74 pages • 2 hours read
Arundhati RoyThe Ministry Of Utmost Happiness
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2017A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 10-12Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 10 Summary: “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness”
Back in the present, the residents of Jannat House settle into a routine. Anjum and Tilo care for Miss Jebeen the Second, Tilo gives lessons to children and “learn[s] Urdu and something of the art of happiness” (403), and Saddam and Zainab fall in love and adopt a number of stray and injured animals. The house also grows its own vegetables, which provides work to the drug users who hang around the cemetery: “Some of the more able-bodied addicts were recruited to help with the garden and the animals. It seemed to bring them some temporary solace” (405).
In the outside world, Hindu nationalism is gaining strength and erupting into violence. Nevertheless, Saddam chooses this moment to ask Anjum for Zainab’s hand in marriage. In fact, when Anjum expresses misgivings, Saddam explains that it is precisely because of the way events are unfolding in the outside world that he feels he can set aside his quest for vengeance and marry; he shows Anjum a video of Dalits throwing cow carcasses onto a government official’s property, saying that because “[his] people have risen up” (411), his own involvement would make no longer make a difference.
A month before the wedding, Saddam says that he is taking everyone on an excursion. Anjum, Saeeda, Nimmo, Zainab, Tilo, Miss Jebeen, and Saddam all pile into a car and drive out of the city, finally stopping at a mall. They settle down to eat lunch at a restaurant, and Saddam explains why he brought them there: His father died “[w]here this building now stands. Before it came up there were villages here, surrounded by wheat fields” (417). Anjum is disturbed, and although Saddam attempts to reassure her that his father was given a “proper” Hindu funeral, she insists that they do more:
After a great deal of discussion, they decided they would buy a shirt in his name from one of the shops (like people bought chadars in dargahs) and bury it in the old graveyard so that Saddam and Zainab’s children would feel the presence of their grandfather around them as they grew up (418).
Back in the cemetery, the group lays Saddam’s “father” to rest, along with the ashes of Tilo’s mother. Imam Ziauddin officiates, and Tilo recites her mother’s favorite passage from Shakespeare in lieu of a Christian prayer.
Saddam and Zainab marry a month later at a wedding attended by several Hijras, Dr. Azad Bhartiya, and friends Saddam has made doing various odd jobs over the years. The married couple and those closest to them pay a visit to Hazrat Sarmad's dargah after the wedding to ask for his blessing.
Three weeks later, Bhartiya receives a letter from a woman named Revathy in the Bastar forest, where communist forces have been fighting against the clearing of the land and the expulsion of its indigenous inhabitants. Revathy is Miss Jebeen the Second’s biological mother, so Bhartiya reads the letter aloud to Anjum, Tilo, and Saddam Hussain.
Explaining that she will be dead by the time her message is received, Revathy tells her life story. Her father abused her mother, so Revathy was raised largely by her grandfather, who was a communist. Her Maoist convictions deepened into activism when she went to college: “I worked as a part-timer and courier for the Party. Afterward [i.e. after college] I worked in the Mahila Sangham—women’s organization, creating class awareness in slums and villages” (426). This position exposed her to considerable danger, because the government was ramping up its efforts to suppress communism in the region. Eventually, Revathy was detained by the police, who tortured and raped her. Although she escaped, she later discovered she was pregnant. She initially planned to kill the baby but changed her mind and simply left the child on a trip to Delhi, afterward returning home to “live and die by [her] gun” (431).
Those listening to this story are touched and decide that Miss Jebeen should one day learn about her mother (but not her father). They also rename her Udaya Jebeen (“Udaya” being the name Revathy had chosen for her child). The next day, the group buries Revathy’s letter in the cemetery and holds a funeral for her:
Dr. Azad Bhartiya procured a red flag. Revathy’s letter was put into an airtight container and then it was wrapped in the flag. While it was buried he sang the Hindi version of ‘The Internationale’ and gave her a clenched-fist Red Salute (432).
Chapter 11 Summary: “The Landlord”
The novel reverts to Dasgupta’s narrative. Dasgupta has developed a drinking problem, lost his job and his wife, and moved into Tilo’s old apartment, where he spends his time reading and organizing Tilo’s old papers. As a result of this, he has become sympathetic to Kashmiri separatism, although he doesn’t intend to publicly broadcast his new views. In the meantime, Kashmir remains a violent and dangerous place:
It’s no longer the case that security forces are attacking people. It seems to be the other way around now. People—ordinary people, not militants—are attacking the forces. Kids on the streets with stones in their hands are facing down soldiers with guns; villages armed with sticks and shovels are sweeping down mountainsides and overwhelming army camps (435).
