Alex’s Reviews > Mother Mary Comes to Me > Status Update

‘If protesting against having a nuclear bomb implanted in my brain is anti- Hindu and anti- national, then I secede. I hereby declare myself an independent, mobile republic. I own no terri-tory. I have no flag.’

I wasn’t Christian enough.
I wasn’t Hindu enough.
I wasn’t communist enough.
I wasn’t enough.

"At every event I could see Pradip in the audience, looking proud, tearing up when I started to read. But it was difficult for him and stressful for me. All the light shone on me. He, grand, wonderful man, my teacher, lover and best friend, was made invisible. He didn’t mind, but I did. The balance in our relationship was upended. My newfound fame crashed into our little love tent & jerked us around like puppets."

That kind of focused, ferocious love, regardless of what it may choose as its object, is a blessed love. The challenge for those of us who are not chosen, and instead watch love pass us by, is to learn from it, marvel at it, and not grow bitter and incapable of love ourselves.

When it came to me, Mrs Roy taught me how to think, then raged against my thoughts. She taught me to be free and raged against my freedom. She taught me to write and resented the author I became.

‘You’re a millstone around my neck. I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born.’

I used to dream of millstones stacked high in a ship’s hold & wonder how they knew how many to take when they started on a journey. How did they calculate how many people would die onboard & need to be buried at sea with millstones around their necks so that their corpses didn’t float around?

Still, he had saved me from something bad. I was shaken and felt the least I could do was to marry him. (Being unaccustomed to kindness, I was often over- grateful.)

‘You are so cute, just like a bonsai plant.’

What is double- love divided by triple- my- size multiplied by free tickets divided by careless words? A cold, furry moth on a frightened heart. That moth was my constant companion.

I learned early that the safest place can be the most dangerous. And that even when it isn’t, I make it so.

I know that moth. 🙂

I learned that day that most of us are a living, breathing soup of memory and imagination that we may not be the best arbiters of which is which. Fiction is that strange, smoky thing that writers don’t entirely own, even if they think they do.

Where does it come from? Our past, our present, our reading, our imagination – yes. But perhaps from premonitions of our future, too.