Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Corruption, Political Violence, and Capitalism
Resilience and Hope
Gender Identity, Social Division, and Coexistence
Social Hierarchy vs. Social Inclusivity
Religion and Power
Summary
Analysis
Another day in Delhi, and the city is shaken by simultaneous explosions that have gone off in bus stop, a café, and a shopping mall. Five are dead and several are injured. The television newscasters are in shock, but the first-person narrator isn’t: “blasts evoke a range of emotions in [him], but sadly, shock is no longer one of them.” The narrator finds himself in an old apartment in a nice neighborhood. He owns the apartment, but his tenant is nowhere to be found. He has been sent home from the foreign service because his drinking habit has worsened, and he is supposed to check into rehab to deal with his health before returning to Kabul, where he is stationed. Although the situation there is dangerous—his office has been attacked twice—the narrator longs to return. He is addicted to Kabul’s “battle of wits.”
The new, first-person narrator shows himself to be a jaded bureaucrat, desensitized to the atrocities of the wars that occur in the region of the world where he lives. That he would long to return to Kabul because he is addicted to its “battle of wits” is a harrowing admission. As a functionary of the government, the narrator should be seeking in all ways possible to reduce the violence that occurs in the city where he is stationed. However, his cold appreciation for the violence demonstrates not only how numb he and the Indian government have become to violence, but also how perhaps they might not be working towards reducing violence at all.
Themes
While he waits to be declared fit for service, and avoids the rehab he is supposed to be doing, the narrator has decided to check in on his tenants. The neighborhood where the apartment is situated was, when he bought it, up-and-coming, but since then the area has become over-built, full of middle-class families and constantly under construction. The apartments are glossier and more expensive looking, and the streets are full of upper-caste Indians and white expats alike. There’s even a new elementary school, where children are taught English nursery rhymes from a young age. The narrator observes that, in spite of the construction and the smell of waste, “compared to Kabul or anywhere else in Afghanistan or Pakistan […] this foggy little back lane […] is like a small corner of Paradise.”
The narrator’s use of the word “Paradise” in this passage invites readers to compare this neighborhood with Anjum’s “paradise”—Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services. According to this narrator, “paradise” looks like the increasing influence of Western cultures in India (as evidenced by the expats and the English instruction in the nursery school), as well as the dominance of upper-caste Indians without any lower-caste people in sight. This is essentially the opposite of Anjum’s “paradise,” which includes almost exclusively people who lack class privilege and is entirely disassociated from the influence of Western culture.
Themes
Having seen his fair share of suffering during the foreign service, posted in various neighboring countries, the narrator thinks highly of India. He even scorns the “grumbling intellectuals and professional dissenters” who complain about the country, observing that they “can only [complain] because they are allowed to. And they are allowed to because, for all [India’s] imperfections, [it is] a genuine democracy.” This is why the narrator is proud to serve the country’s government.
The narrator clearly thinks poorly of those who criticize India’s government. His disrespect towards these critics demonstrates his unwillingness to recognize India’s flaws which, the novel argues, are many. Because he is a functionary of the government, this attitude might be indicative of the entire government’s general disregard for constructive criticism, and lack of interest in listening to its people. What the narrator doesn’t seem to realize is that under “genuine democracy,” not only are people “allowed” to complain, but they are listened to and responded to by the governing bodies.
Themes
When the narrator discovers that the apartment he rents out on the second floor of the building is empty, he goes downstairs and his first-floor tenant’s wife invites him to have some tea. He observes, with some dismay, the tacky interior decorating to which she has subjected his property: watermelon pink painting on the walls, cheap wood furniture. As the two sit down to have tea, the woman’s maid—who the narrator imagines to be an indigenous woman from a poor region of the country—crawls beneath their feet to clean the floor. The narrator thinks of how his father, who has “reflexive hostility towards Christian missionaries and their flock, would have called [the maid] Hallelujah.”
The image of the maid literally crawling beneath the feet of her boss and the narrator demonstrates the extremity of social inequality in India. His immediate recognition that the maid is probably indigenous, and from a poor region of the country, indicates how rigid the social structures are—he would never expect to see a light-skinned Brahmin maid, for instance. What’s more, his thought about his father’s “distaste” for Christianity reflects a legacy of religious intolerance and Hindu supremacy.
