that, in her latest book, My Seditious Heart (2025; in Catalan, by Ara Llibres, translated by Imma Falcó), she wanted to recover the complex relationship with her mother. In February, Roy made headlines when she left the Berlinale shortly after Wim Wenders, president of the festival jury, refused to take a stand on the situation in Gaza. The writer refused to present the restored version of In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones (Pradip Krishen, 1989), for which she wrote a screenplay inspired by the years she spent in New Delhi studying architecture. After cancelling her visit to Barcelona last year, Roy has returned to the city to participate in three events at the CCCB: a conversation with writers Pankaj Mishra and Laila Lalami, a meeting with students, and the screening of the first film she collaborated on.

We managed to meet despite the difficulties, in a week marked by a general strike.

— I view large popular mobilizations with a certain skepticism. Not all of them have approaches that interest me, nor are they carried out from a position of radicalism. In 2021, in India, my country, there was a major anti-corruption mobilization. All my friends and all the activists went, but I stayed at home because I was convinced it would pave the way for fascists, just as it ended up happening. A few years ago, part of the Arab Spring was instigated by the very regimes of some countries that needed the protests to promote changes that, in some cases, have ended up being worse. Before committing to a cause, you must deeply analyze who it might benefit.

These days you have spoken about some political, cultural and moral challenges of our present accompanied by Pankaj Mishra and Laila Lalami. Which topics worry you the most?

— My intervention focused on Gaza, artificial intelligence and the crisis of capitalism. The meeting with the students was more personal: they were interested in knowing things about my life, about my vision of writing and also about my latest book, My refuge and my storm.

In this memoir, focused on the lights and shadows of the relationship with her mother—we will get to that later—, she recalls the years she spent in New Delhi studying architecture and which are the basis of the film In which Annie gives it those ones, which could only be seen on Indian television in the late 80s and is now circulating again.

— It was released in theaters in India last year, and at first I was worried, because it is a film that is many years old, but when I watched it again I found it interesting to find the seed of the ideas that have grown so much both in my later fiction and in my essays. Seeing my version from just over 20 years ago on the screen when I am now almost 65 was quite an experience.

Describe your university years in New Delhi as an experience of “radical freedom”. Why?

— I had left home for good and had no family member to supervise me. I did very diverse jobs to be able to pay for my tuition. At that time, in the late 70s, it was possible to support yourself and pay for your studies on your own; privatization had not yet reached the university, and courses were not as expensive as they are now. Nowadays, I wouldn't have managed, neither in India nor anywhere else. But back then, I studied and worked without anyone controlling me. The people I met allowed me to discover a philosophy of life that the film conveys: it is okay to make mistakes, you don't need to be ambitious; if you want, you can even go dressed in clothes you make yourself.

She studied architecture inspired by the architect who had built the school that her mother managed in Kerala.

— And what I ended up learning at university was exactly the opposite of what I had been taught at school. I had a constant battle within myself about the education I had received up to then. The lessons in Delhi were not limited only to what I was taught in the classroom, but had to do with everything that remained outside of it. I came from a very small and traditional place, where everyone knew each other. Suddenly, in the big city, no one expected anything from me, and that liberated me, because it taught me that I also didn't have to expect anything, neither from others nor from myself. I was in no hurry at all to achieve success. It was not worth competing with anyone.

These are lessons that clash with some of the core values of neoliberal capitalism. Did you feel like an outsider when you were young?

— The film is a tribute to friendship. I bonded with the people I met to fight against the establishment, which wanted us to build ugly buildings in increasingly unequal cities. If I compare it to the present, India, which already came from being a very traditional caste society, has moved in that direction. From every point of view, I am an outsider. The thing is that I have always lived in India, and therefore it is a country that I know very well: it is the place from which I write and from which I have fought. I come from the margins, but one fine day I became a very well-known writer. Even so, I will never feel fully integrated into a society in which only between 2 and 3% of the population marries someone of a different caste or religion from their own.

Could she have written My refuge and my storm if his mother were still alive?

— Not at all. My mother had asthma and I couldn't say anything to put her on the ropes, because she would have had an asthma attack that would have landed her in the hospital, and it would have been my fault, just as she made sure to remind me. We never talked, for example, about why I left home.

Was she surprised to experience such intense grief for someone who had made her suffer so much?

— Yes. From the age of five I knew that my mother had asthma and that she could die at any moment. A chronic illness places you in a situation of not knowing what might happen: the future is not promised. That is why in my novels I dedicated myself to rehearsing what the day would be like when my mother was no longer there. When she actually died, I was surprised to react in that way. My brother said to me: how can you be so sad, considering that she treated you so badly? Now I know that this behavior is quite common in many people who have had traumatic relationships with their parents. When, suddenly, you realize that they are no longer there, your life loses its meaning, because until then everything is structured around how to tolerate that relationship.

