The cover that made a little too much noise

Published on : 25 Sep 2025, 3:00 pm 4 min read

When I first read that the Kerala High Court had entertained a PIL against Arundhati Roy’s latest book cover, I laughed out loud. Not because it was funny, but because the absurdity left me no other option. Here was a constitutional court - with dockets overflowing with bail pleas, land disputes, habeas petitions and constitutional challenges - being asked to decide whether the jacket of a novel, because it shows the author smoking a cigarette, needs a statutory health warning. I laughed, and then I raged.

The petitioner clarified, with a lawyer’s care, that his challenge was not to the “literary substance” of Mother Mary Comes to Me. No, the problem lay outside the text- the cover photo, Roy with a cigarette. According to him, t