Themes
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As they drink tea, the woman explains to the narrator what has happened with her upstairs neighbor, who seems to have left quite suddenly. She shares a vague story involving a baby and the police. The narrator remembers his tenant—although tenant is “something of a euphemism,” as he has romantic feelings for the tenant. In spite of the fact that the narrator admits to loving her, the two never have had any sort of romantic relationship.
Here, the narrator’s character becomes more complex. Whereas up until this point, he has seemed to be a dry and almost heartless bureaucrat, in this moment readers recognize a more emotional, sensitive side to the narrator. His feelings for the tenant, who from what he has described so far does not subscribe to the norms or values of mainstream society, suggests that the narrator himself may not fully subscribe to these beliefs either.
Themes
The narrator first meets his tenant in 1984, when Indira Gandhi is assassinated by her Sikh bodyguard—spurring mob lynching of Sikhs all across the country. The narrator remembers that he even saw a lynching, which, like the explosions, failed to shock him at the time—he observes that “normality, in [his] part of the world, is a bit like a boiled egg: its humdrum surface conceals at its heart a yolk of egregious violence.” At the moment of such political unrest, the narrator and his tenant are involved in the production of a play called Norman, Is That You? but decide to postpone the opening day due to the political moment.
The revelation that there were lynchings of Sikhs after Indira Gandhi’s assassination gives readers more historical context for the violence against Muslims that is occurring in the novel’s present. It is clear that Muslims are not the only group to have been historically persecuted by the Hindu majority. The narrator’s belief that violence exists at the heart of India’s culture is a defeatist, pessimistic outlook, that stands in stark contrast to the other characters, such as Anjum. who exhibit strength of character, resilience, and hope.
Themes
The play is directed by David Quartermaine, a gay Englishman who has moved to Delhi from Leeds whom the narrator admires. In the play, Naga, one of the narrator’s classmates, plays Norman, while the narrator plays Norman’s lover, Garson Hobart. Both he and Naga study history at Delhi university, and they grew up together. Tilo, short for Tilotamma, is the set and lighting staff member of the play, and she is a student of architecture. The narrator is instantly infatuated with her, although she “[doesn’t] look like any of the pale, well-groomed girls [he knows] at college. Her complexion [is] what the French would call café au lait (with very little lait).” Unlike other girls her age, Tilo doesn’t care about her appearance. Indeed, her “complete absence of a desire to please, or to put someone at their ease, could, in a less vulnerable person, have been construed as arrogance.”
In this passage, the narrator’s description of Tilo reveals a lot about the way he views class, belonging, and privilege. The first thing he says about her is that her skin is dark, which due to colorism in India is associated with members of the low-caste and generally not considered to be a sign of beauty. Furthermore, his admission that most of the girls he knows in college are “pale” and “well-groomed” reveals that at the time, college was a place that was accessible principally to members of the elite. Unlike the narrator, Tilo isn’t invested in the nuances of privilege and class, not caring to disguise her apparently humble background.
Themes
At first, the narrator can’t place where Tilo is from, but due to her accented English, he guesses Kerala. He learns that her father is not in the picture, and her mother, originally from a high-caste Syrian-Christian family in Kerala, got pregnant as a teenager and gave Tilo up for adoption, only to adopt her own baby herself. Tilo isn’t close to her family, and never goes home for the holidays. Both Naga and the narrator try to charm Tilo, but she only has eyes for a third member of their play—Musa Yeswi.
Tilo’s complicated life story—being born into a high-caste family, given up for adoption, and then being adopted back into the same family under the pretense of being an adopted child rather than a birth child—makes it impossible for her to claim the caste privilege that she would have had access to if her mother had accepted her as a birth daughter. However, because her mother’s family wanted to save face, and not admit that their daughter had given birth to such a dark-skinned baby out of wedlock, Tilo is forced to live in a caste-obsessed society without being able to claim any as her own. This renders her a definitive outsider.
Themes
Musa, like Tilo, studies architecture, and while the two are very close the narrator can’t tell if they seem more like siblings or lovers. Musa is a quiet Kashmiri young man very dissimilar to Naga, who adores attention and seems able to change not only his personality, but his very appearance, to please those in whose company he finds himself. Musa, on the other hand, seems to want to draw attention away from himself, but has a quiet sort of strength. He is gentle and serene, and his pale Kashmiri complexion starkly contrasts with Tilo’s dark skin.
