WRITING WITH FIRE : HOW TO BE AS CANDID AS ARUNDHATI ROY

  

Arundhati Roy’s new book Mother Mary Comes to Me is creating a buzz in the market, with loads of discounts, combo packs, tote bags, and many other things. What makes her writing stand out?

Discover how to write with the honesty, lyricism, and political depth of Arundhati Roy — where truth meets poetry.

Writing as candidly as Arundhati Roy means daring to be unflinchingly honest, lyrical, and political all at once. Her words — whether in The God of Small Things or her piercing essays — move like water and fire together: intimate, rebellious, and utterly alive.

To write like her is not to imitate her voice, but to inhabit her fearlessness. It’s about standing bare before the page — with nothing to hide, nothing to please, and everything to feel.

Here’s what it means — and how you can consciously bring that Roy-like candour into your own writing.

 

 1. Write with Emotional Nakedness

Arundhati Roy never hides behind politeness or convention. Whether she’s writing about love, caste, or resistance, she lays feelings bare — raw, flawed, and human.

Try this: When you describe an experience, don’t smooth its edges. Let discomfort, contradictions, and tenderness coexist in the same line. The truth is rarely tidy, and that’s what makes it powerful.

 

 2. Let Politics Breathe Through Your Prose

Even her fiction hums with quiet politics — not through slogans, but through the lives of her characters. Every gesture, every silence, carries meaning.

Try this: Instead of stating your stance, show it through the texture of daily life — who eats first, who stays silent, who is seen and who is unseen. The politics of a story often live between its lines.

 

 3. Experiment with Rhythm and Language

Roy bends English to the rhythm of Indian speech, to the music of memory. Her sentences often sound like whispered poetry, each word chosen for its pulse as much as its sense.

Try this: Play with sentence length, sound, and repetition. Let your language breathe and stutter and sing. Use English as if it were your own tongue — because it is.

 

 4. Be Brave Enough to Be Personal

Her essays and speeches often begin from her own body — where she stands, what she sees, what she refuses. She writes from lived experience, not from safe distance.

Try this: Begin with I unapologetically, but let it grow into we. Personal truth, when told with courage, often becomes collective memory.

 

 5. Hold Beauty and Rage Together

Roy never separates the political from the poetic. She can talk about dam displacement, violence, or injustice — and still make it achingly beautiful. Her words remind us that beauty, too, is a form of resistance.

Try this: Don’t choose between lyricism and truth. Let your fury be melodic, your hope be rough-edged. The most powerful writing doesn’t whisper comfort — it sings courage.

 

To write like Arundhati Roy is to write as though the world depends on your honesty — because in some small way, it does. It’s to believe that language can still be sacred, that words can still hold fire.