The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
- by Arundhati Roy
- This blog is part of task given by Dr. Dilip Barad sir, aimed at critically analyzing the narrative structure of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.
Part 1 | Khwabgah | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: Anjum’s transition, the Graveyard/Jannat)
Part 2 | Jantar Mantar | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: Saddam Hussain, the Baby, the Protests)
Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: Tilo, Musa, the letter from Revathy)
Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: The ending, resilience)
Thematic Study | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: Nature of Paradise etc)
Symbols and Motifs | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy (Focus: Paradise, Modernization, "Dunya" vs. "Jannat")
WORKSHEET ACTIVITIES:
Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness employs a deliberately shattered, non-linear narrative structure that reflects the traumatic lives of its characters and the fractured reality of contemporary India. Rather than unfolding in a smooth chronological order, the novel moves across time, space, and voices, creating a broken mosaic of experience that mirrors broken histories and identities. This narrative strategy can be understood through the idea of “how to tell a shattered story by slowly becoming everything,” where the novel gathers fragments of suffering, memory, and resistance instead of forcing them into a single, unified plot.
The novel begins in Khwabgah literally the “House of Dreams” in Old Delhi, where the intersex Aftab becomes Anjum and finds a chosen family among hijras. Anjum’s deeply felt wish for connection leads her to adopt a found child, Zainab, on the steps of a mosque, an act that gives her brief happiness and maternal identity within this enclave. However, after surviving communal violence in Gujarat, Anjum’s identity fractures further. She leaves Khwabgah and relocates to a graveyard, which she transforms into Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services a living shelter and community for society’s outcasts. The transition from Khwabgah to the graveyard (Jannat) marks a profound shift in Anjum’s life, moving from one form of marginal community to another more anarchic, porous one, and structurally signals the novel’s break from conventional linear storytelling.
The novel’s non-chronological structure reflects how trauma disrupts time, refusing tidy beginnings and endings. Anjum’s story and the broader political history of sectarian violence, caste oppression, and exclusion are told in overlapping fragments rather than in sequence. In this way, the narrative style mirrors the lived experience of characters whose pasts continuously intrude upon their present, suggesting that trauma remains active rather than neatly concluded.
In parallel to Anjum’s narrative is the story of S. Tilottama (Tilo), introduced later in the novel. Tilo’s arc carries the reader from student days into the Kashmir conflict, where she becomes intimately involved with Musa, a resistance figure, and witnesses violence in the Valley. The Kashmir narrative itself is non-linear, moving through flashbacks, fractured timeframes, and political violence that resist simple chronology. Through this structure, Roy conveys the psychological and collective trauma of a region enduring persistent conflict.
The two narrative strands converge through a crucial event: an abandoned baby discovered during protests at Jantar Mantar, whom Tilo takes with her and later brings to Anjum’s Jannat Guest House. This found child, named Miss Jebeen the Second (later Udaya) in memory of a lost child from Kashmir, becomes a literal and symbolic link between the Khwabgah/Graveyard world of Anjum and the political world of Tilo’s experiences in Kashmir. The baby’s journey from observatory to graveyard embeds personal loss within a broader national tragedy, illustrating how fragmented narratives can intersect and “become everything” without collapsing into a single timeline.
By refusing smooth transitions and by allowing past and present to coexist without hierarchy, the novel’s structure enacts the very trauma it describes. Characters including Anjum and Tilo carry forward loss, memory, and hope in ways that cannot be told with conventional beginnings, middles, and ends. In The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, the shattered story finds coherence not in chronology, but in the way individual traumas, political histories, and found connections like that of the abandoned baby interweave to form a collective narrative of resilience and resistance.
Activity B: Mapping the Conflict
.png)
Activity C: Automated Timeline & Character Arcs
Anjum's Journey: Detailed Chronological Timeline:
Anjum's arc traces a hijra's struggle with identity, trauma, and community in Arundhati Roy's novel, evolving from birth as Aftab to a marginalized yet resilient figure.
1. Birth and Early Childhood as Aftab:
1.1 Intersex Birth in Old Delhi:
Jahanara Begum births Aftab, announced as a boy by midwife Bhaji Ahalam despite visible dual genitals; Jahanara hopes the female traits seal off naturally, cycling through shock, recoil, suicidal thoughts, and eventual embrace of this unknown identity. The family, rooted in Mughal-descended Muslim pride, hides Aftab's condition to avoid shame, as everything in their Urdu worldview carries male or female gender except her child. This introduces themes of living "outside language," challenging binary norms.