Naga’s shape-shifting personality in a way speaks to his lack of character—he doesn’t have a true sense of self or core values that come through no matter where he is. Naga cares more about external validation than he does about sincerity. Musa, on the other hand, seems to have strong values, a quiet strength emanating from a deep knowing of and commitment to himself that Naga seems to lack. This demonstrates that Musa is likely more willing to stick up for what he believes, even if this isolates him from others.
Themes
Once they graduate from architecture school, Tilo and Musa drift apart. Musa returns to Kashmir, Tilo begins to work in an architecture firm. But Tilo and the narrator see each other occasionally, and one day, after visiting the shrine of a famous poet, the narrator goes to her house for the first time. The two smoke hashish, and although the narrator wants to tell her about his feelings for her, he doesn’t. Instead, he asks if she plans to marry Musa, which she answers by saying she won’t marry anybody at all. That night, the narrator, who at the time still lives in his parents’ house, marvels at how different his own life is from Tilo’s. While he is a comfortable member of the upper-middle-class, surrounded by attentive family, she is all alone, poor, seemingly without the foundations that are so imperative in the narrator’s own life.
The narrator’s failure to tell Tilo how he feels about her reveals his cowardly nature. Readers can assume that the narrator’s hesitance to be vulnerable with Tilo stems not only from the fact that vulnerability is hard for everybody, but also from the great class differences that exist between the narrator and Tilo. The narrator struggles to admit his feelings for her because, due to his class background, he is not “supposed” to date someone like Tilo. However, it seems that this difference is precisely what makes the narrator so attracted to Tilo: she represents a world totally different from his own and has access to a freedom that he doesn’t have.
Themes
While away, Musa has become involved in the Kashmiri résistance. Tilo, seemingly having moved on from her romance with him entirely, marries Naga weeks after Musa’s death. But the narrator continues to love her unrequitedly. After all, his Brahmin family “would never accept her—the girl without a past, without a caste—into the family.” Indeed, the narrator has chosen a much more acceptable path for himself. He’s married a Brahmin woman, with whom he has two daughters. One of them hopes to become a human rights lawyer, which the narrator initially thinks is merely “teenage rebellion against her father,” but later he comes to recognize that human rights law can be respectable and “even lucrative.” The narrator has never imagined doing anything that would upset his family’s comfortable lifestyle, and yet, when Tilo reenters his life, asking to rent a room in his apartment building, he puts his family at risk.
In this passage, the narrator explicitly mentions his family’s disapproval as a reason that he chose not to pursue Tilo, even though he loves her. In this way, the narrator’s dedication to maintaining India’s rigid class structure prevents him from developing the types of relationships that he would ideally like to have. What’s more, the narrator’s disapproval of his daughter’s desire to pursue human rights as a profession reveals the ways in which his work at the government has desensitized him to the necessity of human rights. For him, the only saving grace of the profession is not that it will save lives, but that it will make his daughter money. For the narrator, the values of capitalism are more important than the values of human rights.
Themes
The Naga that Tilo has married is very different from the teenage boy she once knew. He has gone from an idealistic, overly intellectual, radically left student to an “unemployable intellectual” to a mainstream journalist. Along the way, Naga has advocated for a great number of leftist causes, most of which have nothing to do with each other. Indeed, the narrator observes, “what has remained consistent [in Naga’s political opinion] is only the decibel level.” In the narrator’s eyes, Naga has a “handler” in the government, and, as a well-respected journalist in the field, he is a “valuable asset” for the Intelligence Bureau. Naga writes articles that help to settle down human rights groups when they’re upset, when, as the narrator puts it, their facts “need[] correcting.” Because Naga is the first to get breaking new from the government, he quickly rises to even greater success in his field.
In this moment, readers recognize how Naga’s people-pleasing nature as an adolescent has blossomed into a typical form of corruption in his adulthood. More interested in recognition in his field of journalism than actually telling the truth, Naga turns a blind eye to human rights abuses the government commits in order to maintain a relationship with officials that guarantees him breaking news stories. The narrator’s view that some facts about human rights need correcting demonstrates that he does not value journalism’s power to tell the truth; rather, he sees the media as a force to be controlled so that it is in the government’s best interests. Contrary to what he has said previously, the India this narrator lives in and helps to run is not a democracy at all.
