Assignment :- Contemporary Literature

Q-1  Explain the title of the novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’. ?

Ans:-

Introduction:- 

Arundhati Roy, a much sought-after Indian English writer keeps her readers glued to her works not because of the fulminations but also because of her capability to capture the complexity of human relationships in the flux of time. Like other contemporary novelists, she too calls her works fiction but they transcend what humans face every day though they pass unnoticed. Roy's keen sense of observation and her grasp over psychological underpinnings and her incisive eye arrests the undercurrents camouflaged under the quotidian human life that remains oblivious to numerous crushed desires trampled under the heavy feet of globalization responding to time and space making all the difference. The present paper endeavors to explore the complexity of human relationships that not only binds man to man but also distance him from his fellow humans. Human life is not as easy as it appears and the demands of every age prompt us to make various compromises despite the fact that 'its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence' sparked by political pundits weaving different patterns of meaning in the ever-changing world order. We are reminded of what Shakespeare says, "The web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill together: our virtues would be proud if our faults whipped them not, and our crimes would despair if they were not cherished by our virtues."

Arundhati Roy:-

Arundhati Roy was born on November 24, 1961, in Shillong Meghalaya, in Bengal, North Eastern India. Her father was a Hindu tea planter, and her mother was a Christian teacher and social activist. Roy began her education at “Corpus Christi,” a school founded by her mother in AymaNam, India. This school was very informal. As a result, Roy developed a way of thinking and writing that differed from those educated at more formal schools. In other words, Roy learned to think for herself. From the beginning of her education, Roy wanted to be a writer. It was her childhood dream.

She demonstrated her independence at the early age of sixteen, leaving her home to live on her own in a small hut with a tin roof. She survived for seven years by selling empty beer bottles for income. She observed the effects of Christianity, Marxism, Hinduism, and Islam in India, which shaped her attitudes and beliefs. Eventually, she grew tired of this poverty-stricken life and decided to enter the Delhi School of Architecture. There, she met her first husband, Gerard Da Cunha. While they were married the couple decided to put their degrees aside and do something simple. The two embarked to Goa on the coast of India where they made and sold cakes to tourists for seven months. But Arundhati lost interest in this lifestyle, ending their marriage within four years.

Roy found a job with the National Institute of Urban Affairs where she met her future husband commuting on a bicycle, a film director Pradeep Krishen. At the beginning of their relationship, Arundhati received a scholarship to study the restoration of monuments in Italy. She began to realize her unique writing abilities in Italy. Upon her return to India, Roy teamed up with her husband to write a screenplay for a television series. Unfortunately, the idea failed, but she continued to write more screenplays that resulted in several films including In Which Annie Gives It Those Ones and Electric Moon.

Beginning with her critique of the film Bandit Queen, which turned into a lawsuit, her work has been controversial from the start. Following the lawsuit, she began to concentrate on her writing. Eventually, this practice became The God of Small Things. This novel proved to be a success as it was published in nineteen countries and sixteen languages. She was compared to Charles Dickens and William Faulkner for the way she deals with the issues of race, class, and society. She was the first Indian writer to receive the Booker Prize, which is the most prestigious literary award in England.

Roy learned to live and think independently from her experiences. She is determined to do and say what she wants, even if her opinion goes against the social norm. To this day, she continues to voice her opinion as a social activist, writing about current events in essay form. Roy is known for her anti-war activist opinions, and she expresses them bravely in her numerous published works and speeches.

ArundhatiRoy'slatest's novel Ministry of Utmost Happiness(2017)is intricately woven into a web of various characters, who strive and suffer because of their individual choices differentiating them into two groups. The first group of characters belongs to hermaphrodite and creates their own world through their passion for music and live life in their own ways. Another group of characters though not suffering from sexual anomaly also finds themselves misfit in the real world because of myriad problems. Roy's array of multiple characters in this novel doesn't reflect her ideological differences against the so-called idea of oneness, which according to her, is the enemy of this novel. In defense of her second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, she says:

Itis a story that emerges out of an ocean of languages, in which a teeming ecosystem of living creatures

official –language fish, unofficial –dialect mollusks, and flashing shoals of word fish—swim around, some friendly with each other, some openly hostile, and some outright carnivorous. But they are all nourished by what the ocean provides. And all of them, like the people in the Ministry, have no choice but to co-exist, to survive, and to try to understand each other.

