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I
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n her 2nd fictional novel, that took 20
years to write, Anjum (Majnu), the bisexual, leads the story with her strange
life, while the latter main characters, Tilo (S. Tilottoma) and the trio of her
lovers, Musa, Naga and the Landlord, carries the dangling story with their own
little, tragic tales, and together combined, both separately and collectively,
these two broadly immersive stories, produce an impactful book that only
Arundhati is capable of writing.
When
I first read Arundhati, her The God of
Small Things of course, during the train-ride to Rawalpindi, I was an
immature (but mature enough to see its godlikeness), unwise, and a
shallow-depth reader. This time when I read Arundhati, her The Ministry of Utmost Happiness of course, during the train-ride
to Rawalpindi, I was a mature (mature-r than last time, to see its
godlikeness), wiser, and a deeper reader, and thus, avengedly, reading her for
the 2nd time paid off in the way that I wish my first encounter with
Roy would have had. I still believe that it’s not easy to read Arundhati. It
takes patience and a stamina for reading that you probably wouldn’t have
because no other writer has made you feel the need for it through their writing
because no other writing style is as unique as Arundhati’s. But still, when I
found that Arundhati (one of my most beloved writers) has come up with another
novel while I was scrolling through the list of nominees for the best
‘Fiction-Book’ of 2017 on the Goodreads website, I wanted to test myself again,
to refill the shortcomings I had as a reader when I first read her, to feel
challenged again, to read another godlike novel. No paperbacks available yet
being a recent novel, never mind, I was, by then, accustomed to read from a
screen, which I did again, without losing a breath (e-books are always
available).
But
where
do I start from, now that I have, god-graciously, read this book? Do I start
with the striking name for the novel, equally striking if not less than the last one? Or do I start
with the literature, so impure, so shamelessly ugly, yet so excessively
beautiful and so normally striking? Or do I start with the characters, too many
of them, yet so well detailed that everyone felt like a friend, like a mother,
like a lover, like a stranger you cared for, or like a crowd you’d miss when
you’re done reading? Or do I talk about brutality, injustice, massacre, all so
closely and truthfully told that it leaves you haunted, weeping? Or do I talk about
how magically the story lines came together and how beautifully they came to an
end? But to write so particularly might take away from the essence of this
novel, nor would it be possible to pen down each neat detail and praise each
line, each purposefully accurate word, each smallest thing discussed, because
there are so many of them and because only Arundhati has that god-of small
things-like ability. However, I have to do the justice on my part here, the
least or the most I could do, to a novel I so consciously read and deeply
embraced; let’s review it.
The
stories told here are so commonly peculiar, yet everlastingly impactful. They
are strange and yet weirdly pleasant to read, no less than addictive. But what
makes this novel, and the previous one too, so plainly fantastic and so easily
the grandest, is the pure talent of Arundhati’s way of thinking, her extremely
keen observation, her belongingness to her rather ugly (from world’s perspective)
background, and her origin-embracedly, unique, raw yet refined way of writing.
Her literature alongside her great many characters are what make this novel one
of 2017’s bests. The novel is, at times or for most of the times, too detailed
to be fiction; there’s no lazy writing. None. The accurate details that make
the scenes and the events, or the pleasantly specific, abstract writing, are
too real-like to feel unreal. It sort of blurs the line between what’s real and
what’s not. However, there are consecutive surprises, when the storylines are
not so specifically talked about, that keeps the novel fresh and the readers
invested. Complementing these pieces is, again, the peculiar way for Roy’s
writing, which is a mixture of a sweet amount of witty, sensible, savvy writing,
and plenty, yet always fresh amount of unique writing that seems to filtered
through an ugly, realistic, ordinarily extraordinary eyes. And what the mixture
produces is nothing like any other. It’s grand and it’s addictive! With this
style of putting thoughts to words, the author, Arundhati, walks a fine line
between pure genius and total stupidity, but what she accomplishes lies not
only on the genius side but far beyond it. Her knowledge and her touch of
intelligence in writing makes her an amazingly accomplished writer.
Where
the strong, brave literature clothes The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, the
characters embodies it. For any other novel, these many characters may seem
hard to handle, animals included, but Arundhati does it so graciously that it
hardly seems crowded; each character fills the missing piece and combines to
make a great picture – that of Utmost Happiness. But since it’s not a
fictionally built world where fake tragedies are immediately met with happy
results, there are heart breaking moments, the real ones what leave your eyes
sparkling from the undropped tears, and there are quite a handful of these
moments. The untimely death of Miss
Jabeen The First was the part where it got real intense. Reading through
this part, I was stabbed many times and many times my wounds were iced, and it
repeated endlessly. It was after a long time that a story played with my
emotions so intensely, first being Hosseini, who had done a similar thing to my
heart with his novel A Thousand Splendid
Suns (my most favorite novel), and I am so glad those scars, those tortured
feelings were visited again; it makes one feel alive.
But
even
a novel so perfect, comes with some exceptions. Close to mid parts, the story
got a little stretched where the political aspects crawled in, and me not being
a political student or a politics-liking student, I didn’t really enjoy it. And
while I praised the very minute details before, here I’d address the
distractions they caused, whether it got boring or a little too much, they just
weren’t welcomed some of the times. And sometimes, a storyline started, then
just after a paragraph, found its way into sub-storylines and started building
them rather the main one, which was weird and annoying to some extent (careless writing is what NYTimes called it). It got even more
complex, confusing, and frustrating when the plot jumped from one main
storyline to another; the transition was abrupt, and not foreseeable. But then
again, as I said before, reading Roy isn’t easy, it takes patience. But what I
can’t categorize as good or bad though, are the other little things that stood
out to be noticed, but weren’t judged: the random, rather useless, text
messages, the unique way a sentence was repeated twice, but backwards (there
are a few of them) which felt good to read to be honest, or the little noises
that were spelled, baby noises, the noises of the slippers walking on streets
and others. I just couldn’t leave them unnoticed. It’s the small things after
all.
An Excerpt: (I literally had
three pages, more than 100 lines, noted down. But sadly, I have to go with
one.)
“She wondered how to un-know certain things,
certain specific things that she knew but did not wish to know.”
I
saved this part particularly for my last paragraph: “How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everyone. No. By
slowly becoming everything.” This, indeed, is a story that is told not only
through everyone’s perspective, but through everything’s perspective as well.
Arundhati takes in account everything when it comes to telling a story, from
people to animals to things, from ordinaries to the a level even below
ordinaries. One can only understand what not seeing (noticing) everything that
we see every day means after reading Arundhati. I wanted to love the heck out
of this book. I was so desperate to, this time with all acknowledgments and
understanding, embrace and respect her novels which I failed to do last time.
And although it started with exactly that (it’s getting a 5 star for sure), it
switched in the middle (maybe not, it lost its charm), and back to exactly
where it started (it’s one of my top 5 favorites). It’s such an amazing
experience to read her. It glorifies your days even when things outside her
fictional realm aren’t going well – reading her neutralizes everything.
It is
easy to love the beautiful, be with someone charming, live amongst the
comforts, to laugh, but it’s difficult to embrace the ugly, live in the dark,
be the ordinary and to accept it, to think – and Arundhati Roy teaches you to
do the difficult. She’ll make you accept yourself, however incomplete, embrace
the ugliness (or purity, same thing I reckon), and love the ordinaries –
especially, loving the ordinaries!
My praise for the novel:
Truly significant. One that I’ll refer to many years from now
for all its originality, grandness, and uniqueness.
Rating: 5/5
*****
A review by: Ejaz
Hussain
Feb9th,
2018