Themes
The narrator remembers how Naga, as a youth, always had a fiery talent for rhetoric. He recalls how, in elementary school, Naga made a powerful speech about the futility of religion, for instance, and observes that in the current political climate—"as the saffron tide of Hindu Nationalism rises in our country like the swastika once did in another”—Naga would have been expelled, or worse, for making such a speech. Indeed, even the narrator’s colleagues in the government are ultra-conservative, what he calls “closet Brahmins” who hide their deep investment in the caste system from the public eye. The narrator himself is a twice-born Brahmin, which is why he is accepted among his colleagues. In spite of his own conservative leanings and complicity in the oppressive government, it saddens the narrator to see Naga so “housebroken.”
In this passage, the narrator’s disappointment that Naga has been “housebroken” shows readers that in spite of his corruption and cold heart, there is something in the narrator that values resistance, difference, and truth. The detail about how all of his colleagues in the government are “closet Brahmins” is evidence that in spite of democracy’s arrival in the country, the rigid caste systems in India haven’t changed to reflect democratic values, or the equality of the people. The narrator’s casual tone in comparing the rise of Hindu nationalism to the rise of Nazism in Germany is alarming in its coldness; he seems wholly unperturbed that he is complicit in the development of such a violent movement.
Themes
When the narrator is stationed in Kashmir, Naga is working as a journalist in the region. As the Kashmir conflict is an area of government work of which human rights activists are heavily critical, Naga’s role there proves exceptionally useful to the narrator and his team—although Naga still sees himself as an honest, left-leaning journalist. The narrator himself observes the violence in Kashmir as exaggerated, but, principally, he blames the various factions of Islam in the region for annihilating one another. Indeed, he observes that it is to the Indian government’s advantage that there are “eight or nine versions of the ‘True’ Islam battling it out in Kashmir.” Some of the most radical, he admits, are actually funded by the government. And Kashmiri businessmen help out by investing in the Peace Process—which, the narrator is quick to observe, is “an entirely different business opportunity from peace itself.”
Here, the narrator’s admission that the Indian government funds Muslim factions in Kashmir to perpetuate the conflict in the region reveals an extreme level of corruption. The Indian government is fighting so that Kashmir will remain part of the country, and, as such, should ideally seek to protect the citizens of the region. However, because the government recognizes that instability in the region is economically profitable, it actively endangers the lives of Kashmiris by pitting them against one another. The detail about the peace process being “entirely different” from peace itself makes the government’s dishonesty very clear. The officials, and the corrupt Kashmiri businessmen who help them, intend to draw out the conflict for as long as it is profitable.
Themes
One fall day, the narrator is working with the Governor of Kashmir, and has just finished listening to His Excellency’s morning briefing when he receives a strange phone call from the Joint Interrogation Center, which operated out of the Shiraz Cinema. The narrator shares that it wasn’t the government that shut down the Cinema, rather, Jihadist extremists who had done so years before, arguing that cinema was simply a vehicle for Hindu propaganda. The call comes from Major Amrik Singh, who, contrary to custom, addresses the narrator by his name—Biplab Dasgupta. Hearing from the Major distresses the narrator, who has been dealing with the troubles that the unhinged Major has caused in the region with unnecessary and indiscreet murders. (The Major does indeed prove to be an unstable character—years after his time in Kashmir, he murders his wife and three children while on asylum in the United States.)
Roy includes the detail that Jihadists shut down the cinema in order to demonstrate that religious extremism prevails and is a problem on both sides of the conflict. Additionally, Major Amrik Singh’s characterization as an extremely violent, and unstable, man serves to negatively characterize the Indian Army in which he serves. That he would be able to get away with indiscreetly and unnecessarily murdering citizens reveals that the government does not care about Kashmiris’ lives. They even protect Major Amrik Singh from experiencing any sort of consequence for his actions. The correlation between the major’s violence in his army position and his domestic violence invites readers to consider that, although the first type of violence is technically legal and the other is illegal, they might in fact be equally morally wrong.
Themes
Major Amrik has big news for Biplab—he has captured an “A-Category terrorist,” Commander Gulrez. Biplab, for his turn, is not impressed. Because the military is incentivized to capture, torture, and kill “A-category” terrorists, it seems that every Kashmiri captured is a dreaded member of Jihadist movements. But, more interestingly to Biplab, the major reveals that he has also captured a “ladies,” who isn’t Kashmiri. This is unusual. The captured woman has been handed over to ACP Pinky, the only female in the military force and yet one of its most brutal interrogators. But the captee has announced that she has an important message for Biplab, which she has sent via Major Amrik: “G-A-R-S-O-N H-O-B-A-R-T.”
