The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

by Arundhati Roy

  In faraway Gujarat, Gujarat ka Lalla recognized the appearance of the old man–baby as a sign from the gods. With a predator’s unerring instinct, he accelerated his March to Delhi. By the fifth day of the old man’s fast, Lalla was (metaphorically speaking) camped outside the city gates. His army of belligerent janissaries flooded Jantar Mantar. They overwhelmed the old man with boisterous declarations of support. Their flags were bigger, their songs louder than anyone else’s. They set up counters and distributed free food to the poor. (They were flush with funds from millionaire God Men who were supporters of Lalla.) They were under strict instructions not to wear their signature saffron headbands, not to carry saffron flags and never to mention Gujarat’s Beloved by name even in passing. It worked. Within days they had pulled off a palace coup. The young professionals who had worked so hard to make the old man famous were deposed before they, or even he, understood what had happened. The Happy Meadow fell. And nobody realized. The Trapped Rabbit was dead meat. Soon the Beloved would ride into Delhi. His people, wearing paper masks of his likeness, would carry him on their shoulders chanting his name—Lalla! Lalla! Lalla!—and place him on the throne. Wherever he looked, he would see only himself. The new Emperor of Hindustan. He was an ocean. He was infinity. He was humanity itself. But that was still a year away.

  For now, in Jantar Mantar, his supporters shouted themselves hoarse about government corruption. (Murdabad! Murdabad! Down! Down! Down! Down!) At night they rushed home to watch themselves on TV. Until they returned in the morning the old man and his “core group” of a few supporters looked a little desolate under the billowing white canopy that was large enough to accommodate a crowd of thousands.

  —

  Right next to the anti-corruption canopy, in a clearly demarcated space under the spreading branches of an old Tamarind tree, another well-known Gandhian activist had committed herself to a fast to the death on behalf of thousands of farmers and indigenous tribespeople whose land had been appropriated by the government to be given to a petrochemicals corporation for a captive coal mine and thermal power plant in Bengal. It was the nineteenth indefinite hunger strike of her career. Even though she was a good-looking woman with a spectacular plait of long hair, she was far less popular with the TV cameras than the old man. The reason for this wasn’t mysterious. The petrochemicals corporation owned most of the television channels and advertised hugely on the others. So angry commentators made guest appearances in TV studios denouncing her and insinuating that she was being funded by a “foreign power.” A good number of the commentators as well as journalists were on the corporation’s payroll too and did their best by their employers. But on the pavement, the people around her loved her. Grizzled farmers fanned mosquitoes from her face. Sturdy peasant women massaged her feet and gazed at her adoringly. Apprentice activists, some of them young students from Europe and America, dressed in loose hippy outfits, composed her convoluted press releases on their laptop computers. Several intellectuals and concerned citizens squatted on the pavement explaining farmers’ rights to farmers who had been fighting for their rights for years. PhD students from foreign universities working on social movements (an extremely sought-after subject) conducted long interviews with the farmers, grateful that their fieldwork had come to the city instead of their having to trek all the way out to the countryside where there were no toilets and filtered water was hard to find.

  A dozen hefty men in civil clothes but with uncivil haircuts (short back and sides) and uncivil socks and shoes (khaki socks, brown boots) had distributed themselves among the crowd, blatantly eavesdropping on conversations. Some of them pretended to be journalists and filmed conversations with small Handycams. They paid special attention to the young foreigners (many of whom would soon find their visas revoked).

  The TV lights made the hot air hotter. Suicidal moths bombed the sun guns and the night smelled of charred insect. Fifteen severely disabled people, sullen and tired from a long, hot day’s begging, hovered in the dark, just outside the circle of lights, resting their buckled backs and wasted limbs on government-issue, hand-operated cycle rickshaws. The displaced farmers and their famous leader had displaced them from the coolest, shadiest stretch of pavement where they usually lived. So their sympathies were entirely with the petrochemicals industry. They wanted the farmers’ agitation to end as soon as possible so they could have their spot back.

