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Utmost Happiness



Book Review

The world today resembles the macabre settings in the gothic novels: horror, death and a little romance. Unlike in those novels, however, there is no resolution of the problems.  Life today is, as Arundhati Roy’s novel under review says, “a rehearsal for a performance that never eventually materializes.”  It is impossible to make a neat narrative with the traditional elements of beginning, crisis, climax and resolution.  The world is full of debris left by the horror and death.  A writer is condemned to gather the fragments lying shattered all over and put them together to make as meaningful a picture as possible.  This is what Roy’s novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, does. 

The novel tells the story of many people – too many people, in fact – one of whom is a transgender Anjum who “lived in a graveyard like a tree” after a tragedy that befell her during the 2002 Gujarat riots.  Though Anjum is a Muslim she was not killed by the rioters because of the belief that “Hijron ka maarna apshagun hota hai”.  Anjum realises with horror that she, a hijra, is a “Butcher’s luck”. 

It is a butchers’ world.  The butchered are human beings.  The graveyard is the right place for the human beings.  Anjum builds her home in the graveyard and even the municipality bureaucrats (who are compared to the hijras because of their unique dexterity to smell a celebration and arrive there to demand their share) don’t dare to evict her from there.  She makes her home in the graveyard so fine that she calls it Jannat House. 

Later in the novel, in Kashmir, Major Amrik Singh of the Indian Army compares himself to a travel agent who facilitates the Kashmiri jihadis to reach their jannat where their houris are waiting for them.  He calls himself Jannat Express though he is more fond of a sexual metaphor: “Dekho mian, mein Bharat Sarkar ka lund hoon, aur mera kaam hai chodna.” 

Anjum finds her jannat in the graveyard.  Major Amrik Singh finds it in “fucking” the jihadis.  In search of her personal jannat is Tilottama, the other major character, whose name is shortened to Tilo.  Tilo is a dark-skinned Malayali who studied architecture in Delhi, smoked Ganesh beedies kept in a Dunhill cigarette packet, and wore an ill-fitting shirt bought from the second-hand clothes market outside the Jama Masjid.  Her quest for her personal jannat will link Anjum’s Delhi with the jihadis’ Kashmir. 

One of the many jihadis in Kashmir is Musa, Tilo’s classmate in Delhi School of Architecture.  Tilo joins him in Kashmir and there is a bit of gothic romance.  Musa who lost his wife and child in a counter-terror attack knows very well that Tilo is a rare specimen.  He knows that if he had married her he would be wearing the hijab and she would be running around the underground with a gun.  That’s Tilo, the quintessential rebel which is what Arundhati Roy is.

Musa knows well that the Indian government has made Kashmir a land of “duplicity”.  Jannat is far, too far, from Kashmir.  “Duplicity is the only weapon we have,” says Musa.  “You don’t know how radiantly we smile when our hearts are broken.  How ferocious we can turn on those we love while we graciously embrace those whom we despise.”

The utmost happiness lies in Anjum’s graveyard jannat. 

This is a novel about the fragmented world or the fragmented Bharat where cows are better off at least policy-wise.  It is about how India is destroying itself with its hatred of certain people.  The novel makes use of a lot of fragments like diary entries, letters, lessons written by Tilo for The Reader’s Digest Book of English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children and so on to tell the story.  The author’s creative genius is evident in the novel.  But the novel fails to satisfy a serious reader at some level.  (Non-serious readers won’t go beyond a few pages anyway.) There are too many characters and too many fragments which don’t combine into an aesthetically unified whole, a whole which is greater than the sum of the parts. 

The socio-political activist in the author has superseded the literary artist.  Nevertheless the novel is a valuable contribution especially in the current scenario where the waters in all the holy rivers of the country have been riled by much vindictive politics. 

Acknowledgement: I'm indebted to a blogger-friend who gifted me a copy of the novel. 

Comments

  1. I have only read the books'Kindle sample. Going to buy it to read. The sample surely gives a little peep into her creative ability to show the drama as it happens in front of you.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. All the best with the book. Her style is stunning in many places.

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  2. The reader's digest book and the commentary of Tilo's mother on her dead bed, are the two out of my many such favorite pieces in the novel.

    Metaphors were evident in them. But as you said earlier, she did use the raw elements in them, perhaps because the writer in her contrived to make a clear point to the world.

    The writer in her don't see the thin line dividing fiction and reality. The Writer, a frustrated writer, a hopefully hopeless writer, a foolishly genius writer, a writer who could have easily made loads of money by selling her genius but decided to gulp the bitterness of nationalists, pseudo nationalists.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You are right, Roy's bitterness got the better of her. Perhaps, she is too genuine to control her powerful emotions aesthetically. That aestheticism might have reduced the effect of the novel considerably. As it is, it is raw and hits us directly. We deserve that. The actual people who should feel the hit won't, however.

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