Biplap’s failure to be impressed by the Major’s declaration that he has captured an “A-category terrorist” reveals the army’s dishonesty in the Kashmir conflict. Indeed, the army lies about having captured terrorists when they have instead captured, tortured, or killed innocent civilians. That they are incentivized to do so reveals that the Indian government values the appearance of military success over truly winning. This lack of integrity makes them willing to endanger the lives of the very people they are supposed to protect.
Themes
Biplab realizes instantly that the woman who has been captured is Tilo, which leads him to wonder if Commander Gulrez—the “A-category” terrorist that Major Amrik Singh has captured—is, in fact, Musa. Biplab immediately wants to get Tilo out of capture, but instinctually he wishes to distance himself from the woman he loves. So he calls up Naga and asks him to go and take Tilo away from the interrogation center, and orders for Tilo’s immediate release.
The extraordinarily close relationship between Naga and Biplab stinks of corruption. That a journalist would be so available to do a government employee’s bidding should, ideally, call into question the integrity of that journalist. Naga’s close involvement in government dealings seems to be obviously corrupt to everyone but him.
Themes
Once Naga has brought Tilo to his hotel, Biplab requests that he put Tilo on the next plane to Delhi. Naga replies, “She’s not freight, Das-Goose,” referring to Biplab’s college nickname, Das-Goose-da, which Naga would pronounce in a German accent. Biplab reflects on his name, admitting that he has never forgiven his parents for naming him Biplab—revolution. He has considered changing his name to something “more peaceful like Siddhartha or Gautam,” but has decided not to. Rather, he continues existing as Biplab, a revolution, “in the innermost chamber of the secret heart of the establishment that calls itself the Government of India.”
In this moment, the plays on Biplab’s name are noteworthy. Naga’s pronunciation of Dasgupta in a German accent may—even if Naga himself is unaware of it—be a reference to Nazi Germany on Roy’s part. Secondly, Biplab’s distaste for his name, which means “revolution,” reveals his conservative nature. It also speaks to how the hopes and dreams that India had immediately after independence—a corruption-free, liberated state—have come to die, and have been replaced by complicity in a conservative, oppressive establishment.
Themes
While Tilo is recovering from her time in the interrogation center, the situation in Kashmir continues to worsen. The body count rises, and Biplab is advised not to go back to the city from the Governor’s house that day. Even from the Governor’s house deep within the forest, Biplab can hear the cries of Kashmiris protesting the deaths of their compatriots. “Azadi! Azadi! Azadi!” they cry. While Biplab understands that the word in their dialect loosely means freedom, he finds irony in the fact that no Kashmiri defines the word exactly the same way, or associates it with the same “ideological and geographic contours.” But, he believes, the Kashmiris are not confused—quite the opposite. Rather, they operate with “a terrible clarity that exists outside the language of modern geopolitics. All the protagonists on all sides of the conflict, especially [the government exploit] this fault line mercilessly.”
In this moment, Biplab’s observation that Kashmiris’ definition of Azadi exists outside of “the contours of modern geopolitics” suggests that the systems and ideologies of modern geopolitics do not create the possibility of simple freedom. Kashmiris want liberty, and Biplab’s suggestion is that they won’t find it within any ideology or practice that already exists. Due to the corrupt political climate, the “protagonists” or leaders of various political bodies are able to exploit the Kashmiris’ raw, simple desire for freedom to further their own agendas—often, agendas that have nothing to do with freedom at all.
Themes
The protestors outside the forest house where Biplab is sheltered are, in fact, at public funerals. For Kashmiris, those who die in conflict with or at the hands of the Indian government are martyrs for the cause of independence. On occasions like this, the crowds get riled up, and the police must remain vigilant, but “out of sight.” The Indian government operates under the assumption that allowing the people to take to the streets to mourn their dead gives them an opportunity to channel their frustration at the government, so it doesn’t turn into “an unmanageable cliff of rage.” That’s why, in all of the years of the Kashmiri conflicts, the police have allowed the Kashmiri people to “mourn[], [weep], and shout[] their slogans”—and, soon after that, to go back home.