  Some distance away a bare-torsoed man, with yellow limes stuck all over his body with superglue, sucked noisily on a thick mango drink from a small carton. He refused to say why he had stuck limes to his skin or why he was drinking mango juice even though he seemed to be promoting limes, and grew abusive if anyone asked. Another freelancer, who called himself a “performance artist,” wandered aimfully through the crowds wearing a suit and tie and an English bowler hat. From a distance his suit looked as though it had seekh kebabs printed all over it, but on closer inspection they turned out to be perfectly shaped turds. The wilted red rose pinned to his collar had turned black. A triangle of white handkerchief peeped out of his breast pocket. When asked what his message was, in refreshing contrast to the rudeness of the Lime Man, he patiently explained that his body was his instrument and he wanted the so-called civilized world to lose its aversion to shit and accept that shit was just processed food. And vice versa. He also explained that he wanted to take Art out of Museums and bring it to “The People.”

  Sitting near the Lime Man (who ignored them completely) were Anjum, Saddam Hussain and Ustad Hameed. With them was a striking-looking young Hijra, Ishrat, a guest at Jannat Guest House who was visiting from Indore. Of course it had been Anjum’s idea—her long-standing desire to “help the poor”—which made her suggest they go to Jantar Mantar to see for themselves what the “Second Freedom Struggle” the TV channels had been broadcasting was all about. Saddam was dismissive: “You don’t have to go all the way there to find out. I can tell you now—it’s the motherfucker of all scams.” But Anjum had been adamant and of course Saddam would not let her go alone. So they made up a little party, Anjum, Saddam (still in his sunglasses) and Nimmo Gorakhpuri. Ustad Hameed, who had dropped in to see Anjum, was dragooned into the expedition, as was young Ishrat. They decided to go at night when the crowds would be comparatively thinner. Anjum had dressed down, in one of her drabber Pathan suits, though she could not resist a hairclip, a dupatta and a touch of lipstick. Ishrat was dressed as though she was at her own wedding—in a lurid pink kurta with sequins and a green Patiala salwar. She ignored all advice to the contrary and wore bright pink lipstick and enough jewelry to light up the night. Nimmo had driven Anjum, Ishrat and Ustad Hameed in her car. Saddam had arranged to meet them there. He rode Payal to Jantar Mantar and tethered her to a railing some distance away (and promised a cheeky little shoe-shine boy two choco-bars and ten rupees to keep an eye on her). Sensing Nimmo Gorakhpuri’s restlessness, Saddam had tried to entertain her with the animal videos he had on his phone—some that he had shot himself, of the stray dogs and cats and cows he came across on his daily treks across the city, and others he had received from friends on WhatsApp: See, this fellow is called Chaddha Sahib. He never barks. Every day at 4 p.m. sharp he comes to this park to play with his girlfriend. This cow loves tomatoes. I take her some every day. This one has a bad case of itching. Have you seen this lion standing on two legs and kissing this woman…? Yes, she’s a woman. You can tell when she turns around…Since none of them featured goats or Western women’s fashion, they did nothing to alleviate Nimmo Gorakhpuri’s boredom and she soon excused herself and left. Anjum on the other hand was fascinated by the bustle, the banners and the bits of conversation she overheard. She insisted they stay on and “learn something.” So, like everybody else on the pavement, they settled into their own little huddle. Headquartered there, Anjum sent her envoy—His Excellency, Plenipotentiary, Saddam Hussain—from group to group to get a quick low-down on where they were from, what their protest was about and what their demands were. Saddam went obe
diently from stall to stall like a shopper in a political flea market, returning every now and then to brief Anjum about the insights he had gained. She sat cross-legged on the ground, leaning forward and listening intently, nodding, half smiling, but not looking at Saddam as he spoke because her head was turned and her shining eyes were fixed firmly on whichever group it was that he was talking about. Ustad Hameed was not remotely interested in the information Saddam brought. But the expedition was a welcome change from his daily routine so he was content to be part of it and hummed to himself as he looked around absent-mindedly. Ishrat, inappropriately dressed and absurdly vain, spent all her time taking selfies from various angles with different backgrounds. Though nobody paid much attention to her (it was a No-contest between her and the old man–baby) she was careful not to stray too far from base camp. At one point she and Ustad Hameed dissolved into a spasm of schoolgirl giggles. When Anjum asked what was so funny, Ustad Hameed told her how his grandchildren had tutored their grandmother to call him (her husband) a “bloody fucking bitch,” which she had been given to understand was a term of endearment in English.

