The Ministry of Utmost Happiness in On Paths Unknown

May 30, 2017 Seemita rated it liked it

Shelves: politics, war, fiction, culture, toi, india, drama, religion, netgalley

[Originally appeared here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li...]

How does a lament sound? Like a distorted sonorous wave? Hitting the crest with a shrill cry and falling to quietude with mangled whimpers? Or like a prolonged stream of soiled garble, comprehensible only to its beholder?

I don't know on which note of the spectrum this book might fit in, but I do know that this book is a lament - lament on the daily struggles for (dignified) survival borne by the scarred populace of war-torn Kash [Originally appeared here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/li...]

How does a lament sound? Like a distorted sonorous wave? Hitting the crest with a shrill cry and falling to quietude with mangled whimpers? Or like a prolonged stream of soiled garble, comprehensible only to its beholder?

I don't know on which note of the spectrum this book might fit in, but I do know that this book is a lament - lament on the daily struggles for (dignified) survival borne by the scarred populace of war-torn Kashmir, which unfortunately I can't talk of in past tense, and the marginalized of the society (taking the transgender as the pivotal link).

The book, from where I see, is about two characters - A transgender, Anjum and a riot victim, Tilottama. Anjum, born Aftab in Old Delhi but discarded by her family for socially- unacceptable biological makeup, is adopted by a whore-house. She lives a good part of her life here before shifting her residence to a graveyard, courtesy a grave altercation related to adoption and rearing of a girl child. Tilottama, on the other hand, begins as a firebrand member of the youth brigade in a posh South Delhi locality but eventually drifts, amid three of her friends and her own dichotomies, to Kashmir and the city's deep, unknown, frequently fatal, alleys. How life, with her own surprises and shocks, brings the two together rounds up the story.

This book, only second from Roy's stable in the last twenty years, retains the metaphorical music that she used to fair rapture in her first book. The descriptions, spring to life with her subtle touch, and she, almost, looks to have done that effortlessly.

But regardless of what admonition and punishment awaited him, Aftab would return to his post stubbornly, day after day. It was the only place in his world where he felt the air made way for him. When he arrived, it seemed to shift, to slide over, like a school friend making room for him on a classroom bench.

Roy's characteristic insight into her world's props and their subtle breaths is amply visible. She weaves intricate patterns, just like the stunning Kashmiri carpets she refers to couple of times, around her characters and one gets to see a motley crew doing their part well. The three friends, all of them men, who walk in and out of Tilo's life, represent the various facets of the societal fabric Roy wishes to highlight - Biplab is a senior officer in Intelligence Bureau, Naga is an incendiary journalist and Musa, an activist or terrorist (depending on the way you would like to see).

She sensed that in some strange tangential way, he needed her shade as much as she needed his. And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.

But she gets carried away. She touches upon issues of untouchability and gender divide, fanaticism and terrorism, but they emerge only as matter-of-factly. There are long stretches of pages which are dedicated to the haunting memories of Tilottama, which, at first grab our hearts and hold them in their throes, but soon, they become a necessary vent which loses both on emotional as well as novelty quotient. Anjum, in particular, is crafted with a lot of fragility and I would have loved to read a little more about her but Roy had another strong motive to accommodate. Those who are familiar with her political stances, which she has diligently championed across the various articles, non-fiction works and speeches she has put forward, would detect that a lot in this book comes shrouded in her disdain towards the state machinery and its administrators. Place as she might her contempt amid very many chapters, it comes straight out, and with a vengeance. The military establishments, too, come under attack and she holds very few guns back in lambasting their integrity. While she visibly tones down in the second half through the long monologues emanating from Biplab's hours of prophecy, she doesn't quite miss the diatribe train to dispatch her venom. Perhaps, that's why, even for someone fairly apolitical as I, the work didn't pass by without glaring its political face at close proximity to me.

Those viewing the work from a political prism will mostly react in an emphatic manner - whether in support or opposition will depend on their political inclinations. But those looking from an emotional prism will also not be disappointed - she amalgamates the calm and the turbulent of her world with experienced rendition.

Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. In battle , Musa told Tilo, enemies can't break your spirit, only friends can.

The book teeters over its bumpy rides with seething heart and clamped teeth, and comes to a standstill in the culminating chapters where a certain ray of hope and perpetuity leaps into the air. The quietness of the shikara stands in stark contrast to the rippling graveyard that is celebrating a wedding, and one doesn't still know where the lament erupted from and where it died down. Or if it is still wailing.

[Note: Thanks to Netgalley, Arundhati Roy and Penguin Books (UK) for providing me an ARC.]

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Also on my blog. ...more

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Nov 05, 2017 Cecily marked it as did-not-finish

Shelves: sexuality-gender-lgbtqi, indian-pakistani-heritage

The Millstone of Unfair Expectations

I am, by nature, a punctual person. I was very late to one novelistic Roy party and relatively early to the next. But in this case, it was the one I was late for that I enjoyed.

