Anjum wasn’t born a woman or a man, but chooses to be a woman, and life takes her to ‘Khwabgah’ where she lives among a community of Hijras (transgenders). The first being Anjum, and the second being Tilottama.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness describes the journeys of two women. What brings it together? Perhaps it is the reader’s own life experience. But if one reads on and contextualises its subtle meanings and its relevance to the ‘Duniya’ in which we live in, then a small window opens up where all of it comes together. But if you remove Roy’s personal journey and India’s current political climate, and evaluate the book itself as a literary piece, you might get disappointed. The Booker Prize winning author’s own life journey has had its share of conflict due to the stands she’s taken on volatile issues that have engulfed India. But as Arundhati Roy re-emerges after a long hiatus, she produces a complex text which is an admixture of fiction and the political thought she has affiliated to in the two decades between the two books.

That it took two decades to publish her second piece of fiction (she wrote other non-fiction books in the interim), has left many readers aching for far too long. The first being the The God of Small Things and the second being the recently released The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. LtdĪrundhati Roy is the author of two books of fiction. Publisher: Penguin Random House India Pvt.

The ministry of happiness