  “She had no idea what she was saying, she looked so sweet when she said it,” Ustad Hameed said, laughing. “Bloody fucking bitch! That’s what my begum calls me…”

  “What does it mean?” Anjum asked. (She knew what the English word “bitch” meant, but not “bloody” and “fucking.”) Before Ustad Hameed could begin to explain (although even he wasn’t all that sure himself, he just knew it was bad), they were interrupted by a long-haired, bearded young man in floaty, shabby clothes and an equally shabbily dressed girl with gorgeous, wild hair that she wore loose. They were making a documentary film about Protest and Resistance, they explained, and one of the recurring themes of the film was to have protesters say, “Another World Is Possible” in whatever language they spoke. For example, if their mother tongue was Hindi or Urdu, they could say, “Doosri duniya mumkin hai…” They set up their camera while they were talking and asked Anjum to look straight into the lens when she spoke. They had no idea what “Duniya” meant in Anjum’s lexicon. Anjum, for her part, completely uncomprehending, stared into the camera. “Hum doosri Duniya se aaye hain,” she explained helpfully, which meant: We’ve come from there…from the other world.

  The young film-makers, who had a long night’s work ahead of them, exchanged glances and decided to move on rather than try to explain what they meant because it would take too long. They thanked Anjum and crossed the road to the opposite pavement where several groups had their own separate canopies.

  In the first, seven men with shaved heads, dressed in white dhotis, had taken a vow of silence, claiming they would not speak until Hindi was declared India’s national language—its official mother tongue—over the twenty-two other official languages and hundreds of unofficial ones. Three of the bald men were asleep and the other four had slipped down their white hospital masks (their “vow of silence” prop) in order to drink their late-night tea. Since they could not speak, the film-makers gave them a small poster that said Another World Is Possible to hold up. They made sure that the banner with the demand for Hindi to be declared the national language was out of frame, because both film-makers agreed it was a somewhat regressive demand. But they felt that bald men with masks provided good visual texture for their film, and ought not to be passed over.

  Occupying a substantial part of the pavement quite close to the bald men were fifty representatives of the thousands of people who had been maimed in the 1984 Union Carbide gas leak in Bhopal. They had been on the pavement for two weeks. Seven of them were on an indefinite hunger strike, their condition deteriorating steadily. They had walked to Delhi all the way from Bhopal, hundreds of kilometers in the searing summer sun, to demand compensation: clean water and medical care for themselves and the generations of deformed babies who were born after the gas leak. The Trapped Rabbit had refused to meet the Bhopalis. The TV crews were not interested in them; their struggle was too old to make the news. Photographs of deformed babies, misshapen aborted fetuses in bottles of formaldehyde and the thousands who had been killed, maimed and blinded in the gas leak were strung up like macabre bunting on the railings. On a small TV monitor (they had managed to get an electricity connection from a nearby church) grainy old footage played on a loop: a jaunty young Warren Anderson, the American CEO of the Union Carbide Corporation, arriving at Delhi airport days after the disaster. “I’ve just arrived,” he tells the jostling journalists. “I don’t know the details yet. So hey! Whaddya want me to say?” Then he looks straight into the TV cameras and waves, “Hi Mom!”

  On and on through the night he went: “Hi Mom! Hi Mom! Hi Mom! Hi Mom! Hi Mom…”

  An old banner, faded from decades of use, said, Warren Anderson is a war criminal. A newer one said, Warren Anderson has killed more people than Osama bin Laden.

  Next to the Bhopalis was the Delhi Kabaadi-Wallahs’ (Waste-recyclers’) Association and the Sewage Workers’ Union, protesting against the privatization and corporatization of the city’s garbage and the city’s sewage. The corporation that bid for and won the contract was the same one that had been given farmers’ land for its power plant. It already ran the city’s electricity and water distribution. Now it owned the city’s shit and waste-disposal systems too.

  Right next to the waste-recyclers and the sewage workers was the plushest part of the pavement, a glittering public toilet with float glass mirrors and a shiny granite floor. The toilet lights stayed on, night and day. It cost one rupee for a piss, two for a shit and three for a shower. Not many on the pavement could afford these rates. Many pissed outside the toilet, against the wall. So, though the toilet was spotlessly clean inside, from the outside it gave off the sharp smoky smell of stale urine. It didn’t matter very much to the management; the toilet’s revenue came from elsewhere. The exterior wall doubled up as a billboard that advertised something new every week.