Roy's rebellious views may prompt over-enthusiastic readers and critics to put her works into ideological straitjacket exploding anti-establishment views. But such a notion belittles the stature of Roy's realism. The depiction of caste that distances the true merit of individuals merely on the basis of color and class consciousness in her debut novel The God of Small Things itself contradicts as she vehemently opposes the Communist government in the said work. Roy is not a slave to any ideology despite vestiges of various transgressions in her work. While Velutha, transgresses the boundary much as other characters, his party men too transgress the limits of propriety and pooh-pooh the established norms and party ideology while destroying the caravan. Neither the policemen nor comrade Pillai relents while Velutha is smashed and his jaws and bones are broken beyond repair. Roy seems best at portraying the social change that prompts the marginalized to break the love laws and face the consequences. 

The novel under discussion got published after two decades and the veteran writer continued her craft of writing grounded in problems and issues affecting ordinary human lives. We have come a long way and several significant developments have emerged worldwide. But Roy's question remains the same. She carves stories out of several issues that appear less literary.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness where the narrative flows quite lucidly as everyday and commonplace language. The novel in question, if compared with the first novel appears to disappoint ardent readers of Roy. But as a writer of exemplary mettle, she succeeds in weaving the fragmented yarns comprising fact and fiction with equanimity. The Ministry reminds readers not only of the fulminations of another contemporary Indian novelist Aravind Adiga but also takes us back to the one-time champion of the deprived, Mulk RajAnand. It's not unfair to record that both  Adiga and Arundhati are the extended selves of Anand. These writers seem not to sell their soul to  Mephistopheles but create fiction out of their crusade with the oddities of society with changing times. It is this aspect of realism that surfaces repeatedly inArundhatiRoy'sliterary forte.

Since every writer depicts the age he/she lives in,Arundhati Roy too, is not an exception. But in doing so, she does not sacrifice her dharma of a writer's vision. She is aware of the socio-cultural changes taking place from time to time. Her reactions and rebellious views remind us of a celebrated English poet and critic Matthew Arnold who in his famous essay on “Culture and Anarchy” had described the present state as 'an upper class materialized, middles class vulgarized and lower class brutalized'(Arnold). Arnold had advocated that culture should conceive of true human perfection as a harmonious perfection that could develop all sides of our humanity as well as all sides of our society. Roy, like Arnold, reiterates that the excessive materiality and emergence of individuality could not civilize society. Roy's dig on Capitalism apart from other things can also be heard in Aravind Adiga, who inThe WhiteTiger and Last Man in the tower fictionalizes his protest against the capitalistic forces that alienate humans from each other. Balram Halwai in The White Tiger resorts to violence and later establishes his entrepreneurial venture just to avenge his master's cruelties. Likewise, Yogesh Murthy in Last Man in Tower wages a war to claim his space and right in a capitalistic and consumerist world though he is eliminated by the builders. The act of both the heroes appear rebellious but are not devoid of their growing epistemic strength.

Roy's The Ministry depicts various threads of protests manifested through a web of characters. The story begins with the travails of Anjum alias Aftab, the son of Jahanara and Mulaqat Ali, who fail to hide their son's unusual characteristics. Aftab's mother persuades him to undergo surgery but the son rebels and insists on living amid Hizras 'with painted nails and a wrist full of bangles'  and longs to lift his salwar just a little 'to show off his silver anklets'. As luck would have it, Aftab becomes Anjum a famous Hizra, and a disciple of Ustad Kulsoom Bi of the Delhi Gharana, and later participate in different political activities that upset the entire nation from time to time. Having spent several years with fellow Hizras, Anjum feels disillusioned with the state of affairs at Khwabgah. She yearns to live life like an ordinary person who could send her child off to school with her books and tiffin box. A new ray of hope suddenly emerged one day Jama Masjid where she found an unclaimed and abandoned child whom she decided to adopt and explore some joys in rearing the three-year-old infant. Anjum named her Zainab and proffered all her love to her. The child also responded to the affection of Anjum and started calling the former her mummy and other inmates as auntie. The novelist describes this new fond bond in the following lines: “The mouse absorbed love like sand absorbs the sea.

Besides Anjum other members of the Khwabgah also yearned for viable relationships to carve their identities. In this regard, Zainab provided floodgates of filial emotion in Anjum and bred jealousy in Saeeda who also wanted to possess the growing child. Having smelt ofSaeeda's longings, Anjum got cautious and blamed the former for any untoward incident, if any, in the case of Zainab. Calling her illness a result of Saeeda's black magic, she undertook a pilgrimage to Ajmer Sharif to avert all evils befalling Zainab. Anjum's absence provide Saeed enough opportunities to snuggle with Zainab and substitute Anjum's motherly care and concern to the extent that the child started callingSaeeda her mummy.

