The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

I regretfully chastised one of my fellow book-clubbers here for not sticking with this tome of quasi-memoir.  I foolishly bragged that this mish-mosh of gibberish was post-modern literary style, and would soon clarify, like a sixty-year-old Margaux.  I was dead wrong.

Much more like my neighbor’s backyard red, aging doesn’t improve its taste.  Arundhati Roy apparently did not invest her initial fame and fortune into improving her literary skill, but rather, sowed her wild oats gathering stories from far and wide throughout INDIA.  Nothing wrong with that, she earned the time to search for truth.  I always ask the question, though, why did this author write this book?  A lot of effort to complete authoring a book, but easier after you’ve got a Booker Award.  So, was it for money; rekindling the fame-name; or a story that burned to be written? 

Well, it certainly wasn’t the latter, big story.  I can picture the scene in her publisher’s office.  “George, I’ve made you millions and I need an advance.” Hati, it’s been twenty years – a whole new generation, and they don’t know your name.  What are you working on these days?”  “George, I’ve been writing all along – I have file cabinets full of characters, scenes, scraps of stories.”  “Hati, put it all together, I’ll advance you $1,000 a page.” 

And so, we wound up with 441 pages of the toilet flush from Hati Roy’s commode.  She’s got the potential to be a great author, and certainly the creds to be a good one now.  But that isn’t her life’s goal.  She’s spent the past twenty years pursuing her life’s goal.  She’s done a pretty good job of it.  Hasn’t been killed but hasn’t completed her time on Earth.

Why are WE here?  We’re here to support her crusade for change in INDIA.  To re-supply her with money to continue her good works.  That’s it.

Obviously, the Library management and the Foundation bought into this appeal.

To go into any of the “normal” novel-style analysis, like for instance,

   Do we discuss motive and influences behind?

     “Anjum, who now lives in Delhi in a tin shack she has built”

Is a waste of time because they all disappear,

  Since this is more vignettes of a memoir of Hati’s youth.

Maybe this prose is closer to poetry, a series of pleasant (although sometimes not),

    but comforting phrases   -   that give us hope.