It is impossible to review “The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness” (henceforth, MUH) without constantly side-gazing at “The God Of Small Things” (henceforth, GOST). Let us talk a bit on why GOST is such a treasured book before moving to MUH.
GOST manages to achieve one of the most incredible feats in storytelling – Arundhati Roy does not bring the characters and the stories to you. She transports you to a different time and place in Kerala called Ayemenem. The teleportation is almost complete- you can touch the rain, smell the pickles, cringe at the disgusting slippery semen of the fat man on the boy’s hand, and mourn at the angst of the mother clinging on to a fading hope. You are right there, with the characters watching the narrative unfold with joy, humor and tragedy. You want to change certain things or make them stop, but you are helpless. At the end of the epic saga, you are left drained and perplexed. A part of you is relieved that the saga has come to an end, while another is miserable for the same reason. You know you have read and lived the lives of some of the finest characters to ever be created.
And, against this backdrop of the brightest star in the galaxy of fiction comes MUH. It is a complicated story spun across Delhi, Kashmir, and Central India, and laden with eclectic characters. Anjum, who is neither a male nor a female, Tilo who vacillates between a perpetual existential crisis, Musa who is a lover turned into an extremist, Amrik Singh who is violently autocratic yet pathetically subservient, and a myriad other confusing and lost characters who come together to create a chronicle which is riveting at times and frustrating at other times. Roy tries to help you share their journey, feel their pain, and laugh at their utter silliness. Unfortunately, at times you end up with dissipated sympathies. You stay with the story because it is good fiction and not because you are intensely immersed into it or feel that you have lived some part of the lives of the characters.
Roy has not tried to create the novel through a prism of just plain story writing with subtle political innuendos. In fact, it is a book steeped in power, politics, and social stature that lead to marginalization; flashes of activism light up the entire story. In many ways, the book brings into fore the issues that she has been passionate about for the last couple of decades. The everyday tragedy in Kashmir and the dehumanization of people on both sides of the conflict is a sharp reminder of how endless conflicts eventually sap out the empathy from a country and its people.
The entire book has devastating punch lines which make you close your eyes, savor the moment, and let it sink in. Here are my favorite five:
“It was herself who she was exhausted with. She had lost the ability to keep her discrete worlds discrete- a skill that many consider to be the cornerstone of sanity.”
“Death was everywhere. Death was everything. Career. Desire. Dream. Poetry. Love. Youth, itself. Dying became just another way of living.”
“It was like thinking of something clever to say long after the moment has passed.”
“The two women stepped out of the hotel and into the streets of the city that came alive only to bury its dead.”
“And, she had learned from experience that need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty.”
Mastery over language, imagery and metaphor, and weaving those three to create a fictional world was the cornerstone of GOS. In MUH, Roy recreates that magic. It is only in the last part of the book, where her activism overshadows her storytelling, that the book drags a little. At places, it borders on being a small academic exercise and that makes the reader restless, given the complexity of the narrative.
Vajpayee, Hazare, Kejriwal, and Modi also grace the book and Roy treats them with much disdain. Unsurprisingly, she is also unkind to the role of the Indian State in restive areas of the country. One might not always agree to her contrarian views (that also explains the vitriol directed at her or the book on online platforms), but once that shroud of aggressive nationalism fritters away, the joy of reading high-quality fiction takes you on a satisfying ride.
Go read the book, let Roy bring to you the layered characters and their strange ways of functioning in constant turmoil, both internal and external. It will be an exhausting yet worthwhile experience. In fact, you ought to read ‘The God of Small Things’ too!