THE MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS a million dystopias now.

Dr. Supantha Bhattacharyya

Exactly twenty years after she had stunned the literary world with her debut novel, Arundhati Roy has come back
with her only second work of fiction. A lot of water has flowed down the polluted Yamuna and the bloodied
Jhelum since then (why these two rivers? Because contemporary New Delhi and Kashmir are the two locations
where Ms Roy has situated the maximum action of her numbing novel). The interim has seen Indias first Booker-
winner and poster-girl of Indian Writing in English metamorphose into one of Indias most recognized and
respected voices against sacred cow issues: the national nuclear program, the long-term danger of large drams, the
myopic approach to Naxalism, the continuous bungling of our Kashmir policy. She has acquired admirers and
detractors in equal numbers, arousing intense and opposite passions in both camps.
In The Ministry , Ms Roy weaves multiple narrative strands both major and minor to create a magic carpet
showing a picture that is confusing, immense and yet compelling in its terrifying beauty. A picture which lays bare
every single one of its authors heartaches about the countless cruelties and discriminations which are the fait
accompli of most of our small things. A highly disquieting picture of what we are, what this country of ours is
today. While a central tragedy involving the death of the child Sophie Mol (leading to a later death of the God
Velutha), had been at the centre of The God of Small Things, The Ministry spotlights the complex algebra of
infinite injustices with which those living below the sightlines of power have to struggle almost everyday.
The two halves of the narrative pivot around two protagonists: apparently dissimilar, and yet identical in their
excluded status, their otherness. The first is Anjum, born Aftab, a transperson disillusioned both by the vicious
dunia and the equally aggravating khwabgah (a house of hijras) offering an illusion of shelter. Forced to use the
gayatri mantra for survival during the Gujrat riots, Anjum, in her own quiet act of rebellion, sets up her own
utopia, jannat, in the heart of a graveyard. The second half introduces us to the mysterious misfit, S.
Tilottama/Tilo (who studied architecture in Delhi, has tangled hair and a problematic childhood complete with an
activist-educator mother, who on earth could that be?). This segment, narrated in part by one of her devotees, the
diplomat Biplab aka Garson Hobart (the bureaucrat Naga and the firebrand revolutionary Musa being the other
two), partly in the form of letters, official documents, the Kashmiri-English Alphabet, the Readers Digest Book of
English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children, and partly from the pov of Tilo herself, serves
testimony to Ms Roys evolution as a storyteller in complete control over her material and her craft.
The atrocities commited in Kashmir over the last so many years are described with a vivid detailing that can, at
times, come across as rather grisly and overstated, especially for those weaned on the simplistic black v white
stories foisted as facts by the mainstream media. But be warned, this is certinly not a book for the faint-hearted.
Ms Roy takes no sides, she damns both the army and the cross-border terrorists with equal fervor. Her sympathies
are entirely with the hapless, anonymous Kashmiri caught in the crossfire for whom death and disappearance are
family members. In between Anjums point and Tilos counterpoint, there is gods plenty: the quaintly named
Saddam Hussain, the blind imam Ziauddin, the musician Ustad Hameed, the beauteous Zainab, the crazed Dr.
Azad Bharatiya, the evil Amrik Singh, his wife Loveleen, each with their own mini-histories, their back stories.
Many present day public celebrities also make guest appearances and the game of guessing their true identies is
yet another pleasure this kalaidoscopic work offers.
White hot outrage is leavened into virtually every line of the novel at the systemic brutality which aims to
eliminate all dissent, silence all criticism and to perpetuate the myth of good days forever. All this could have
reduced the plot into a dismal and cynical polemics, but two things save it. The two narrative strands finally
converge in the coming of yet another small thing: Miss Udaya Zebeen the Second, a bye-product of state
sponsored terrorism. Her kidnapping and subsequent resurrection in the Jannat Guest House kindle hope among
this rag-tag community, representative of humanity itself, just as the final word tomorrow had done in GOST.
The second element which prevents the novel from becoming yet another unwieldy rumble-against-big-brother is
Ms Roys breathtaking prose. The lyricism, the enchantment she interlaces into the most horrifying of incidents,
helps eliminate the grossness from them without depriving them of their essential impact. To provide an extract
without contextualizing it would be a disservice to the work and its objective.
Arundhati Roy is in the tradition of writers like Dickens, Orwell, Solzhenitsyn, Mahashweta Devi et al who know
how to extend the scope of the novel far beyond merely mindless entertainment. It can be safely predicted that this
book would become required reading in any study of post-globalization India. In fact, The Ministry of Utmost
Happiness should definitely be tied to the jeep of true democracy and paraded before all who pelt stones at it!

[The Minsitry of Utmost Happiness: Arundhati Roy. Penguin Random House India. Pages 445. Price: Rs. 599]