Hello friends
I am Nehalba Gohil and I am student of Department of English, MKBU.This blog is a part of my classroom thinking activity The Ministry of Utmost Happiness and this activity given by Dr Dilip Barad Sir
Arundhati Roy
Suzanna Arundhati Roy is an Indian author best known for her novel The God of Small Things, which won the Man Booker Prize for Fiction in 1997 and became the best-selling book by a non-expatriate Indian author. She is also a political activist involved in human rights and environmental causes.
1)The Reader’s Digest Book of English Grammar and Comprehension for Very Young Children by S. Tilottama. (Question - Answer)
1) THE OLD MAN & HIS SON
When Manzoor Ahmed Ganai became a militant, soldiers went to his home and picked uphis father, the handsome, always dapper Aziz Ganai. He was kept in the Haider BaigInterrogation Centre. Manzoor Ahmed Ganai worked as a militant for one and a half years.His father remained imprisoned for one and a half years.On the day Manzoor Ahmed Ganai was killed, smiling soldiers opened the door of hisfather’s cell. ‘Jenaab, you wanted Azadi? Mubarak ho aapko. Congratulations! Today yourwish has come true. Your freedom has come.’The people of the village cried more for the shambling wreck who came running throughthe orchard in rags with wild eyes and a beard and hair that hadn’t been cut in a year and ahalf than they did for the boy who had been murdered.The shambling wreck was just in time to be able to lift the shroud and kiss his son’s facebefore they buried him.
Q 1: Why did the villagers cry more for the shambling wreck?
Ans :- The villagers cry more for the shambling wreck because came running throughthe orchard in rags with wild eyes and a beard and hair that hadn’t been cut in a year and ahalf than they did for the boy who had been murdered.
Q 2: Why did the wreck shamble?
The wreck shamble because shroud and kiss his son’s facebefore they buried him.
2 ) The Noble Prize Winner
Manohar Mattoo was a Kashmiri Pandit who stayed on in the Valley even after all the other Hindus had gone. He was secretly tired of and deeply hurt by the barbs from his Muslim friends who said that all Hindus in Kashmir were actually, in one way or another, agents of the Indian Occupation Forces. Manohar had participated in all the anti-India protests, and had shouted Azadi! louder than everybody else. But nothing seemed to help. At one point he had even contemplated taking up arms and joining the Hizb, but eventually he decided against it. One day an old school friend of his, Aziz Mohammed, an intelligence officer,visited him at home to tell him that he was worried for him. He said that he had seen his(Mattoo’s) surveillance file. It suggested that he be put under watch because he displayed ‘anti-national tendencies’.When he heard the news Mattoo beamed and felt his chest swell with pride.
Q 1: Why was Mattoo shot?
(a) Because he was a Hindu
(b) Because he wanted Azadi
(c) Because he won the Nobel Prize
(d) None of the above
(e) All of the above.
Ans(a) Because he was a Hindu
Q 2: Who could the unknown gunman have been?
(a) An Islamist militant who thought all kafirs should be killed
(b) An agent of the Occupation who wanted people to think that all
(c) Neither of the above
(d) Someone who wanted everyone to go crazy trying to figure it out.
Ans(a) Islamist militants thought that all kafirs should be killed
3 ) THE CAREERIST
The boy had always wanted to make something of himself. He invited four militants fordinner and slipped sleeping pills into their food. Once they had fallen asleep he called thearmy. They killed the militants and burned down the house. The army had promised the boytwo canals of land and one hundred and fifty thousand rupees. They gave him only fiftythousand and accommodated him in quarters just outside an army camp. They told him thatif he wanted a permanent job with them instead of being just a daily wage worker he wouldhave to get them two foreign militants. He managed to get them one ‘live’ Pakistani but washaving trouble finding another. ‘Unfortunately these days business is bad,’ he told PI.‘Things have become such that you cannot any longer just kill someone and pretend he’s aforeign militant. So my job cannot be made permanent.’PI asked him, if there was a referendum whom he would vote for, India or Pakistan?‘Pakistan of course.’‘Why?’‘Because it is our Mulk (country). But Pakistan militants can’t help us in this way. If I cankill them and get a good job it helps me.’He told PI that when Kashmir became a part of Pakistan, he (PI) would not be able tosurvive in it. But he (the boy) would. But that, he said, was just a theoretical matter. Becausehe would be killed shortly.
Q 1: Who did the boy expect to be killed by?
(a) The army
(b) Militants
(c) Pakistanis
(d) Owners of the house that was burned.