In 2014, I finally read The God of Small Things, Roy’s award-winning and (then) only novel, published nearly 20 years earlier. I loved it: the lyrical mysticism, the layers of meaning and metaphor, the tangled plot, the complex characters, and the rich but unfamiliar setting. See my re ...more

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Nov 19, 2017 Paul rated it it was amazing

Shelves: women-of-colour-2017

The much anticipated follow up to The God of Small Things. I know opinions have been divided about this, but for me it did not disappoint. It is panoramic in scope with a vast range of characters. It ranges across the Indian subcontinent with a special focus on the conflict in Kashmir. The novel’s real focus is the marginalised, the victims of corruption, oppression and prejudice. The novel’s politics is laced with irony and humour. There is also great human warmth amidst the horror.
As always Ro The much anticipated follow up to The God of Small Things. I know opinions have been divided about this, but for me it did not disappoint. It is panoramic in scope with a vast range of characters. It ranges across the Indian subcontinent with a special focus on the conflict in Kashmir. The novel’s real focus is the marginalised, the victims of corruption, oppression and prejudice. The novel’s politics is laced with irony and humour. There is also great human warmth amidst the horror.
As always Roy’s writing is lyrical and adds lustre to the everyday. This is how the novel begins;
“At magic hour, when the sun is gone but the light has not, armies of flying foxes unhinge themselves from the Banyan trees in the old graveyard and drift across the city like smoke. When the bats leave, the crows come home. Not all the din of their homecoming fills the silence left by the sparrows that have gone missing, and the old white-backed vultures, custodians of the dead for more than a hundred million years, that have been wiped out. The vultures died of diclofenac poisoning. Diclofenac, cow aspirin, given to cattle as a muscle relaxant, to ease pain and increase the production of milk, works—worked—like nerve gas on white-backed vultures. Each chemically relaxed milk-producing cow or buffalo that died became poisoned vulture bait. As cattle turned into better dairy machines, as the city ate more ice cream, butterscotch-crunch, nutty-buddy and chocolate-chip, as it drank more mango milkshake, vultures’ necks began to droop as though they were tired and simply couldn’t stay awake. Silver beards of saliva dripped from their beaks, and one by one they tumbled off their branches, dead.”
The plot is complex and the characterization excellent and for me the standout characters were Anjum and Tilo. The plot is labyrinthine and I’m not going to try to explain it. Roy does try to explain her country:
“Normality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence. It is our constant anxiety about that violence, our memory of its past labors and our dread of its future manifestations, that lays down the rules for how a people as complex and as diverse as we continue to coexist — continue to live together, tolerate each other and, from time to time, murder one another.”
It is clear she feels passionately about the plight of those she writes about and her challenges to Hindu nationalism have made her unpopular in some quarters. Roy does see the inherent tension in her position as well as one of the characters writes.
“I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.”
As Anita Fellicelli points out in her review;
“The true measure of a democracy is in how it treats its most marginalized and vulnerable people.”
Roy’s criticisms are pertinent, but in the west it feels to me like we are also guilty of the same, making her warnings just as relevant. This is one of my favourites this year.

...more

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Nov 28, 2018 Nandakishore Mridula rated it it was ok

'Once you have fallen of the edge like all of us have, including our Biroo,' Anjum said, 'you will never stop falling. And as you fall, you will hold on to other falling people. The sooner you understand that the better. This place where we live, where we have made our home, is the place of falling people. Here there is no haqeeqat. Arre, even we aren't real. We don't really exist.'

These words by Anjum, the hijra (transgender in modern terminology), encapsulate what Arundhati Roy has tried to do ...more

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Sep 29, 2017 Meem Arafat Manab rated it liked it

Shelves: fiction

অরুন্ধতী রায়ের লেখা আমার যুতে কোনোদিন না আসলেও - আসে না বলেই হয়ত, এই বই একটা গিল্টি প্লেজার হয়ে বসে থাকবে এক কোণায়।

এখন ভাই, ঠগ বাছতে গেলে ত এই বই রীতিমত উঁইয়ে কাটা হয়ে যাবে। আমার শ্রীমতি রায়রে নিয়ে প্রথম যেই সমস্যা, উনার ফুলেল ভাষা, যেইখানে ভাষা গল্পের বা বক্তব্যের সাথে কোনো সামঞ্জস্য না রেখে নিজের মত নকশা বুনতে থাকে। এই সমস্যা কি এই বইয়ে নাই? আছে, আলবত আছে, একটা বাসার দরজার কথা বলতে গিয়ে তাই সেটারে বেহেশতের দরজা বলতে হয়। আরো ভালো লাগে না ওনার গল্পে আলিফ লায়লা কায়দায় ঘটনার গোজামিল, অরুন্ধতী রায়ের লেখা আমার যুতে কোনোদিন না আসলেও - আসে না বলেই হয়ত, এই বই একটা গিল্টি প্লেজার হয়ে বসে থাকবে এক কোণায়।