Roy as a keen observer of human nature delineates the fact that happiness is completely a feeling of internal realization. While the inmates of the Khwabgah pretended to be happy, they faked happiness. This feigned happiness seemed to offer a sort of retreat to the dreariness and debauchery present in the real world. The novelist makes Khwabgah a mouthpiece to express her angst about the horrendous realities of the real world. The ordinary people albeit surrounded by external problems, the inmates of the Khwabgah face the same internally.

The problems of hermaphrodite outnumber the problems of the common people as they undergo conflicts externally while the former suffers battles of all kinds internally. Khwabgah represents the microcosm of the civilized and normal human world which to the novelist is the macrocosm. Roy, like a neutral observer, expresses the anguish of inmates' identity and also unveils its connections with royal pride. Ustad Kulsoom Bi seems to safeguard the decline of the decreasing regal pride that provided many ancient rulers the safe passage to their tangled relationships.

Kulsoom Bi vouched for the historical significance of the Khwabgah though she cautioned her people against the crumbling of its tradition. She reiterates that such a system still existed and it was not to be written off. The novelist rightly mentions: “What mattered was that it existed. To be present in history even as nothing more than a chuckle, was a universe away from being absent from it, from being written out of it altogether. A chuckle, after all, would become a foothold in the sheer wall of the future”

Human relationships in the novel gain new meanings shrouded in many mysteries not only of the inmates of Khwabgah but also of four university days' friends who in search of their vocation finally separate and rejuvenate at intervals but in different avatars. Their relationships formulate during the rehearsal of a drama but take different shapes because of the volatile political conditions. These relationships are founded on love-hate syndrome spread by a handful of people bent upon creating splits in society just forsome political advantage. Names act as referents to certain faiths and animals become the symbols to ignite racial discrimination. Many characters in the novel change their names justto protectthemselvesfrom the relentless mobocracy, which seemsto have lost all rationale. Roy, a realist, very subtly delineates the merciless murders of innocents in mob frenzy based on baseless allegations. Anjum, a Muslim by caste is shuddered to hear the miserable plight of Dayachand alias Saddam Hussain who had adopted this name simply because of his so-called bravery or butchery against a throng of his avengers. Dayachand had closely watched the brutal murder of his father in the name of cow-slaughter simply because he couldn't bribe the policeman, Sehrawat. It is quite paradoxical that both Dayachand and Sehrawat belong to the same Hindu community which reveres the cow as mother. Roy as a creative writer wants to awaken the sleeping and misguided mankind from the slumber that has sealed their conscience. Her metaphoric ire against the deep-rooted malaise keeps surfacing in the novel to show her authorial intent.

Roy creates stories within a story rooted in a sort of disenchantment with the prevailing order that destabilizes the harmony of fellow beings. What makes the novel exemplary is the novelist's technique of weaving and connecting all other stories into a united structure. The novel apart from depicting the tangled web of human relationships also hints at the split between two communities. This is much in contrast with the inmates of Khwabgah which albeit comprises mostly Muslims yet welcomes people of other communities having different faiths. References to the conflicts between two communities also get mentioned from time to time. The external forces, too, are found taking disadvantage of the splits between two faiths: “The poet-prime minister of the country and several of his senior ministers were members of an old organization that believed India was essentially a Hindu nation and that, just as Pakistan had declared itself the Islamic Republic, India should declare itself a Hindu one”. The lines in context are a dig at the Indian maxim of Vasudhaib Kutumbakam, i.e the entire world is one family. This gets shaken because of the divisive politics of our so-called representatives who perturb the peace of millions of people just to gain access to the corridors of power.

It's quite ironic to note that despite the change of guards at the center nothing changes as such. One community or the other becomes a victim of the years of rebellion simmering in the minds of people. The killing of Mrs. Indira Gandhi, the riot in Gujarat, The Kashmir problem are some such issues that require due attention. But the craze for power keeps the majority of political parties agog with dilly-dallying, sometimes deviating the common masses in the glitter-glitter of globalization and yet at other times soothing their bruises in the name of sympathy. This prompts many idealists to undertake fast unto death, protesting against parochialism on the one hand and red-tapism, on the other. The real issues most often are relegated to the margins.

