Arun Dhatti Roy said: “To me, there is nothing higher than fiction. I am a teller of stories. Her debut novel - ‘The God of Small Things’ proved this claim.
After the gap of almost two decades, ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ published. The story narrated in whisper artistic use of simile and allusions. The whisper of oppressed people whose voices have been buried under the debris of history.
The novel divided into 12 chapters entitled: ‘where do old birds go to die?’ ‘khwabgah’, ‘the nativity’, ‘Dr. Azad Bhartia’, ‘The Slow Goose Chase’, ‘Some Questions for Later’, ‘The landlord’, ‘The Tenant.’ The untimely death of Ms. Farhat Jabeen the first ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ and ‘Guih Kyum’.
The main characters are ‘Anjum,Tilo, Ms. Udaya Jabeen, Ms. Jabeen, Musa and Azad Bhartia. These people belong to the lower tier of the society. Arum’s beautiful style fabricated a remarkable plot. The central theme of the story is post-colonial aftershocks. Roy tries to interpret the capacity of common man to bear post-independence traumatic disorder. She demonstrates the significance of hope. The central character (the hero & the heroine at the same time) Anjum represents not a person, class or religion but a civilisation a beautiful past that met a dreadful fate at its end.
Why Arun Dhatti Roy took a long time to write her 2nd novel? The answer is ‘Anjum’, she created this character, it seems, after 20 years in meditation. This character itself is symbolic and it unfolds the story by the metaphors used.
Graveyard and grave of Sarmad Shaheed and vultures help the readers to understand the meanings running between the lines. When we imagined the condition of Mirza Ghalib’s letter in the context of post 1857 situation in Dehli, the character of Anjum explores a lot. The untimely death of Miss Farhat Jabeen is full of grief and hopelessness but the Miss Uday Jabeen, the second baby, is hope in violent situation.
‘Udaya’ means, sunrise but the birth of later Ms. Jabeen is more tragic then earlier death. The continuity of culture/norms and family system has been broken. Novelist also used love as literary tool, Peblo Nevoda, Agha Shahid Ali are the example in this regard.
The character of Tilo and her three lovers represent love and hate, peace and violence, beauty and ugliness of the society. Author succeeded to reflex whole picture through the mirror of few characters. She invites the reader to reach the facts in the junk of selected narrative.
Cemetery as place of meeting and Hijra as head of ‘mehfil’ are question marks on the face of a secular society. The issues highlighted in the story couldn’t be written by anyone else except Arun Dhatty Roy.
Some critic rightly objected that ‘Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ missed the element of creativity and sultry. The Novel’s second part failed to turn the theme into literary masterpiece. It is a million dollar question whether Roy doesn’t know the difference between report and fiction or she deliberately opted to write like this. It seems that it is her planned strategy. I personally believe that she can narrate in the style of Gibrial Gorcia Marquis but she is well verse of the limited readership of fiction. And more over to understand the complexed plot (like the hundred years of solitude) for ordinary reader is an uphill task.
Arun Dhatty Roy decided to convey the reality to her audience. She succeeded in exposing the selected colonial narrative. Undoubtedly, the novel demands us to review our skewed acumen and tries to find out the truth.
‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ somehow looks like the sequel of ‘Aag ka Darya’, ‘Udas Naslien’, ‘Chand Gehn’ and ‘Aangan.’
Dr. Fareed Hussainee
University of Chakwal