Book Review - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Book Review - The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Cousin :- What are you reading ?

Me : -a novel called-- The ministry of Utmost happiness.

Cousin- So did you find happiness ?

Me- I don't know...

I only started reading this book, because this book was directly/indirectly garnering all the attention at all corners possible. Be it virtual or real. As for me, i was not interested because my limited reading of Arundhati Roy stopped at 2 or 3 pages of "The God of Small things" at a tender age of 15 because i was searching for love making scene descriptions in that novel. From that point on wards to this time, I never read anything about Arundhati Roy or anything written by her.

I am glad that i was mightily proved wrong, I am glad that this book picked me. And most of all this review or the thoughts written about this book are mainly for my purpose & recording of thoughts.

These initial few lines greeted me, when i started reading- The ministry of Utmost Happiness.

It doesn’t matter. I’m all of them, I’m Romi and Juli,
I’m Laila and Majnu. And Mujna, why not? Who says my name
is Anjum? I’m not Anjum, I’m Anjuman. I’m a mehfil, I’m a gathering.
Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing. Is
there anyone else you would like to invite? Everyone’s invited.’


The story starts in Shahajanabad-old part of Delhi, where Jahanara Begum has just given a birth to a boy. Upon detailed inspection next morning, it dawns upon Jahanara Begum,that her son is actually a girl or rather a hermaphrodite. Shocked upon the tragic discovery, she decides not to reveal to anyone that her son Aftab is actually a girl. She takes him to the Dargah of Sarmad Hazrat Shaheed to pray to to teach her on how to love him.

Young Aftab grows, betrayed slowly by his hormones as he slowly bends towards the attributes of being a girl. When his father comes to know of his condition, he suggests to go a sex change doctor, which doesn't help much.

Aftab gets drawn to a beautiful eunuch, Bombay Silk who leds him to Khwabgah. Khwabgah is a place, half old in dilapiladted condition but rich in memories and its inhabitants. Its heralded by a eunuch named kulsoom Bi , who accepts Aftab after he shows sheer determination to be accepted by her clan. Aftab becomes Anjum & the transformation becomes complete.

Its here, when the story shifts its focus on the new born "Anjum" and inhabitants of Khwabgah. Disowned from her home and family, Anjum settles into Khwabgah and is reborn again as a woman. She learns the ways of an eunuch and becomes quite popular with the dailies, journalists, new channels and photographers.

As years pass, Anjum finds an abondened little girl in Jama Masjid and adopts her. The little girl named Zainab, becomes the life of Anjum.

While she feels paranoid of Saeeda -a new & popular resident of Khwabgah, who Zainab drawns towards to. Anjum thinks of thwarting Sifli jadu by Saeeda, so that Zainab can only be hers Anjum then resolves to go to Ajmer with Zakir Mian - owner of a flower shop, to pray for Zainab , on the way they encounter the infamous Godhra riots, where Zakir Mian is killed instantly, but Anjum is only spared because she is an eunuch. This makes a deep impact on her, which she tries to reinforces to little Zainab. Zainab petrified, gets more closer to  Saeeda. Angry & hurt, Anjum moves out of Khwabgah & settles down gradually in a graveyard where her family, friends, are buried.

Its here where she makes lifetime friends. She meets & Befriends Saddam Hussein, meets her old friends from  Khwabgah. As uncertain & quirky all circumstances in this novel are, their little troupe accidentally stumble across a few month old baby in a protest against the corruption by old, faithful Gandhian and his faithful aide, Mr.Aggarwal. Rightly guessed, Anjum and her group in the group are in times of great political turmoil, where Gandhian & his troupe protest against corruption prevailing so rampantly in our country.

It is here at the maidan, where groups of different political ideologies are gathered & Anjum's group meets this baby, who is kidnapped by someone.

The disappearance of baby perhaps triggers introduction of three friends , Naga, Biplab Gupta & Musa- and their common love interest- Tilottama "Tilo".

We are suddenly thrown into the myriad mindscapes of Naga, Biplab, Tilo & Musa. Arundhati Roy perhaps interwove all the major upheavals of Indian History. The story rushes back and forth to insurgence in Kashmir, election of our current PM, comparisons between previous and present government. Arundhati Roy in her novel goes around India to search for her characters and stories and sweeps her readers right into it.