The way that the army addresses the issue of Kashmiri funerals is highly manipulative. Kashmiri people seem to see their vocal participation in mourning their dead as an expression of freedom, even an act of resistance. But they don’t know that even their resistance is predicted, controlled, and monitored by the government. What they perceive as freedom of expression in the face of violence doesn’t stem from the army recognizing their right to mourn their dead. Rather, the army allows this small expression of freedom so they can maintain control of the region.
Themes
The next day, once things have settled, Biplab drives to Naga’s hotel to meet him and Tilo, only to discover that the two of them have already left. A few weeks later, he receives an invitation to their wedding. He feels responsible for the marriage, which he deems to be ill-fated—he knows that Tilo would never willingly marry a journalist whom she knows to be corrupt. And yet again, Biplab chooses not to tell her how he feels, and attends the wedding as a guest. There, Tilo wears no makeup, and is even almost bald. She looks nothing like a traditional bride. Meanwhile, Naga’s family, who, like Biplab’s, are high-caste and wealthy, clearly disapprove of Naga’s choice of bride. Naga’s young niece even asks her grandmother innocently if Tilo is a “nigger,” to which Naga’s mother replies, “We don’t use words like nigger anymore […] We say negro.”
Here, Tilo’s failure to conform to traditional beauty standards causes Naga’s family to disapprove of her. Her expression of feminine gender in a way that does not conform to the upper-caste expectations Naga’s family places on her renders her an outsider even at her own wedding. What’s more, the fact that a young member of Naga’s family—not an older, out-of-touch person, as might be expected—would use the n-word demonstrates how deeply conservative and discriminatory Naga’s family is. Naga’s mother’s correction instead only further emphasizes this point, as she suggests another antiquated and racist term.
Themes
This is the last time Biplab sees Tilo until, four years before the present moment, she sees his name in the paper under an advertisement for a tenant in a second-floor apartment. She says she needs space to work as a freelance illustrator, and soon moves in. At the time, Biplab is on placement with the Ministry of Defense, and is at home alone. When Tilo moves into the apartment upstairs, Biplab is excited.
In spite of having seen Tilo many times in contexts that totally defy upper-caste expectations of femininity, Biplab continues to be enamored of her. This reveals the fact that he does not wholly adhere to the values of his upper-caste background.
Themes
In the present moment, in Tilo’s abandoned apartment, Biplab senses, from looking at all of the Post-Its, documents, and the photographs in the place, that there is something dangerous about the life she has been leading. Among the photographs is one of a dead child, four or five years old, wrapped in a shroud. The wound on the child’s temple has bled onto the white shroud, leaving a “rose-shaped stain.” Biplab wonders immediately if the child is Musa’s daughter. The other is a picture of a Kashmiri man holding a pair of kittens. Biplab opens a green file and begins to look at the documents it contains. Here, even more mysteriously, Tilo has pictures of a public toilet. But these photos have an explanation.
Biplab’s attraction to Tilo is so strong that he is willing to remain in her apartment and look through her things, even though he suspects that something dangerous is occurring there. It is through his attraction to Tilo that Biplab begins to consider and engage with perspectives other than his own or than that of the government. The documents that Tilo has chosen to keep hint at her interest in the Kashmir conflict, her preoccupation with the violence that occurs in the region.
Themes
In a document titled “Ghafoor’s Story,” a first-person narrator has written down the story of what happened in that public toilet. Biplab reads that outside that particular public toilet, the narrator and a friend are walking when they hear Special Task Force vehicles pull up on the road. The soldiers force the narrator and his friend to cross the street at gunpoint, telling them that “an Afghan terrorist [has escaped and has run] into the toilet.”
The soldiers in this moment are comfortable accosting two innocent civilians, demonstrating that they are more concerned with exercising power over the people than they are with protecting or even respecting them. Two civilians should have nothing to do with an Afghan terrorist, but because the soldiers want to demonstrate their power, they accost the civilians.
Themes
The soldiers ask the narrator and his friend to go in and ask the terrorist to surrender, and, fearing for their lives, the two try to resist, only to have the Special Task Force soldiers put pistols to their heads. The narrator’s friend tells him to cooperate with the soldiers, who he says are just trying to make a scene. Eventually they enter, and find a man in the drain, whom they realize is Kashmiri and not Afghan. They ask him to come out, but he seems to be unable to speak or move. After some time, they watch the man die in front of them, covered in human waste.
