Shattered heart
If you’re thinking of reading this book, it’s probably because of Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize 20 years ago. In which case, proceed with caution. Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, is set mostly in Delhi and Kashmir. The first protagonist is Anjum, a transwoman or hijra, who was born intersex and assigned male by her parents: “I’m a mehfil, I’m a gathering. Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing.”
Another hijra, Nimmo, says of being trans: “The war is inside us. Indo- Pak is inside us. It will never settle down. It can’t.” Eventually Anjum takes up residence in a graveyard, “the place of falling people”, where various strays — animal and human — settle around her.
The other protagonist is Tilo, an architect and writer who becomes pro- Kashmiri independence after witnessing the struggles of her lover, Musa, a freedom fighter. Both Anjum and Tilo adopt baby girls they find abandoned in the street; both live in a world rife with poverty and violence. Tilo writes: “I would like to write one of those sophisticated stories in which even though nothing much happens there’s lots to write about. That can’t be done in Kashmir. It’s not sophisticated, what happens here. There’s too much blood for good literature.”
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness contains interesting characters and arresting writing. But the story tries to go in too many directions to be compelling. Roy frequently breaks out of third- person narration into other forms of writing — the seven- page manifesto of one of the minor characters; military press releases; Tilo’s creative writing. These intrusions feel self- indulgent and quickly become tedious.
One of Tilo’s poems reads: “How/ to/ tell / a/ shattered/ story? / By/ slowly/ becoming/ everybody. / No. / By slowly becoming everything.” It seems like a mission statement for the book itself, which is caught halfway between being mainstream contemporary fiction and a post- modern exercise in “shattering” a story.
Readers with stamina and patience will find much of interest, but, unlike Roy’s previous novel, which packed an unforgettable emotional punch, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness left my heart untouched.