The Ministry of Utmost Happiness (Arundhati Roy) - Am I what I am or am I what I am supposed to be?

Rating ⭐⭐⭐1/2

First out, its not God of Small Things. That was a masterpiece, this is a book. That was a unintended, this is intended. That had no agenda, this, I suspect, has one. 

Be that as it may, the two stories that run in parallel, are both beautiful, in their own way. So Anjum, who was born Aftab, and loves her adopted daughter, lives in Old Delhi, in practically another age, another world, is achingly endearing. She is stubborn, coquettish, charming, stupid, adamant, loving, clear headed, confused. She lives in another duniya but is constantly impacted by the other duniya - not her own but where she longs for acceptance. She finds acceptance among others of her kind - those that are different, those that the world has given up on and pretends simply don't exist. She finds love and peace amongst these people in a graveyard, where the dead and living coexist peacefully and happily, accepting each other for what they are and not what the world wants them to be.

And then there is Tilo - the dark, enigmatic Tilo. Who unknowingly is Anjum - confused, lonely, unclear about who she is and what she should have been instead - a dilemma many of us encounter. Am I what I am or am I what I am supposed to be? She struggles with these existential questions unknown to herself or her reader. The men who fall in love with her have no hope of ever forgetting her. They get a part of her, but no one gets the whole of Tilo - perhaps even she never gets the whole of herself. Her beauty lies in being broken.. like the Japanese art of Kintsukuroi (which means "golden repair"), the art of fixing broken pottery with gold, silver or platinum and retaining the scar.

The journey through Kashmir and the references to real life incidents, is interwoven in the story, but becomes deliberate and forced upon, in places. The love story between Musa, the boy who never wanted to be what he became, and Tilo, the girl who never knew what she was, leaves the reader with a dull ache in the heart. Could they have lived happily ever after? Is there such a thing as happily ever after? One wonders, babajaan....

Bringing the two parallel stories together is where the book loses the plot. It gives rise to a faint suspicion that Ms Roy actually wrote two stories, couldn't imagine how either ends and thus decided to make it into one story and end both.