Dasgupta, however, expects that the army will eventually get the upper hand once more, and that the entire situation is likely to devolve into nuclear war.
Dasgupta then recounts how Musa stopped by the apartment one evening looking for Tilo. The two men had a friendly conversation over dinner, avoiding talk of politics. Dasgupta did, however, say that Musa “may be right [about Kashmir], but [he’ll] never win” (437). Musa responded that he believed “the opposite”: “We may turn out to be wrong, but we have already won” (437). He also asked after Naga, who is one of the only people Dasgupta ever sees: The two have reconnected in Tilo’s absence and are considering starting “a sort of yesteryear music channel, on the radio or maybe a podcast” (438).
Just before Musa left, Dasgupta asked him whether he killed Amrik Singh, and Musa explains that he “made him kill himself” (438). Various Kashmiris came to see how Singh was living in the United States, and the sight of his former victims hanging around his home, workplace, etc. eventually drove Singh to suicide. This, Musa says, is what will also eventually happen to India.
Dasgupta ponders this while he sits alone in the apartment. He worries that the world around him is already “unraveling” (440) and fears that he himself will as well. He realizes he ought to get in touch with Naga about the podcast but decides to have a drink first.
Chapter 12 Summary: “Guih Kyom”
Musa takes his “recoveries” to Jannat Guest House and spends three days and nights reconnecting with Tilo. After that, he plans to return to both Kashmir and “a new phase in an old war from which, this time, he would not return” (443). Nevertheless, he takes comfort knowing that Tilo will be able to cope with his death now that she has found peace in her new home.
That same night, Anjum is unable to sleep and walks around the cemetery, saying prayers at the various graves and introducing Miss Udaya Jebeen to their occupants. She then takes the child out of the cemetery onto the main road; the pair look at the stars and then return to Jannat Guest House, where everyone is asleep. The only exception is “Guih Kyom the dung beetle” who is “on duty, lying on his back with his legs in the air to save the world in case the heavens fell” (443). He knows, however, that Udaya Jebeen’s arrival means that everything will work out in the end.
Chapters 10-12 Analysis
For those who live there, Jannat Guest House is a place where they can heal and live truly full lives. In the broader context of the novel, however, it’s worth asking what this retreat from the world at large means, particularly since none of the crises plaguing India—the war in Kashmir, the rise of Hindu nationalism, etc.—have been resolved. Saddam Hussain raises this issue explicitly when he announces that he no longer feels the need to seek vengeance on behalf of his father; he is free to pursue his own private happiness with Zainab, secure in the knowledge that other Dalits are carrying on the fight in the outside world.
This retreat from the social problems Roy has spent so much time addressing may strike readers as strange, but one way of thinking about it lies in the name of Jannat Guest House—that is, “Paradise” Guest House. In a figurative sense, those who live in Jannat Guest House have already died, and the house itself exists outside of time and history. This helps explain why Anjum claims that “nothing much [has] changed” (421) over the course of the novel despite everything that has happened; the world of the cemetery is eternal, and consequently unchanged by all of the events that take place over the course of the story (most notably in Kashmir). On that note, it’s significant that the chapters set in Jannat Guest House bookend the rest of the novel; in effect, the novel mimics the structure of an individual human life, with “death” (or existence in a separate world) on both ends of a person’s life story.
The structure of the novel also helps to provide a sense of closure in an otherwise open-ended story; although the fate of Kashmir might not be clear by the end of the novel, the return to Jannat Guest House does suggest that “things [will] turn out all right in the end” (444). Roy doesn’t wrap up all the novel’s loose ends into a tidy or upbeat conclusion. By reverting to Dasgupta’s perspective, Chapter 11 raises complex questions about India’s future:
What if [Musa’s] right? We’ve seen great countries fall into ruin virtually overnight. What if we’re next in line? […] If this little back street is anything to go by, perhaps the unraveling has already begun. Everything has suddenly fallen quiet. All the construction has stopped. […] How could it all disappear so quickly? (440).
The India Dasgupta himself represents dying by the end of the novel; Dasgupta’s inability to move on with his life suggests that India will similarly stagnate if it continues on its current course.
This helps explain why Miss Jebeen the Second is such an important figure in the novel: She is a product of the many dispossessed, marginalized, and oppressed peoples that the novel is concerned with. As Dr. Azad Bhartiya sees it, she has “three mothers […] all stitched together by threads of light” (137): Anjum (a Muslim Hijra), Tilo (a Syrian Christian by birth with ties to Kashmir), and Revathy (a Telugu Maoist freedom fighter, and the child’s biological mother). In this way, she serves as a symbol of a more hopeful future for India: one that embraces and defines itself in terms of its diversity and differences.
