The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

A life deeply shaped by her relationship with her mother, the Indian educator and women's right activist Mary Roy.

In this episode, joined by Belgian journalist and writer Catherine Welstieke, Arundhati Rohr recalls her last visit to her mother's home and reflects on how facing cruelty as a child shaped her voice as a writer, the deeply empathetic novelist she became.

So I arrived after three days and two nights on the train to Kottem, this small town railway station.

And she had sent a lady who worked for her called Amal to pick me up.

So I don't know.

I just didn't take it as, I suppose, you know, as somebody who can also understand the other person's point of view.

And maybe that's what made me a novelist, because you also understand, you know, the whole story and not just your story.

And later on in the book, towards the end, there's a part where, because of the political writing that I do, a man who was a member of the Hindu Nationalist Party and also a movie star, based upon some fake news that he had read, according to him, I had said something about the Indian army in Kashmir, which was fake.