Nervous laughter greeted the usual enquiry as to who had read the book. Of the seven present only three had got to the end, and that for two of them at least had involved semi-demi-skimming at best. The common reaction was “oh good! It’s not just me”, and “this was hard work”.
Searching for
credit found instances of excellent descriptive passages, and
vivid accounts of some experiences, notably in the Kashmir section,
but overall there was considerable disappointment. People found the
characters hard to identify, partly because of their names, partly
because of the complexities of the various castes, their culture and
clothing and partly because, apart from Anjum and Musa, they did not
engage us. The early interest roused in the unusual life of the
hijiras, more oucast than the untouchables but a part of everyone’s
life for celebrations, was left unsatisfied as the book moved to
political themes, known only superficially by most western readers,
and largely tragic eg Gujarat, Srinagar and Shiraz. The fantastic
setting in the graveyard, while well imagined and described was so
unlikely to have gone un- noticed or persecuted by the police for
hush money over 20 years that it lost credibility, and it’s “Utmost
Happiness” at the end was presumably ironic.
It had taken 20
years to write, during which many ideas and sub-plots had occurred to
the author, many of which would have made good stories in themselves,
but we felt that she liked so many places and episodes so much that
she could not bear to leave them out. It desperately needed a
thorough edit.
The Indian life
style is not that well known here and the references to different
items of clothing, castes etc. were not understood.
The many characters
were difficult to keep up with.
The story is of
clashes and fighting between India and Kashmir. Major Amrik Singh is
a cruel leader who appears to kill for fun.
There was an
interesting piece well into the book where Tilo and Musa escape
into Kashmir to spend some time together and Mr Singh somehow discovers
the river boat they are hiding on. Singh believes he has killed Musa
when in fact it was the boat owner who died.
The couple meet up
again later in the story.
The time scale was
around late 1980's early 1990's and maybe Asians would find the book
very interesting but not our group.
The people entitled to mark it gave it 3, 4, 5. Average 4
My comments:
This book should be called the Ministry of Utmost UNHappiness. It is depressing from the first page. I didn't know whether the name used was between trees or other plants talking to each other or what. Then I discovered it was about a child born as a hermaphrodite who as he grows up goes to live in a hostel of either prostitutes or other hermaphrodites, it is not made clear, that are rented out to parties among other things.
Not my type of book. Page 38 is it.