Did the fact that her mother watched her so closely and was so critical of what she did add an element of tension when it came to writing and publishing?

— My mother supported my political ideas. Curiously, she was someone who understood me on that point. My problem with her was more personal.

How was it, that personal problem?

— I am unable to speak about her in a simple way. My mother was critical of me, but she was also proud of what I did. These two feelings were mixed, and that caused me great insecurity. I never knew what to expect from her. When I left home, I distanced myself from her as soon as I could. I needed to regain control of our relationship. How could I continue to love my mother without her destroying me? If I had cut off all contact with her, this question would not have haunted me for so long. I wanted to keep communicating with her, because she was a formidable woman, and I loved her sincerely, but at the same time, I did not want her to finish me off.

Do you think that in the book you try to put yourself in her place to try to justify her?

— Constantly. You have to keep in mind that your mother is more than a mother. She has also had her battles and has had nightmares. The process that allowed me to become an adult woman—and that helped me write the books—was learning to look at the world from all perspectives. Perhaps in the book I was not looking to justify the mother, but to explain or understand her.

After writing the scripts for In which Annie gives it those ones and Electric moon (1992), she began working on the novel that changed her life, The God of Small Things.

— If I hadn't studied architecture, I probably would never have written it. It gave me the ability to understand the structure of the text in a different way. I conceived that novel as a building, and I had to construct it in the best possible way, which does not mean starting with the front door. When, years later, I wrote The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, I thought it was like a city, and that if I wanted to succeed, I needed to learn how to inhabit it, not just know which streets to take to cross it. Perhaps it made things a little difficult for the reader, but that was what I wanted to do.

Will there be a third novel?

— I don't know.

But doesn't she rule it out?

— I have no plan and I don't follow any map. Since my first novel gave me financial independence, since then I do whatever I want.

The God of Small Things won the Booker Prize and was translated into more than 40 languages. In almost 30 years, about 10 million copies have been sold. It was a novel that was defined as “postcolonial literature.” Do you feel comfortable with this label?

— The question we should ask ourselves, in the first place, is whether the colonial world has ended or if it continues among us. I think that colonization is still an open process in many parts of the world, from Palestine to India. When my country achieved independence, many parts that until then were independent realms were annexed militarily. Colonialism does not only come from Western countries and is directed at the so-called Third World countries. We ourselves have our own colonialisms: cultural, religious, territorial... That is why I believe that the label of postcolonial literature is not appropriate, and it makes me a bit uneasy.

This expression has been used in literary studies for the last four decades, especially since the essay Orientalism, by Edward Said (1978).

— Words like postcolonialism and multiculturalism have helped to grease the path for capitalism to enter many countries. Do you know what I mean?

Capitalism has been precisely one of the systems that you have analyzed in articles and essays such as Capitalism: A ghost story [Capitalism: A ghost story] (2016). Do you believe there is a real alternative to capitalism?

— You don't have to be a genius to understand that alternatives to capitalism exist. The problem is how we implement them. Right now we live in societies with a monopoly-rooted capitalism, with, on one hand, the fascism of the technological world and, on the other, the existence of feudal-style barons, as happens in India, where a few large corporations control everything: the media, airports, the textile and petrochemical industry, telecommunications... No one with any common sense would defend this system. The problem is how to defeat it. This system is based on an economic monopoly that, at the same time, decides how the government should act. You only have to see what Elon Musk did during the first months of Trump's second term. All the cuts he applied... He should be able to be taken to court.

Tell me a little more about the situation in your country.

— In India, private companies can provide financial support to political parties. Right now, the Indian People's Party [with a conservative and nationalist profile] is, by far, the party with the most resources in the world. When elections are called, if you compare this party with the others, it would be like a race between a Ferrari and a bicycle. It is impossible to achieve a fair electoral result. In India, you find that money is concentrated in very few hands, and these hands feed the political parties that interest them, to ensure they implement the policies that suit them: in this way, they will be able to enrich themselves even more. It is a system that is beyond capitalism. I would say that our capitalism is a stage 4 cancer, meaning it has already metastasized. Either we reach a situation of total collapse or we start changing things urgently to stop some dynamics.

Another topic that worries her is the proliferation of artificial intelligence (AI) and some of its consequences.

— AI companies are unviable from an economic and environmental point of view. Since their owners are aware of this, what they have started doing in the United States is merging with armament and security companies, as is the case with Palantir. In this way, if the defense of a country like the United States depends on AI, it no longer needs to be viable; it becomes necessary to maintain its security. Everything hidden behind this idea is to preserve internal and external hegemony. On one hand, they say that AI could destroy the world, but on the other, they are building underground complexes so that a small part of the population can survive there, an elite that already acts as if it had separated itself from the rest of humans.