1.2 Isolation and Curiosity (Ages 5-10):
Aftab grows withdrawn in a basement, barred from playing outside to evade ridicule; from a gallery, Aftab spies a glamorous hijra (Bombay Silk) shopping amid burkha-clad women, sparking fascination. Following her to Khwabgah, Aftab glimpses a world of hijras like Mary (Christian), Godiya, and Gulbadan, ruled by Ustad Kulsoom Bi's gharana system tracing to Mughal guardianship of zenana. Aftab's mother delivers meals thrice weekly, maintaining proximity.
2. Transition to Khwabgah and Identity Formation:
2.1 Permanent Move and Renaming (Age 15):
Insisting on hijra life, Aftab relocates to Khwabgah a dream-world (khwabgah) contrasting duniya's chaos adopts "Anjum" (gathering of everyone/nobody), rejecting a client's "inverted Majnu" label tied to Leila myths. Undergoing botched surgeries and hormones, Anjum remains interstitial: "woman trapped in man's body" or vice versa, internalizing riots, wars, and gender wars as personal turmoil unlike duniya's external woes.
2.2 Maternal Longing and Adoption:
Discovering infant Zainab abandoned on Jama Masjid steps, Anjum adopts her, channeling innate motherhood; Zainab falls ill, heightening Anjum's fears amid Khwabgah rivalries.
3. Gujarat Trauma and Exile:
3.1 2002 Riots Pilgrimage (Gujarat Massacre):
Anjum and lover Zakir Mian visit a shrine; engulfed in anti-Muslim pogroms (echoing real 2002 events), Zakir perishes, but Anjum survives killers spare hijras as ill omens. Returning shattered, her speech fragments; she dresses Zainab as a boy for protection, clashing with Kulsoom Bi over changed behaviors.
3.2 Departure from Khwabgah:
Exiled from the gharana, Anjum wanders, embodying tree-like endurance in a graveyard initially enduring cruelty like a transplanted sapling, hosting birds, vultures, and "The Man Who Knew English."
4. Reclamation in Graveyard (Jannat):
4.1 Establishing Jannat Guest House:
Anjum roots in the graveyard ("Jannat"), inviting all; this surreal space (where old birds die unseen) becomes a haven for outcasts, contrasting paradise myths.
Saddam Hussain's Journey: Detailed Chronological Timeline:
Saddam embodies caste-class rage against Hindu majoritarianism and state violence, intersecting Anjum's world post-trauma.
1. Childhood Lynching Witness (Haryana, Pre-2002):
1.1 Father's Murder:
As Jamar, a Dalit boy watches his father lynched by a "Jai Shri Ram"-chanting mob and police (led by Shahrawat) on fabricated cow-slaughter charges while skinning a carcass. This vigilante "cow protection" violence scars him, fueling vengeance against systemic upper-caste impunity.
2. Name Change and Vow:
2.1 Inspired Renaming:
TV images of Iraq's Saddam Hussein's stoic capture/hanging inspire the boy to adopt "Saddam Hussain," rejecting victimhood for defiant symbolism.
3. Migration and Jannat Convergence (Post-2002):
3.1 Delhi Hustles and Losses:
Jobless after hospital mortuary and security gigs, Saddam reaches Delhi's graveyard.
3.2 Meeting Anjum and Transformation:
Joining Anjum permanently, he commercializes Jannat charging for stays/funerals solidifying their bond; by 2011, they protest at Jantar Mantar, uniting personal upheavals with national dissent.
Activity D: The "Audio/Video" Synthesis:
References :
Barad. “Flipped Learning Worksheet on the Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Research Gate, Jan.2026, www.researchgate.net/publication/399801292_Flipped_Learning_Worksheet_on_The_Ministry_of_Utmost_Happiness.
DoE-MKBU. (2021a, December 28). Part 1 | Khwabgah | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-29vE53apGs
DoE-MKBU. (2021b, December 28). Part 2 | Jantar Mantar | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr1z1AEXPBU
DoE-MKBU. (2021c, December 28). Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKH_89rML0
DoE-MKBU. (2021d, December 28). Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5EULOFP4g
DoE-MKBU. (2021e, December 30). Symbols and Motifs | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbBOqLB487U
DoE-MKBU. (2021f, December 30). Thematic Study | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NYSTUTBoSs
Thank You
Comments
Post a Comment