Abortion, war , Happiness in the graveyard.- reading Arundathi Roy in Guyana

Picture of St James The Less Cemetery, Subryanville taken just for this blog...

(This is not a review of Arundathi Roy's Ministry of Utmost Happiness )

Graveyards
I live within walking distance of three graveyards - the Muslim Burial ground, the St James-the-Less (Christian) cemetery and a small Hindu burial ground which is no longer used.

A man , Ali, who does odd jobs  lives sometimes in the Muslim Burial ground. The St James-the-Less cemetery is fenced off now, probably to stop the one or two people who used to sleep on the tombs. The last time I passed the Hindu burial ground it seems to have been turned into a rubbish dump.

The book starts  with vultures dying from diclofenac poisoning. I laugh when I think about the first page  because I have 75mg of diclofenac in my body and contemplating another to deal with a pain in the foot. I am not laughing at vultures dying.

The book then moves to the graveyard and introduces Anjum who "lived in the graveyard like a tree".  

The book ends with Anjum looking at the Jannat Guest House which is in the graveyard  - "with a sense of contentment and accomplishment".

Arundathi Roy has been writing and speaking brilliantly since her first book The God of Small Things. She has been writing articles, saying things, being charged for sedition.
I am glad for the hours I have available, well the hours I made available. I am turning page after page, laughing at her ironical twists, and understanding the politics. She writes about Anjum loving the ram she will later kill in the sacrifice for Eid, about Saddam Hussein taking everyone to the mall which had opened above the land where police killed his father.

 I realise half way through though.. that the characters are not really speaking too much.

Nikita Blair, also reading in Guyana,  writes that she did not appreciate the audio book read by Roy. There is something I think in what Nikita observed "Her tone was mostly monotonous and sometimes it was hard to determine which character was talking. " 

I realise that I am not loving the book, as much as I am loving to read Arundathi Roy's writing.


Abortion
The USA seems to be reversing all progress made on making safe abortion available to women and girls. Abortion is in the news. Tilo goes to the Government hospital to have an abortion. She meets women who are waiting for fertility treatments. The doctors do not treat Tilo well. India and China have made abortion news about the how girl fetuses have been aborted.

Tilo's mother had left her at the orphanage, then returned to adopt her. Tilo 'abducts' a baby who has been left behind by Revathy. Revathy is a Adivasi, and a member of the Communist party. Police rape Revathy. Revathy wants to kill the baby who reminds her of the six police who raped her. She leaves the baby at the protest park. Revathy writes a letter about her story.

Roy makes no statements about abortion, but in reading and connecting these stories of the women and unwanted pregnancies , I read about choice and understanding choices.   And that there is probably no need to make any statements.

That letter which Revathy writes does not have to be fiction. The letter could be the story of many women in India and around the world. 

War
There is war in the book. "In Delhi.. the war of the rich against the poor".. The sectarian violence. The Gujarati man who was condemned for staying away from the Hindu against Muslim violence. The sectarian wars. The war in Kashmir  - the best kind of war.. 'the war which will never end'?

Kashmir is a beautiful place brought to Guyana through Bollywood.. a place where Indian heroes go to battle against Muslim terrorists.   The song Bumbro Bumbro  was a hit in Guyana..
 



Arundathi Roy writes of the apples and beautiful fields and the littered lakes. One of her characters is Kashmiri. Indian security forces kill his wife and daughter. She describes the torture rooms and implements. Tilo notices the "scaled-down stone or concrete pillars, pipes , a tub of filthy water, jerry cans of petrol,  metal funnels, wires, .. ".. on a shelf there was a jar of red chilli powder..

 .. Tilo learns that the pillars were used as "rollers on prisoners who were tied down while two men rolled the pillars over them, literally crushing them"  Chilli powder applied on rods applied to rape men with.

This is no longer fiction though.
 
The day I read most of the book, there is news of a a report "Torture: Indian State's Instrument of Control in Indian Administered Jammu and Kashmir," In the Al Jazeera story about the report,   Nazir Ahmed Sheikh talks about what the soldiers did to him, rolling the stone pillars over his legs. People telling their own stories. Maybe not in beautiful sentences or in literate ways. Al Jazeera interviews Nazir Ahmed Sheikh near beautiful trees.

In the non-fiction world, where the horrible truth is the fiction, should we converting the real stories of people into fiction? What place does the fictional telling have when the st

The Government of India has denied the allegations, and has cut of communications  with the Special Rapporteurs on the Human Rights Council on the report.

Arundathi Roy wrote earlier in the year that Modi Must go , . Modi implements and nurtures an India for Hindus position and depending on who you talk to, Modi is the most brilliant PM ever or he is the most destructive force of India's repubican ideals.  But, the world's largest democracy apparently voted largely for Modi again.  

Happiness

In the crazy world though, the book has a Happy Ending. The assorted characters,  marginalised and living or hanging outin the graveyard , are in a community.
People are getting on with their lives in the messy world. They fight their personal battles, have their own struggles. And they have each other.