Here, the fact that the soldiers have characterized a Kashmiri citizen as an “Afghan” is a tactic they use to justify their cruelty. Because the Indian Army shouldn’t, of course, kill or torture Indian citizens, the soldiers need to pretend that their victim is an Afghan in order to be able to abuse him. To uphold the myth of nationalism, in a way, soldiers create narratives that associate members of other nationalities with violence, and Indians with innocence.
Themes
Once the man has died, the soldiers give the narrator and his friends crowbars and spades to dig the dead body out of the manhole. It is then that the narrator discovers what had happened—the soldiers had tied up the man and put him in the manhole earlier, after he had been badly tortured. The Special Task Forces officers ask the two to sign a paper that reads that the STF has “tracked down and killed a dreaded Afghan terrorist who was cornered in a public toilet in Nawab Bazaar.” But the truth, according to the narrator, is that the dead man was simply a laborer from Bandipora. Filled with regret, the narrator recalls the eyes of the Kashmiri in the manhole, thinking that they were “forgiving eyes, understanding eyes.”
Even though the man has been tortured and left to die in a manhole, he manages to have compassion for the two civilians that could have helped him but didn’t. That he is able to have compassion for them shows how commonplace the Indian Army’s cruelty and abuse has become in Kashmir at the time. It is not clear why the soldiers have chosen to torture this particular man, but it does seem to have been unnecessary. A laborer has nothing to do with the Kashmir conflict, and yet the soldiers, eager for recognition and reward, force the onlookers to blatantly lie on record, demonstrating their corruption.
Themes
Unconvinced by the story, Biplab judges it terrible. He feels strongly that Kashmiris are always exaggerating the wrongs done to them, the things they suffer. After all, he thinks, Kashmiri militants have done their fair share of horrible things to Indian soldiers. “If one has to choose,” he thinks, “then give me a Hindu fundamentalist any day over a Muslim one.” He remembers the Pakistani Army’s action in East Pakistan as a “clear case of genocide,” and refers to the Indian Army as the great liberator of Bangladesh.
Biplab’s reaction to this story shows how history is always told from the victor’s perspective. He is willing to recognize violence that Muslims perpetrate as “genocide” only because he and his people were on the victim side of the conflict. Given what readers already know about the Indian Army and the atrocities it commits in the novel, it is unlikely that all sides view the army as the “great liberator” of Bangladesh; rather, this seems to be more of Biplab’s one-sided thinking.
Themes
Drawn to another packet of documents, Biplab picks up two sachets of photos labeled “Otter Pics” and “Otter Kills.” Upon opening them, he realizes to his disappointment that they are not pictures of otters at all—instead, they contain more documentation about Kashmir. They are all pictures of soldiers in the Indian Army, the first featuring a Sikh solider posing triumphantly over the body of an obviously dead young man. The following pictures are all images of the same solider in different situations. The soldier’s face is “blank and expressionless.” Biplab finds another document in the same carton that is a resume for a Licensed Clinical Social Worker (LCSW) in Clovis, California—the city where Major Amrik Singh was granted asylum and murdered his family. Biplab realizes the photos of the solider are photos of the major. The documents the major used to apply for asylum are also attached.
The fact that a solider would pose victoriously over the dead body of an adolescent shows that for the major, at least, waging war has become more than a job: it’s become something he enjoys. Indeed, the fact that his face seems “blank and expressionless” suggests that he is emotionally unmoved by the dead bodies that he himself has murdered. His lack of empathy reminds readers of Biplab’s own lack of an emotional response to the violence he witnesses as a bureaucrat in the Indian government.
Themes
Before reading the asylum questionnaires, Biplab is so overwhelmed that he pours himself a drink—although he knows, of course, that he shouldn’t. The testimonials provided by Major Amrik Singh and his wife, Loveleen Singh, are startingly different. The major claims to have been made into a scapegoat by the Indian government for the wrongful murder of a human rights activist, and, because he has been blamed for the incident, the major is in danger of being tortured and killed in India. Loveleen, by contrast, provides a long, detailed narrative about having been captured and tortured by police after her husband, framed for the murder of a Muslim human rights activist, refused to take the blame. Once she is freed, she and her husband are forced to flee Kashmir, but are pursued all throughout India by “Muslim terrorists.”