  This week it was Honda’s newest luxury car. The billboard had its own personal guard. Gulabiya Vechania lived under a small blue plastic sheet right next to the billboard. This accommodation was a step up from where he’d begun. When he first arrived in the city a year ago, out of abject terror as well as necessity, Gulabiya had lived in a tree. Now he had a job, and some semblance of shelter. The name of the security agency he worked for was embroidered on the epaulettes of his stained blue shirt: TSGS Security. (A rival concern to Sangeeta Madam Haramzaadi Bitch’s SSGS.) His job was to prevent vandalism, in particular, to thwart repeated attempts being made by certain miscreants to urinate right on to the billboard. He worked seven days a week, twelve hours a day. That night Gulabiya was drunk and had dropped off to sleep when someone sprayed Inqilab Zindabad! Long Live Revolution! right across the silver Honda City. Below that, someone else scrawled a poem.

  Chheen li tumne garib ki rozi roti

  Aur laga diye hain fees karne pe tatti

  You’ve snatched poor folks’ daily bread

  And slapped a fee on their shit instead

  Gulabiya would lose his job in the morning. Thousands like him would line up hoping to replace him. (One might even be the street poet himself.) But for now, Gulabiya slept soundly and dreamed deep. In his dream he had enough money to feed himself and send a little home to his family in his village. In his dream his village still existed. It wasn’t at the bottom of a dam reservoir. Fish didn’t swim through his windows. Crocodiles didn’t knife through the high branches of the Silk Cotton trees. Tourists didn’t go boating over his fields, leaving rainbow clouds of diesel in the sky. In his dream his brother Luariya wasn’t a tour-guide at the dam-site whose job was to showcase the miracles the dam had wrought. His mother didn’t work as a sweeper in a dam-engineer’s house that was built on the land that she once owned. She didn’t have to steal mangoes from her own trees. She didn’t live in a resettlement colony in a tin hut with tin walls and a tin roof that was so hot you could fry onions on it. In Gulabiya’s dream his river was still flowi
ng, still alive. Naked children still sat on rocks, playing the flute, diving into the water to swim among the buffaloes when the sun grew too hot. There were leopard and sambar and sloth bear in the Sal forest that clothed the hills above the village, where during festivals his people would gather with their drums to drink and dance for days.

  All he had left from his old life now were his memories, his flute and his earrings (which he was not allowed to wear to work).

  Unlike the irresponsible Gulabiya Vechania, who had failed in his duty to protect the silver Honda City, Janak Lal Sharma, the toilet “in-charge,” was wide awake and working hard. His dog-eared logbook was updated. The money in his wallet was organized carefully, by denomination. He had a separate pouch for coins. He supplemented his salary by allowing activists, journalists and TV cameramen to recharge their mobile phones, laptops and camera batteries from the power point in the toilet for the price of six showers and a shit (i.e., twenty rupees). Sometimes he allowed people to shit for the price of a piss and didn’t enter it in the logbook. At first he was a little careful with the anti-corruption activists. (They were not hard to identify—they were less poor and more aggressive than everybody else. Though they were fashionably dressed in jeans and T-shirts, most of them wore white Gandhi caps stamped with a solarized print of the old man–baby smiling his Farex-baby smile.) Janak Lal Sharma took care to charge them the proper rates and log the nature of each one’s ablution correctly and carefully. But some of them, especially the second batch of new arrivals, who were even more aggressive than the first, grew resentful that they were being charged more than the others. Soon, with them too, it became business as usual. With his extra income he subcontracted his toilet-cleaning duties, which were unthinkable for a man of his caste and background to perform (he was a Brahmin), to Suresh Balmiki who, as his name makes clear, belonged to what most Hindus overtly, and the government covertly, thought of as the shit-cleaning caste. With the increasing unrest in the country, the endless stream of protesters arriving on the pavement, and all the TV coverage, even after setting aside what he paid Suresh Balmiki, Janak Lal had earned enough to make a down payment on an LIG flat.