If you can imagine a story that spans decades, encompassing transgender rights issues, political violence, communal strife, Naxalism, Kashmir, 9/11 and the 2002 Gujarat riots, while still managing to explore the lives of its lead characters, you’ll begin to understand what Arundhati Roy’s new book, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is about. Phew. That long, rambling sentence is also evocative of the book.
Disclaimer: I approached Roy’s second book in 20 years, without ever having read the first – the Booker prize-winning The God of Small Things. I came to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness with no preconceptions of what I was getting myself into – except of course, the reviews of her first book (from my friends and family) and the Booker prize itself.
For me, the book was a revelation.
First, the Good News
The book revolves around a little boy, Aftab, who comes into her own as Anjum. Roy takes us through Anjum’s life through the stories of Tilo and the three men – whose lives are intertwined with Anjum’s – and the stories of Delhi and Kashmir. In Roy’s book, places aren’t simply locations – they are characters with distinct personalities.
Graveyards are a central theme of the book. Anjum makes a graveyard her home. A martyr’s graveyard in Kashmir fills up fast, highlighting the violence that envelops the Valley. Aftab takes his first step toward becoming Anjum in the balcony of a house that overlooks a grave, Dilli 6’s Chitli Qabar.
While Anjum is easily the earthiest character in the book, Tilo is the most interesting. Her story reads like a chapter from Roy’s own life – Malayali roots, Syrian-Christian mother, a student of the ‘Architecture School’ in Delhi (most likely a fictionalised version of the School of Architecture and Planning which Roy herself attended).
Tilo’s story is the one that connects Anjum’s internal struggles in Delhi, to the political struggles in Kashmir, and eventually to the violent Maoist struggle in Telangana.
The characters are richly portrayed, with their idiosyncrasies and their very real desires and dislikes. Sometimes, they’re self-aware. At other times, they’re oblivious. Reading about these characters made me feel like I just spent an afternoon with each one of them.
But All’s Not Well in ‘The Ministry’
But while the story itself is compelling, parts of the book dim the appeal of the narrative.
Roy weaves a story that she wrote over many years; but in parts, it feels like she sat down with a checklist of events to include in her timeline. While it is evident that the Narendra Modi-led government had not been elected when she began writing her novel, it feels like her digs at the political class were all added recently.
It is almost as if she went back to the beginning with that checklist and tried to squeeze in everything from 9/11 and the Gujarat riots to Anna Hazare’s anti-corruption protest and the rise of the Aam Aadmi Party.
The little jolts of realisation that struck me as I recognised her references to key characters from the current political scenario, or when she linked an incident in the book to a real-life occurrence, kept things interesting. That said, these parts also mark a departure from the otherwise leisurely pace of the novel.
Roy takes her time to tell the stories. This isn’t a bad thing. Sometimes, it lends itself to the image of a slow, breezy day spent in the shade of a tree in a park in central Delhi. At other times, however, it may come across as rambling. While non-linearity can be a great literary tool, in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness it runs the risk of making the reader lose interest.
But despite everything, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a great read that leads one to believe there is still hope for the dystopia we live in.
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