海角大神

Arundhati Roy鈥檚 first novel, 鈥淭he God of Small Things,鈥� is one of the few that justifies the oxymoron 鈥渋nstant classic.鈥� The Delhi-based star-crossed romance won the Booker Prize in 1997 and catapulted its author to international fame 鈥� and a scrutiny few would be comfortable with.聽

Roy, then in her 30s, reportedly donated her prize money to activists protesting the displacement of villagers by dams, eschewed modeling offers, and turned to political writing and activism, including the fate of the India-occupied state of Kashmir.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, her first novel in two decades, offers a sprawling tale in which the battle over Kashmir figures largely. It鈥檚 a big book in which the rising factionalism between India鈥檚 Hindus and Muslims spills over into violence, and sanctuary can only be found among the outcasts and in forgotten spaces like graveyards.聽

The novel is almost impossible to sum up, but twin plots cluster around two women: Anjum and Tilo. The first was born a hermaphrodite and left her family 鈥� who wanted her to live as a boy 鈥� for life as a Hijra in an intersex community. Hijras, as Roy details, have traditions going back hundreds of years in India. The second is an architect-turned-activist who gets swept up in the Kashmiri struggle for independence.

鈥淭he riot is聽inside聽us. The war is聽inside聽us. Indo-Pak is聽inside聽us. It will never settle down. It聽肠补苍鈥檛,鈥� another Hijra tells Anjum, making the case that trans people like them are a metaphorical embodiment of the religious divisions polarizing India.

Anjum gets caught in pogroms against Muslims in a way that nearly destroys her. 鈥淚鈥檓 a聽mehfil, I鈥檓 a gathering. Of everybody and nobody, of everything and nothing,鈥� she says at the beginning of the novel. Her place of retreat is a cemetery, where she builds a series of ramshackle rooms above the graves of her family and starts collecting strays and waifs in need of shelter. The Jannat Guest House, as she calls it, serves as home for a growing list of minor characters, including an orphan who renamed himself Saddam Hussein. Anjum and her graveyard family could have been scope enough for a novel, but Roy then switches gears entirely to Tilo鈥檚 story.

We learn about Tilo first through three men who went to school with her and loved her: a Kashmiri activist, a journalist, and a member of the Indian security forces. Garson Hobart, as Tilo nicknamed him, starts things off with a jaded tone entirely different from what鈥檚 come before. 鈥淣ormality in our part of the world is a bit like a boiled egg. Its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence,鈥� he says. 鈥淎s long as the center holds, as long as the yolk doesn鈥檛 run, we鈥檒l be fine."

Explaining the conflict over Kashmir, he says, 鈥淚t made for the perfect war, a war that can never be won or lost, a war without end...鈥� before his alcohol-fueled grief spills over into the tale of how Tilo came back into his life, courtesy of a message she sent through her torturer.聽

Anjum鈥檚 and Tilo鈥檚 stories do connect, eventually, but it鈥檚 easy to see how a reader could lose patience waiting for that to happen. Those who do not share Roy鈥檚 political views on Kashmir 鈥� which don鈥檛 read here as a screed but are clearly deeply held 鈥� also are unlikely to enjoy her new novel, which vividly portrays the brutality inflicted on those even tangentially caught up in the conflict. The stories that stayed with him, one of the characters says, are the ones where 鈥渉ope and grief were woven together in it, so tightly, so inextricably.鈥澛�

鈥淭he Ministry of Utmost Happiness鈥� is a magpie kind of tale 鈥� a heaping collection of tossed-together treasures nested in Roy鈥檚 deep sense of compassion for minorities and those cast off by society.