এখন ভাই, ঠগ বাছতে গেলে ত এই বই রীতিমত উঁইয়ে কাটা হয়ে যাবে। আমার শ্রীমতি রায়রে নিয়ে প্রথম যেই সমস্যা, উনার ফুলেল ভাষা, যেইখানে ভাষা গল্পের বা বক্তব্যের সাথে কোনো সামঞ্জস্য না রেখে নিজের মত নকশা বুনতে থাকে। এই সমস্যা কি এই বইয়ে নাই? আছে, আলবত আছে, একটা বাসার দরজার কথা বলতে গিয়ে তাই সেটারে বেহেশতের দরজা বলতে হয়। আরো ভালো লাগে না ওনার গল্পে আলিফ লায়লা কায়দায় ঘটনার গোজামিল, যেটা এই বইয়ে শেষের দিকে একটু একটু করে বেড়েই চলতেছিলো। আরো কত কিছু যে ভালো লাগে না, এই যেমন আগের বইয়ে চরিত্রগুলিরে দেখলাম খসে পড়া পলেস্তারা জোড়া দিয়ে তৈয়ার করা -

কিন্তু এই বইয়ে সেটা কেটে গেছে, অন্তত বেশ কয়েকটা চরিত্রের ক্ষেত্রে। তিলোত্তমা খুব বেশি পানসে, মিস জেবীন জায়গাটাই পায় নাই সোজা হয়ে দাঁড়ানোর, এটুকু বলে যদি চলে যাই তাহলে অন্যায় হবে, কারণ আঞ্জুমের সঙ্গীসাথীরা আছেন, আজাদ ভারতী আছেন, মুসা আর বিপ্লব আছেন। একটা বইরে ত আমি তার তথ্যগত জায়গা থেকে বিচার করবো না - সেই তথ্যগত বিভ্রাট যদি আন্টির ঊর্দু আপা এমন বাজে দাবীও হয়। একটা বইরে আমি দেখবো তাদের চরিত্রদের সাথে কাঁধ মিলায়ে, যা এইখানে অনেক দূর কাজ করে, কাজ করে প্রায় পুরোটা জূড়েই। হ্যাঁ, একটা অ্যাসাইলামের ফ্যান্টাসি আছে, কিন্তু উনি যেহেতু অ্যাক্টিভিস্ট, এ ত স্বাভাবিক।

আমি মুগ্ধ। ছোটে চিজোঁ কে খুদা পড়ার পর এতটাই বিরক্ত হইছিলাম যে আর কখনোই ভাবি নাই অরুন্ধতী রায়ের উপন্যাস পড়ে মুগ্ধ হবো। মুগ্ধ বলেই এক রাতে তিনশো পাতা পড়ে ফেলা, মুগ্ধ বলেই শেষে চরিত্রেরা তাদের বৈশিষ্ট্যের সাথে বিশ্বাসঘাতকতা করায় বিরক্ত (সাদ্দাম হুসেন, আই এম লুকিং এট ইউ বয়)। খুব উঁচা দরের না হলেও বেশ মনোগ্রাহী বই, আর তাই চয়ন বড়ুয়াকে ধন্যবাদ। ...more

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Aug 05, 2017 Magdelanye rated it really liked it

Shelves: culture-conflict, social-commentary, social-history, postmodern-fiction, august-2017

In battle...enemies cant break your spirit, only friends can. p273

I was shocked, preparatory to writing my own review, when I scanned the reviews here on GR.
AR seems to have attracted a slew of haters, and after the glorious reception of her first novel, it does come as a surprise.

The problem is not confusion, not really. It's more like a terrible clarity that exists outside the language of modern geopolitics. p185

There is much in this long and often rambling work that might offend those who ta ...more

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Jun 01, 2018 Isabella Ides rated it it was amazing

The best read of 2018 (so far). I don't expect there'll be another book that radically alters my vision of this world we live in, this planet we have such difficulty sharing. If this author didn't have so many political enemies, her ratings would soar. It seems India has been experiencing it's own version of a "Spanish Inquisition," Muslim and Hindu fundamentalists precipitating hellish wars and purges. O, poor humanity!

And yet Arundhati Roy finds characters to love and winds a gorgeous literar

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Jul 05, 2022 Catherine Mustread rated it liked it

Shelves: pakistan, afghanistan, india

Encompassing India, Pakistan, & Afghanistan confusion abounds between the good guys and the bad guys and who's who in the intelligence and rebellious factions. Impressive and horrifying. ...more

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