There is extreme delicate love story between Musa & Tilo, endearing & Rocky relationship between Naga & Tilo & the man who always loved Tiro but never had a love story with her-Biplab. The words they urge you to explore more and more, to search within them, to search for more stories and perhaps to not look for any endings. The only ending in real life story is always death.

Everything is immortal until death happens to them.

The restless, cruel, upheaval in Kashmir is depicted beautifully by Arundhati, your heart is sewn together in patches of hope and bound by loose strings of love, heartbreak, jihad, freedom and everything alike in this book.

The short but brief interaction between Tilo and her mother Maryam Ape is a novel within itself. Wish Arundhati Roy writes a whole novel based on the mother-daughter relationship.

The ending perhaps in this book, comes as a whole pot potpourri, all well fitted but still as a reader i longed for more. Because once when you complete this book, you will still think about the book. The characters will etch in your head. And as for me, i would long to have a conversation with Anjum or Tilo.

There is something magical about the prose that Arundhati has written. Its prose poetry. Every paragraph reads out a like a verse, like a poem. I've never come across such beautiful lines & stories and words will jump out to life.

And she had learned from experience that Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty. 

He believed that poetry could cure, or at least go a long way towards curing, almost every ailment. He would prescribe poems to his patients the way other hakims prescribed medicine.

When the sun grew hot, they returned indoors where they

continued to float through their lives like a pair of astronauts,

defying gravity, limited only by the outer walls of their fuchsia

spaceship with its pale pistachio doors.

It was possible for Tilo and Musa to have this strange conversation

about a third loved one, because they were concurrently

sweethearts and ex‑sweethearts,

lovers and ex‑lovers,

siblings

and ex‑siblings,

classmates and ex‑classmates.

Because they

trusted each other so peculiarly that they knew, even if they were

hurt by it, that whoever it was that the other person loved had to

be worth loving. In matters of the heart, they had a virtual forest

of safety nets.

It had to do with the way she lived, in

the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and

seemed to have no consulates.

I could go on and on writing about this beautiful, surreal and yet so grounded to reality prose. 

There is a story within a story. Labyrinths of words filled with archway of immortal characters, verses & archway lightened up with torches of humor, love and warmth, ancient maps carved on wall filled with making and modern history of India & world. 

It doesn't feel artificial, it doesn't feel forced upon . The important History events are weaved in seamlessly. The reader gets drawn into the world of its major characters. 

Of course if one must summarize, then we can say that the book is roughly divided into the brief lives of Anjum & Tilo. Story of two women, separated by a ocean of ideologies, dreams, men , places, upbringing. Its somehow fate and events play a symphony that they meet and share a fragment of their lives together. 

Towards the end, one might wonder why this novel is called The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. Is it because, all the characters somehow find happiness at the end at Anjum's unusal home or is it because, if not happiness they have found a closure in their lives. Only if temporary their broken hearts and lives are mended. Or perhaps the characters of the book and us too, have a ministry of utmost happiness within ourselves. We seek, we create our own happiness. 

A pain to block out another pain, a happiness to create another happiness. 

Arundhati Roy's novel is like a huge canvas painting , stretched wildly in our mind. We can interpret this novel, its words in endless ways. Arundhati Roy allows herself to be indulgent with the words & she gives her reader free reins to interpret the story. 

Arundhati has carved out a lifetime of all the characters in the book. She has breathed life in all the characters. So we have stories of major characters, their colleagues, friends, lovers back stories. Back stories of back stories. Its interwoven, delicate, strong and it never feels in this mini mammoth of a book, that something is disconnected. 

I will definitely read this book again. Not for its story perhaps but for the beauty of words and prose & the characters that still haunt you for a long time. 

I am glad I was proved wrong..May be someday i will pick up "God of small things" again . And hopefully this time, Arundhati Roy won't make us wait for another twenty years. 

You can buy the book from : Amazon | Flipkart | Infibeam

Name of the Book : The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Author : Arundhati Roy

Publisher :-  Hamish Hamilton- an imprint of Penguin Books.

Genre :- Fiction.

ISBN No- 978–0-241-30397-9

No.of Pages : 445

Selected in Man Booker Long List Nominees 2017