The novelist is not oblivious to the fact of various relationships which fade because of the political instability. The government policies seem to favor the elite masses and show disregard to the common masses. People in power most often get shielded at the cost of the cold-blooded murder of innocents merely because of the fault of a handful of people or their faith. The craze for a consumerist culture pushes the nativity ode into oblivion and the sprawling cities give everyone the illusion of a shining country where pedestrians find little space either to relax or to revive their lost energies. In such a situation people like Dr.Azad Bhartiya, a triple M.A in Hindi, Urdu, and History undertakes a strike for eleven years. But ironically, this person is kept under surveillance mostly. He has become a crusader and is ostracized by everyone yet what he says has ample substance: “Capitalism is like poisoned honey. People swarm to it like bees. I don't go to it. For this reason, I have been put under twenty-four hours' surveillance. I am under twenty-four hours' remote control electronic surveillance by the American government”

The novel also unfolds the tangled web of Tilo's life which is full of mystery. A foster child of a Christian mother, Tilottama, one of Delhi University's Architecture students gets attracted towards Musa though they take to their professions and get separated. This provides Biplab the chance to try his luck. Attracted initially by Tilo's charm, he is at war with himself thinking what disarmed him towards Tilo and says: “It's hard for me to describe someone who has been imprinted on me, on my souls, like a stamp or a seal of some sort for so many years. I see her as I see a limb of mine –a hand, or afoot. But Tilo negates the question of marriage with anybody and hence this charm comes to an end. Biplab, alias Garson, gets disappointed and his infatuation for Tilo also comes to an end.

Tilo, on the other hand, kept herself tied constantly to Musa and later married him. Musa's yearning for Kashmir's freedom takes him to the disturbing valley where he stealthily starts a family but loses his wife and daughter in police firing. He goes into hiding yet continues to be associated with Tilo. Soon, people come to know about his death. It is later revealed that Musa had a dubious identity and he created the fake news of his death. The insurgency in Kashmir effects and distances them yet they maintain a secret bond. Tilo is trapped in Kashmir but because of Naga, she is rescued in Delhi where she marries him.

Roy as a novelist is not confined merely to literary creativity. As discussed earlier, her first novel The God of Small Things also is not devoid of her political activism. This is amply justified in her later writings grounded more in her poetics of protest than of sheer literary leanings. It is pertinent to quote an observation of Geoffrey Ken, who in his article “Tuning (In or Out) the Big Voice of Arundhati Roy following the God of small things,” .

Roy's persistent general focus has been and remains the exercise of power; within this domain, her attention has passed through several phases from conflict between state or national government agencies and local within India to Indian development of nuclear weapons and Indo-Pak conflicts to the United' response to 9/11, and most recently to theWar onTerrorwhatshe regards as the militaristic Establishment of the American Empire.

Tilo's marriage with Naga, the son of Ambassador Hariharan, and their luxurious life loses its sheen shortly. Out of exhaustion, Tilo leaves Naga as the former wanted 'an insular independence'. She was tired of 'living a life that wasn't really hers at an address she oughtn't to be at'. While Naga wanted to shine as a 'celebrity', Tilo wanted to sink into oblivion. When Naga was packing Tilo's things to be put into a carton, he was wonderstruck by Mariam Ipe's medical reports that disclosed the mother-daughter relationship. He later comes to discover that Tilo's individuality and her unusual quirkiness were the results of her mother's influence on her. He failed to notice that distance from her mother had an adverse effect on Tilo but Naga's realization was too late. The lack of companionship not only forced her to live in a rented house but also to kidnap an unclaimed child at Jantar Mantar. But this also didn't last long as the police started searching for the kidnapper and the suspicion lay on Tilo. The mother of the unclaimed child had reported to the police who suspected Tilo's whereabouts. Tilo was forced to seek shelterin Jannat Guest House established byAnjumand others.

What tangles human relations further in the novel is the mystery behind the kidnapped child later named MissJebeen, the second. The real mother of the child, Revathy sends a letter to Dr.Azad stating her miserable plight and the loathing relationship with the child. She admits with disdain that the child was illegally begotten because the latter was conceived after her rape by police forces. Revathy had joined the Communist party just to avenge her father's atrocities on her mother. But because of her rebellious ways, she was arrested by several policemen who had raped her one after another. She got conceived and gave birth to the accursed child in the forest. She detested the child and named her Udaya, who according to her, had river as mother and forest as a father. The desertion of the child at Jantar Mantar was the result both of Revathy's hatred of her and also of the hope that some good soul would take care of the child.

