Hello friends
I am Daya Vaghani, student of the Department of English,mkbu.This blog is assigned as a part of Thinking Activity by our Prof.Dilip Barad.In this blog I am going to give answer of some questions from the novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness by Arundhati Roy.
Click here to visit teacher's blog on this novel.
Introduction of the text
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is written by Arundhati Roy. It takes us on an intimate journey of many years across the Indian subcontinent - from the cramped neighborhoods of Old Delhi and the roads of the new city to the mountains and valleys of Kashmir and beyond, where war is peace and peace is war.
It is an aching love story and a decisive remonstration, a story told in a whisper, in a shout, through unsentimental tears and sometimes with a bitter laugh. Each of its characters is indelibly, tenderly rendered. Its heroes are people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued, patched together by acts of love - and by hope.
The tale begins with Anjum - who used to be Aftab - unrolling a threadbare Persian carpet in a city graveyard she calls home. We encounter the odd, unforgettable Tilo and the men who loved her - including Musa, sweetheart and ex-sweetheart, lover and ex-lover; their fates are as entwined as their arms used to be and always will be. We meet Tilo's landlord, a former suitor, now an intelligence officer posted to Kabul. And then we meet the two Miss Jebeens: the first a child born in Srinagar and buried in its overcrowded Martyrs' Graveyard; the second found at midnight, abandoned on a concrete sidewalk in the heart of New Delhi.
As this ravishing, deeply humane novel braids these lives together, it reinvents what a novel can do and can be. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness demonstrates on every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy's storytelling gifts.
Now let's discuss the questions.
1.Political issues in novel:
In this novel we can find many incidents that are connected to politics.The novel recounts some of the egregious events of Contemporary Indian history such as land reform, 2002 Godhra train burning and Kashmir insurgency as well. It illustrates the sufferings, pain and the right of the LGBT community in contemporary India. The novel also incorporates many social and political events occurred in India and other parts of the world against the backdrop of its story.The reference of Emergency in 1975 is also mentioned by Roy.
2.Gender Concerns in the novel
At the beginning of this novel we can find gender concerns because the novel told through Anjum,a transgender woman and former sex worker who was born with both female and male genitalia. (Her mother gendered Anjum a boy and named him Aftab, and he/him/his pronouns are used to refer to Aftab at the beginning of his life before he starts identifying as a trans woman.) Through Anjum’s eyes,we are exposed to the various inequalities and forms of violence that plague the city in which she lives. The Urdu word for trans woman is Hijra, an identity that is very important to Anjum and the other trans women she lives with. Through exploring the ways in which Anjum navigates gender identity and by portraying her trans identity in a positive and nuanced light, Roy challenges not only the idea of a gender binary, but also other artificial forms of social division—particularly nationality and religion.The following quotes are related to this theme.
"Sarmad’s insubordinate spirit, intense, palpable and truer than any accumulation of historical facts could be, appeared to those who sought his blessings. It celebrated (but never preached) the value of spirituality over sacrament, simplicity over opulence and stubborn, ecstatic love even when faced with the prospect of annihilation. (chapter 2)"
“But for us the price-rise and school-admissions and beating-husbands and cheating-wives are all inside us. The riot is inside us. The war is inside us. Indo-Pak is inside us. It will never settle down. It can’t.”
3.Environmetal concerns in the novel/Ecofeminist study:
Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness consists of numerous level narrative ranging from ancient history to the present time through flashbacks. It investigates various environmental and feminist issues.
The question may arise in our mind that what is ecofeminism...
First coined by Francoise D’Eaubonne in 1974, “ecofeminism,” is a term that is concerned with the interconnection between the domination and exploitation of nature and the domination and exploitation of women. This suggests that ecofeminism is a feminist theory that is actively informed by ecology. It broadens the theory of feminism to include the domination of nature.
In this novel Roy describe the transwoman Anjum.She is different from others.Transgender people are the individuals who identify their roles as the opposite of their biological sexes and their behavior differ from the stereotyped gender norms.
According to Mulakat Ali (Anjum's Father) a person who is perceived by majority of people as a traditional man should act like one.
“He chose to server all ties with his son. He never met Anjum…Occasionally they would pass each other on street and would exchange glances, but never greetings” (Roy 25).
Roy opens the novel with the prologue describing the condition of Anjum who is torn into pieces by the hostile social forces and asks the Imam:
“you tell me where do old birds go to die? Do they fall on us like stones from the sky? Do we stumble on their bodies in the streets? Do you not think that the All-seeing, Almighty one who put us on this earth has made proper arrangements to take us away?” (Roy 5)
This lines suggests the fact that old birds like old people are generally rejected by the society as we have seen in this novel.. Such people are usually disposed away from the world of pleasure. Equally discarded is Anjum who is not considered as a part of society her entire life. She is showing her concern towards the demise of old birds (Delhi’s vultures) – victims of a new chemical-diclofenac, introduced into the ecosystem given to cows to extract more milk. While Delhi indulges itself on ice cream, Roy ironically criticizes the humanity, “Not many noticed the passing of the friendly old birds” (Roy), as people have so much to look forward to.
Greta Gaard in her article “women, water and energy: an ecofeminist approach” states that “More than a theory of feminism and environmentalism or women and nature, as the name might imply, ecofeminist approaches the problems of environmental degradation life. and social justice from the premise that how we treat nature and how we treat each other are inseparably linked” (Gaard 158).
The other feminist character apart from Anjum are Tillotama,Maryam Ipe,Revathy.In all this character we can read ecofeminism.
4.Narrative pattern in this novel
The narrative in this novel are changing first person to third person.The first half of the story is said in the third person omnipresent narrator who details the life of Anjum and the people associated with her. The second part altogether starts without a clue with Biplab Das as the narrator, introduced as 'The Landlord' by the title, and later as Hobart Garson (the name by which Tilo called him since he acted out that role in their skit). Thus this part of the narrative is subjective and biased as seen by the evidence, “Or at least that‟s the way I see it” , leading to an unreliable narration. So we can say that the narrator is unreliable.
Roy uses varied narrative techniques like epistolary, stream of consciousness, pamphlets, news articles, hospital records, photographs, poems, addressed to an unknown character etc.
The novel starts with the setting of the graveyard, then moves backward to Shahjahanabad, Delhi then to Khwabagh or the House of Dreams to the Jannat Guest House. Then it takes a shift to the urban Delhi or the city only to come back to Kashmir, to complete the dystopian sphere, but ultimately the two loose strands join in the Jannat Guest House, completing the utopian dream. In terms of the setting, this setting of the city can be seen as an evolution of the writer from a smaller canvas to a bigger one.
We can understand the narrative through this image/quote from the novel that the whole story is shattered.
Here I want to share the board work done by Prof.Dilip Barad sir while discussing characters and summary of the novel.
Here is the video recordings about the Characters and Summary of the novel 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
Part 1 | Khwabgah
Symbols and Motifs in 'The Ministry of Utmost Happiness'
- Gaard, Greta. Ecofeminism: Women, Animals and Nature. USA: Temple University Press, 1993. Print
- Roy, Arundhati. The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. 2017.
- Suleman, Danish. "Political and Gender Issues in Arundhati Roy’s "TheMinistry of Utmost Happiness"Masalah Politik dan Gender dalam Arundhati Roy "The Ministryof Utmost Happiness"." ReserchGate (2020): 8.
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