Here, Loveleen Singh in particular takes advantage of the worldwide bias against Muslims to make a case for her to be granted asylum. The stories make no sense within the historical context of India—an army major in the Indian Army would be far too powerful for Muslim Kashmiri resistance members to pursue in such an aggressive way. Even so, Loveleen takes advantage of the fact that post-9/11, an American LCSW might be likely to believe a story in which Muslim terrorists are the antagonists. They make use of the Western ignorance surrounding India’s cultural and political moment.
Themes
Biplab doesn’t believe the stories for one second, and, in fact, observes that in Kashmir they “would be received as slapstick comedy.” But the LCSW in charge of determining whether the Singh family qualified for asylum, Ralph Bauer, seems to have believed them. He has diagnosed Loveleen and Major Singh with PTSD, and suggests that they be granted asylum as they are being sought after by terrorists around the world. Biplab wryly thinks to himself that they almost got away with it. He then wonders why Major Singh had committed suicide and murdered his entire family years before, if he had been able to get asylum. He wonders if it really was a suicide, but stops himself—he knows it doesn’t matter to him, the Indian government, or even the California police.
The narrator coldly observes that Major Singh’s suicide and murder of his entire family doesn’t matter to anyone—not even the government of the state that formerly employed the major, and not the police of the state where the major lived when he died. This reflects Biplab’s cynical view of police and the government. Although it is unjust that Loveleen and her three daughters were murdered, Biplab recognizes that no government would be interested in pursuing justice for them simply because their lives were not important enough to matter.
Themes
Biplab, overwhelmed with the bounty of strange documentation he has found in Tilo’s apartment, begins to drink heavily and soon falls asleep. He is woken up by a knock at the door. Delirious, he opens the door to two strangers who enter the room: “a young man in dark glasses and an older man. Older woman. Man. Woman-man.” The woman introduces herself as Anjum, and says she and her friend Saddam Hussain have come to collect Tilo’s things for her. They gather baby toys and clothes from the cupboards, and Anjum asks Biplab if he wants to take a message for Tilo. Without hesitation, he tears a page out of one of her notebooks and writes “GARSON HOBART” on it. Anjum and Saddam leave, and Biplab is left wondering whether it has all been a hallucination.
Biplab’s return to drinking reflects his poor mental health and unhappy inner world. The entrance of Anjum and Saddam Hussain on the scene invites readers to compare the different protagonists Roy has provided. Biplab’s inability to characterize Anjum’s gender reminds readers the extent to which she is othered by mainstream society. In addition, while Anjum and Saddam Hussain seem cheerful, confident and friendly, Biplab himself, drinking alone in an abandoned apartment, is the picture of unhappiness especially compared to the other two.
Themes
Now awake, Biplab continues to dig through Tilo’s documents. He finds something she’s written, a dictionary that appears to be incomplete. It is called “Kashmiri-English Alphabet,” and lists the 26 letters of the Roman alphabet, all associated with words commonly used in Kashmir. For instance, A is for Azadi, America, Afghan, Ammunition; F is for funerals; H is for HRV (human rights violations), Half-widows, and Half-orphans; I is for interrogation; N is for NGO and NTR (Nothing To Report); Q is for Quran/Questioning; and Z is for Zulm (oppression). Biplab is reeling. Why, he wonders, is Tilo still “wallowing in this old story?” Especially if Musa isn’t around, “filling her head with this trash”?
Tilo’s compilation of the Kashmiri-English alphabet is an attempt to create a language for the atrocities that occur in Kashmir. This endeavor harkens back to Anjum’s mother’s thought, when she discovers that her child is intersex: is it possible to exist outside of language? It seems that Tilo’s purpose in documenting the Kashmiri conflict, in going so far as to create an original language for it, is to prove that it exists. From what Biplab has shared with readers about the media coverage in Kashmir, it seems that there is no accurate representation of the true extent of the violence that occurs there. Tilo’s project, then, is to create a language for what has never been articulated. This project also has to do with Kulsoom Bi’s insistence on the importance of being documented in history: Hijras need this documentation to prove that they exist and have always existed. This acknowledgement empowers the community. In the same way, Tilo’s documentation of Kashmir empowers the Kashmiri community by gifting them with the right to tell their own narrative in a language made especially for them.
Themes