Friendship and love as the foundations of every human relationship seem to fritter away because of everyone's professional exigency. In this regard Tilo of the Delhi University friends' group keeps all of them tied to one another because of her mysterious charm in mysterious ways. She initially attracts Garson alias Biplab and Naga but these male members though not truly friends, maintain a sort of adversarial relationship. The competing forces of friendship and love distance them both personally and professionally making them rivals to each other. Musa's untimelyexitfromTilo'slife allows Nagy to show advances to her and later their marriage brings some fresh showers though short-lived. While Garson seethes in his lost longings for Tilo, his marriage with Chitra also suffers a breakdown even after so many years. His desertion by his wife and daughters allows some room for his unfulfilled romantic leanings towards Tilo. Years after he derives a faint satisfaction in renting out his apartment to Tilo, the woman who in his 'weak, wavering way', he 'will never stop loving.

Tilo finally seeks refuge in Jannat Guest House where she finds peace in the company of Anjum,  Saddam, Zainab, and Saeeda who are also living borrowed lives. Musa comes out of his hiding in search of Tilo who had preserved his recoveries safely. He finally unites with Tilo and also makes peace with Biplab alias Garson. Biplab also realizes the futility of all his years working in the Bureau as an intelligence officer bent upon toeing the right course of action though in the wrong manner just for a little patch of land. His disillusionment with the state of affairs in Kashmir gives an eye-opener to Whatman has made of man.

The natural urge of humans to transgress the sacrosanct boundaries charted out in past hangs like an Albatross around our necks though we may boast of living in a globalized world. It goes without saying that Indian masses have demystified inter-racial marriages, live-in-relationships, and other issues of sexuality once considered illicit. The depiction of such themes and their deliberations in academia are no more considered profane. Hence, it is the guts, grit, and gumption of Arundhati Roy, who as a writer of realist fiction, doesn't dodge her responsibility but instead reiterates her vision and imagination of tomorrow.

HETEROTOPIC SPACES AS THE SPACE OF THE ‘OTHER’ IN ARUNDHATI ROY’S THE 

MINISTRY OF UTMOST HAPPINESS

Conclusion:-

Thus, Arundhati Roy's novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness weaves a story that depicts the gaps and ruptures but finally untangles the web of human relationships by reuniting the characters, who despite various grievances against one another make peace. There are some characters who change their names and identities but finally re-surface and reassess themselves for bringing harmony. In this regard, Anjum is overjoyed to see her adopted daughter Zainab tying the knot with Saddam who gets blessed to pay the last rites to his father murdered in cold blood. Musa gets united with Tilo while Biplab mends his fences with Musa. Biplab's idea of starting a music channel with Naga emerges out of his will to harmonize everyone lost on the sands of time. The shattered story of the novel gets dovetailed with the unifying forces of love.

Arundhati Roy thus employs the heterotopias of deviation to console and settle the traumatic psyche of her gendered subalterns. Heterotopia is a widely accepted concept in literature. Heterotopic spaces in the literature provide the author ample space to settle the traumatized psyche of the protagonists. The graveyard and Khwabagh provide Anjum a place to discover her ‘self’. She likes deep-rooted tree that shelters the human and non-human species. Heterotopic spaces redefine their roles and status. They no longer belong to the state of ‘other’ that the patriarchal society has doomed them. These spaces help them to segregate and build their own world against the hegemonic societal norms.

Work cited:-

Joseph, Sherine Allena, and Dr. Ann Thomas. "ISSN 2395-2636 (Print) | Research Journal Of English Language And Literature | The ISSN Portal". Portal.Issn.Org, 2020, https://portal.issn.org/resource/ISSN/2395-2636. Accessed 17 Mar 2022.

Mishra, Binod. "Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness: Exploring Human Relationships through Changing Socio-Cultural Lens." Researchgate (2020). web. 18 March 2022. <https://www.researchgate.net/publication/338502746_Arundhati_Roy's_The_Ministry_of_Utmost_Happiness_Exploring_Human_Relationships_through_Changing_Socio-Cultural_Lens>. 

Roy, Arundhati. "Arundhati Roy". Conservancy.Umn.Edu, 2009, https://conservancy.umn.edu/bitstream/handle/11299/166316/Roy,%20Arundhati.pdf?sequence=1. Accessed 18 Mar 2022.