Twenty years ago, Indian writer Arundhati Roy wrote a novel that ended up winning a Booker Prize. In 2017, she released her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which sounds like a cheery, whimsical work, but that is not the type of writer Roy is. So while I was slightly taken by surprise when the book took a major change of direction early on, I should have realized there would have been more to the story. The book starts off with the story of Anjum, a hijra (transsexual) who moves to a cemetery and opens a guesthouse, before focusing on a tenant, Tilo, with mysterious sad past.
The book is poignant in some parts, and light in others, but Tilo’s story, which goes back to the brutal Kashmiri conflict impart a heavy air. Kashmir is a Muslim-majority region in northern India that has been experiencing an insurgency for decades due to heavyhanded Indian army control. In the beginning, when we learn about Anjum, the capital Delhi is portrayed with a rich amount of detail highlighting the city’s history, culture and architecture. Roy also provides an entrancing description of the hijra community which Anjum becomes part of when he leaves home and decides he wants to become a woman.
However, Anjum’s life changes when she takes a trip to Gujarat and survives a communal massacre of Muslims (this happened for real in 2003 in retaliation for a massacre of Hindu passengers on a train). When the story shifts to Kashmir, where local uprisings have occurred against the Indian state, the tone changes to one of politics and conflict, as well as religious extremism and brutal policing.
To be honest, I would have preferred it if the novel had just been about Tilo without the transsexual and funeral guesthouse part, though that adds a lot of colour to the book. The two parts differ in tone as well as story, and the effect is two distinct stories fused together. Another issue is that midway in the book, during a recounting of Tilo’s past, the narrative timeline gets a little confusing and it is unclear whether events being described had happened in the past or had just occurred.
Roy’s focus on transgenders, history and the Kashmir conflict echoes her diverse knowledge (she trained as an architect in school) and tremendous activism in speaking out for causes ranging from caste violence, dam-building, and religious conflicts in India, as well as the US government when it invaded Iraq. Besides her two novels, she has written numerous non-fiction books, a few of which I read in my university years, filled with blunt, angry essays about these causes.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is a pleasing book but one which might have been better if it had been streamlined.
Year published: 2017