Ans :- (d)Owners of the house that was burned.
2. Three points mentioned in the photo of board -work .
2) list of Characters
- Anjum / Aftab
- Tilo
- Biplab Dasgupta
- Naga
- Musa
- Saddam Hussain
- Major Amrik Singh
- Ashfag Mir
- Zainab
- Ustad Kulsoom Bi
- Imam Ziauddin
- Miss Jebeen
- Miss Udayan Jebeen
- Gulrez
- Revathy
- D.D Gupta
- Maryam
- Aijaz
- Dr Azad Bhartiya
- Jahanara
- Mulaqut Ali
- Ustad Hameed Khan
- Zakir Main
- Dr Bhagat
- ACP Pinky
- Mr Aggarwal
- The Princess
- Showkat
- Saeeda
Summary - plot
Spanning the 1950s to the 2010s, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, a 2017 novel by Arundhati Roy, follows the interconnected lives of several characters against the backdrop of contemporary India. The novel skips backwards and forwards in time freely, often pauses for detours into the stories of minor characters and includes several texts within the main text (e.g., Bhartiya’s manifesto, or Tilo’s Kashmiri-English Alphabet). At heart, however, the novel consists of two main narrative threads, one of which is centered in Delhi, and the other in Kashmir.
The book has a remarkable narrative plot, with complex set of characters mostly drawn from the lower strata of the society. The terse prose style mingled with occasional aphorism and apt similes is used to dig deep into the Indian modern history to explore the socio-political themes. Roy, as a keen observer of the events -land reform that disowned poor farmers; Godhra train burning; and the insurgency in Kashmir, compels the reader to search facts in the debris of history. The book is replete with the themes of racism, gender in equality and religious fanatism. In fact, it is a compendium of alternatives – alternative structure of kinship, resistance and romance. It is a kind of novel, where we find, a perfect marriage of art and politics, history and fiction, reason and imagination. She, through her beautiful language, creativity and wide reading, exposes the grim and violent truths that would scare anybody of the prevailing socio-political condition of the nation. The hybrid language of the book with beautiful quotations from Urdu, and references to sacred scriptures expose myth with religion. This widens the critical horizons of the novel as a new innovation in the contemporary Indian English fiction. The book can be read from various theoretical approaches –feminist/ gender theories, cultural discourse, political per se and so on.
Fact and Fiction
Real life - social - political - event
The novel also incorporates many social and political events occurred in India and other parts of the world against the backdrop of its story. Political discourse in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness can be seen deeply entwined with the nationalistic agenda. Kashmir conflict is in the center of the novel, discussing the attitude of the political power center in dealing with it. Instead of working for a solution for one of the biggest crises on humanitarian grounds, the politicians used and keep using Kashmir as repetitive rhetoric to keep them in power by gaining more votes. An example of the political slogan is given by the author, “‘doodh mangogey to kheer dengey! Kashmir mango gey to cheer dengey!’ Ask for milk, we’ll give you cream! Ask for Kashmir, we’ll rip you open seam to seam!” (103).India’s national and political agenda has developed its roots in the religious discourse. Despite maintaining a façade of democracy, the country is ruled by the people of RSS, which is a Hindu party essentially and believes in the superiority of only the Hindu people. The ruling party of India is the BJP, which is a branch of the extremist Hindu religious party of Hindutva. Religion, in the hands of these people, is used as a tool to keep their power positions maintained and keep the people of the other religions like Muslims, Sikhs, Parsis and lower-caste Hindus as well, at the periphery. Roy shows the plight of people who are slaughtered, raped and penalized because of their religion, caste or political differences. Thereaders see Anjum; the Hijra stuck in the massacre of Gujrat, Dayachand, the Dalit changing his identity to secure a lowest paying job, Tilo, the Syrian Christian woman travelling to Kashmir for Musa, the Muslimbound to be persecuted. All these threads tell storiesof plight under the fast-rising totalitarian system of India.
3)Write about any one theme or character of the novel with the help of Chat OpenAI GPT. Ask to Chat GPT and put a screenshot as well as copy-paste the answer generated by this response generator.
Theme
3 ) Nature of Paradise
The theme of a ministry of utmost happiness in the context of the nature of paradise refers to the idea that the purpose of a ministry is to help individuals achieve the ultimate state of happiness and peace associated with the concept of paradise. This can include spiritual guidance, counseling, and other practices that are intended to help individuals find inner peace and contentment. In religious contexts, it may also include teaching about the afterlife and the nature of paradise, as well as helping individuals to prepare for the journey to paradise after death.
