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Anjum used to be called Aftab after s/he was born intersex to parents who were praying hard for a son. Living as a Muslim Hijra already seems complicated enough as it is, given India’s diversity of socio ethnic groups that find it difficult to live together, and so Anjum ends up squatting at a graveyard which is fashioned bit by bit to become the Jannat Guest House. One of the guests is a man who calls himself Saddam Hussain and has a revenge plot against a police officer responsible for the death of his father. Later on, the guest house also welcomes S. Tilottama, a Syrian Christian who works as an architect and has ties to three men from different spheres of influence: a journalist from a family of diplomats named Naga; Biplab, a high ranking officer of the country’s intelligence bureau who has always harbored a crush on her; and Musa, the love of her life who is a militant fighting for Azadi in Kashmir. The arrival of an abandoned baby tagged as kidnapped shakes up the dynamics of daily life at the graveyard.
If you’ve already read The God of Small Things, then you might already have your own set of expectations as to what you will encounter in the author’s sophomore outing. The messy style of storytelling is something that unites both novels, but what makes Arundhati Roy a good storyteller always lies in the way she weaves her country’s socio-political realities into whatever narrative she is writing. Of course, appreciation of this heavily depends on your own biases. She clearly has her own stand on certain issues, many of them controversial, yet offer alternative views should you want to participate in those debates.
As a spectator, I am just happy to observe from afar. Of course history books are always available if you want facts instead of feelings. As always, I find society in India to be amusing and bemusing at the same time. I’ve heard about Hijras before but I believe this is the first time I am reading a full story, albeit fictional, about one of them. That specific segment of the novel was fascinating for me, which simply meant that boredom eventually caught up with me after Anjum got sidelined as Tilo hogged the spotlight with her contrived love triangle that just doesn’t end up being as interesting as the Hijra subplot.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is just so hard to read. Nothing much happens in the plot and once again, the author opts for a non-linear structure that makes everything messy. The story begins with Anjum, which leads you to believe that this will be a Hijra narrative, and then it suddenly segues to half a dozen other characters whose connection to the first one introduced is not that clear at all. And so you end up grasping bits and pieces of information as they are introduced as to how all of this will fall into one neat storyline. A linear plot would’ve made the novel less interesting but that would’ve been a way easier read.
Overall, I prefer The God of Small Things. It just felt more intimate and there was just that lingering melancholia in the air that you just couldn’t shake. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness almost feels like an anthology of sorts, a loose collection of incoherent short stories whose only link to one another is the graveyard that the characters end up residing in. While the concept of destiny and how everyone is interconnected felt natural in The God of Small Things, the very same premise just feels forced in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. A mere plot device used as an excuse to make it seem as though everything were organically connected.
Perhaps the worst thing, though, is that you just end up getting lost in all the side character subplots that in the end, you simply forget to care about them at all.
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