We will discuss Ministry of Upmost Happiness by Arundhi Roy on March 12, 2019.
How to tell a shattered story?
By slowly becoming everybody.
No?
By slowly becoming everything.
The
Ministry of Utmost Happiness takes us on a journey of many years – the
story spooling outwards from the cramped neighbourhoods of Old Delhi
into the burgeoning new metropolis and beyond, to the Valley of Kashmir
and the forests of Central India, where war is peace and peace is war,
and where, from time to time, ‘normalcy’ is declared.
Anjum, who
used to be Aftab, unrolls a threadbare carpet in a city graveyard that
she calls home. A baby appears quite suddenly on a pavement, a little
after midnight, in a crib of litter. The enigmatic S. Tilottama is as
much of a presence as she is an absence in the lives of the three men
who love her.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is at once an
aching love story and a decisive remonstration. It is told in a whisper,
in a shout, through tears and sometimes with a laugh. Its heroes are
people who have been broken by the world they live in and then rescued,
mended by love – and by hope. For this reason, they are as steely as
they are fragile, and they never surrender. This ravishing, magnificent
book reinvents what a novel can do and can be. And it demonstrates on
every page the miracle of Arundhati Roy’s storytelling gifts.
-Goodreads
No comments:
Post a Comment