The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

by Arundhati Roy

Be professional, be polite and have a plan to kill everybody you meet.

Wherever he looked, he would see only himself. The new Emperor of Hindustan. He was an ocean. He was infinity. He was humanity itself.

Today we were unlucky. But remember we only have to be lucky once. You will need good luck all the time.

It had the power to make even the most hardened of us wonder, even if momentarily, what the hell we were doing in Kashmir, governing a people who hated us so viscerally.

‘Then will he strip his sleeve and show his scars and say, “These wounds had I on Crispin’s day.” Remember? I taught you that.’ ‘Yes.’ ‘What’s the next line?’ ‘ “Old men forget. Yet all shall be forgot. But he’ll remember with advantages what feats he did that day.” ’

Who can know from the word goodbye what kind of parting is in store for us.

For the first time in her life, Tilo felt that her body had enough room to accommodate all its organs.

Now dust blows on autumn’s breeze Where once were flowers, only flowers

She saw that his outline – the shape he made in the world – had grown indistinct, smudged, somehow.

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers;