The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

by Arundhati Roy

  Suzie Q, mobile shrink, dear friend and best cabbie in London.

  Krishnan Tewari, Sharmila Mitra and Deepa Verma for my daily dose of sweat, sanity and laughter.

  John Cusack, supersweetheart, co-drafter of the Fleedom Charter.

  Eve Ensler and Bindia Thapar. Beloveds.

  My mother like no other, Mary Roy, most unique human.

  My brother, LKC, keeper of my sanity, and sister-in-law, Mary, both of whom, like me, survived.

  Golak. Go. Oldest friend.

  Mithva and Pia. Littles. Still mine.

  David Godwin. Flying Agent. Top Man. Without whom.

  Anthony Arnove, comrade, agent, publisher, rock.

  Pradip Krishen, love of many years, honorary tree.

  Sanjay Kak. Cave. Since forever.

  And

  Begum Filthy Jaan and Maati K. Lal. Creatures.

  —

  Special acknowledgments:

  The passage which the weevil professor reads aloud to his weevil class is adapted from Straw Dogs by John Gray.

  The lyrics of “Dark to Light and Light to Dark” are from “Gone” by Ioanna Gika.

  The poem “Duniya ki mehfilon se ukta gaya hoon ya Rab” is by Allama Iqbal.

  The couplet on Arifa Yeswi’s gravestone is by Ahmed Faraz.

  PERMISSION ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint previously published material:

  Angel Books: Excerpt of “I was washing at night” from Selected Poems by Osip Mandelstam, translated by James Greene. Copyright © 1989, 1991 by James Greene. Reprinted by permission of Angel Books.

  Chrysalis Songs Limited: Excerpt of “Winter Lady,” words and music by Leonard Cohen, copyright © 1966 by Sony/ATV Songs LLC. Reprinted by permission of Chrysalis Songs Limited. All rights reserved. International copyright secured.

  Copper Canyon Press: Excerpt of “LXVI” from The Book of Questions/Libro de las Preguntas by Pablo Neruda, translated by William O’Daly. Copyright © 1974 by Fundacion Pablo Neruda, Pablo Neruda and Heirs of Pablo Neruda. Translation copyright © 1991, 2001 by William O’Daly. Reprinted by permission of The Permissions Company, Inc., on behalf of Copper Canyon Press (www.coppercanyonpress.org).

  Grove/Atlantic, Inc.: Excerpt from Our Lady of Flowers by Jean Genet, copyright © 1963 by Grove Press, Inc., copyright renewed 1991 by Grove Press, Inc. Reprinted by permission of Grove/Atlantic, Inc. Any third party use of this material, outside of this publication, is prohibited.

  Hal Leonard LLC: Excerpt of “Gone,” words and music by Ioanna G. Gika, copyright © 2012 by UPG Music Publishing. All rights in the U.S. and Canada administered by Songs of Universal, Inc. All rights reserved. Reprinted by permission of Hal Leonard LLC.

  The James Baldwin Estate: Excerpt from The Fire Next Time by James Baldwin, copyright © 1963 by James Baldwin, copyright renewed 1991 by Gloria Baldwin Karefa-Smart. Reprinted by permission of The James Baldwin Estate.

  Microhits Music Corp. and Sony/ATV Music Publishing: Excerpt fom “No Good Man” written by Dan Fisher, Irene Higginbotham, and Sammy Gallop. Copyright © 1945 by Microhits Music Corp. and Sony/ATV Music Publishing. Reprinted by permission of Microhits Music Corp. and Sony/ATV Music Publishing.

  Persea Books, Inc: Excerpt of “On the Matter of Romeo and Juliet” from Poems of Nazim Hikmet by Nazim Hikmet, translated by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Translation copyright © 1994 by Randy Blasing and Mutlu Konuk. Reprinted by permission of Persea Books, Inc (www.perseabooks.com). All rights reserved.

  Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc.: Hope Against Hope: A Memoir by Nadezha Mandelstam, translated from the Russian by Max Hayward. Copyright © 1970 by Atheneum Publishers. Reprinted with the permission of Scribner, a division of Simon & Schuster, Inc. All rights reserved.

  W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.: “Muharram in Srinagar, 1992” from The Country Without a Post Office by Agha Shahid Ali, copyright © 1997 by Agha Shahid Ali. Reprinted by permission of W. W. Norton & Company, Inc.

  A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Arundhati Roy is the author of The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize and has been translated into more than forty languages. She also has published several books of nonfiction, including The End of Imagination, Capitalism: A Ghost Story and The Doctor and the Saint. She lives in New Delhi.

  An Alfred A. Knopf Reading Guide

  The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

  by Arundhati Roy

  The questions, discussion topics, and other material that follow are intended to enhance your group’s conversation about The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Booker Prize–winner Arundhati Roy’s dazzling new novel that explores deeply connected layers of family, love, and identity, set against the backdrop of contemporary India.

  Discussion Questions

  1. The novel opens with a vignette describing the mysterious death of vultures—and how “not many noticed the passing of the friendly old birds” (this page). How does this occurrence set the stage and tone for the rest of the novel with regard to the state of India’s society and the unrest that the characters experience within themselves and with the outside world? How does that mood transition into the graveyard setting of the first part of the book?

  2. Discuss the complications of Aftab’s upbringing and his parents’ reactions to their child’s gender. What does the family dynamic suggest about the role that biology plays in determining one’s true family versus an individual’s ability to create or choose one’s family?

  3. Anjum is told that a Hijra is “a living creature that is incapable of happiness…The riot is inside us. The war is inside us” (this page). To what extent do you see this manifest in Anjum’s character throughout the book, and in what ways does she defy that definition?

  4. What roles do magic and superstition play throughout the novel? Which characters are more inclined to subscribe to unconventional beliefs, and do they seem more comforted or disillusioned by those beliefs in the face of harsh realities?

  5. Discuss the following idea: “What mattered was that [the moment] 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” (this page). How does the formal inventiveness and variation of the novel’s narrative—which is told through documents, written and oral histories, and other archival materials passed among characters or left in their absence—attest to this sense of one’s relevance in history at any given moment? What are the different characters’ motives for leaving an impression of their existence?

  6. How does the variety of perspectives that the documents in the novel afford you as a reader—from Tilo’s notebooks to the letter from Miss Jebeen the Second’s real mother—different, if not conflicting, portraits of the political conflict going on in Kashmir? Overall, did they allow you to more clearly see one side’s argument over another’s? What kind of texture did the shifts in narrative form create in your overall reading experience?

  7. What is the intersection between death and life in the novel? Consider the ways in which Anjum’s graveyard/funeral parlor prospers and grows throughout the novel, and the notion that “Dying became just another way of living” (this page).

  8. How does Roy create the atmosphere and emotional tenor of the novel’s primary cities/places in India? What sensory details or descriptions stuck with you the most as the backdrop for the characters’ somewhat nomadic existence?

  9. Did you find there to be more similarities or differences between places or scenes where protesting and violence occur in contrast to those where there is relative peace and civility? How does the point of view from which a given scene is narrated affect how you see a place?

  10. How is parenthood, and, more specifically, motherhood, explored in the novel? Discuss in particular the mother-child bonds that Anjum, Tilo, and both Miss Jebeens experience.

  11. How is religion a defining feature for
characters in the novel and a main source of conflict in the society depicted? How do the differing beliefs and political loyalties affect events that transpire in the novel’s different geographical areas of conflict?

  12. What role does gender play in the novel, in terms of how characters are expected and allowed to behave as well as how they respond to certain emotions, events, and treatments? Is gender the primary way a person identifies instead of by religion, political party, ethnicity/country of origin, or even profession?

  13. The Landlord’s chapters are the only sections written in the first person. How does that point of view color your understanding of the relationship among him, Tilo, Naga, and Musa, including the knowledge that they met on the set of a play? What makes this web of love so intricate, and how does the war intensify their bonds even as it threatens to shatter them?

  14. Musa is one character whose identity must be repressed in various ways to ensure his safety, and even his most arduous disguises are not always successful. What does his struggle and that of others in similar situations (people who disappear and/or transform into others) suggest about the mutability of one’s identity—whether it be by necessity or by organic change? How might you interpret the line “Only the dead are free” in that context (this page)?

  15. Discuss the lines of poetry that Tilo writes the end of the book, “How / to / tell / a / shattered / story? / By / slowly / becoming / everybody. /No. / By slowly becoming everything” (this page). How do the main characters—Tilo, Musa, Naga, and Anjum—embody the idea of telling a story through the assimilation of its many fragments?

  16. By the end of the novel, how did you interpret the meaning of its title?

  Suggested Reading

  Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, Half of a Yellow Sun

  Kiran Desai, The Inheritance of Loss

  Anthony Doerr, All the Light We Cannot See

  Jhumpa Lahiri, The Lowland

  Anthony Marra, A Constellation of Vital Phenomena

  Herman Melville, Moby-Dick

  Rohinton Mistry, A Fine Balance

  Salman Rushdie, Midnight’s Children

  Vikram Seth, A Suitable Boy

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