Nobody writes like Arundhati Roy
When I was young and stupid, I lamented that amongst the languages that I know, English may be the one with the least emotional depth. I believed this to be a fact, when it was just the subjective spidey-sense of me feeling more intimacy and vulnerability in my mother tongue of Bangla and being emotionally distanced from the English that I learnt and used only at school.
To no one's surprise, I grew to be more fluent in and better at manipulating the distant language. By then, I had also dreamed of writing. I thought it to be a great tragedy that I would have to write in my second, shallower language, where it would be impossible to express any feelings in full flavour.
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel. When a dear friend recommended The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy, it took me one page to grow up.
A master manipulator of language, Arundhati Roy's style of writing doesn't merely feel distinct, it feels as though she has created a language more profound and beautiful, one that only she has the expertise to operate.
Her world is vivid and burstingly robust, which she achieves with stunningly original choices of adjectives, adverbs, and any instrument of description.
"The yellow church swelled like a throat with the sound of sad singing"- The God of Small Things.
Upon my first reading, I wondered if anybody has ever compared the atmosphere at a church during a funeral procession with a swollen throat before, and if anybody will think of it again in the future. I am convinced no other comparison would paint such profound imagery.
Roy's prose is steeped in local reference, on the surface ("Her face was pale and as wrinkled as a dhobi's thumb from being in water for too long"- God) or in layers underneath ("The countryside turns an immodest green"- God). She has taken English, along with the heinous history of how we came to know it, and made it ours, to tell our story with an intense, unprecedented intimacy.
In her prose that flows in its rhythm ("a viable die-able age"- God, "She knew very well that she knew very well that she knew very well"- The Ministry of Utmost Happiness), and shock value ("It was the summer Grandma became a whore"- Ministry), Roy scatters her poignant, immaculately phrased insight on the world ("By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men"- God, "Need was a warehouse that could accommodate a considerable amount of cruelty"- Ministry).
Neither of Roy's two novels follows a linear timeline. The interweaving of the past, present, and future in The God of Small Things is a messy spectacle, while The Ministry of Utmost Happiness tells two different equally profound stories, with two different sets of characters in different settings, who only come together in a symbolic place at the end of the novel. Following none of the rules of prose nor structure, Roy has no need to rely on anticipation to engage the reader. Most of the outcomes of the plot is revealed on the first page of The God of Small Things, yet the reader remains enveloped in the ingenuity of her storytelling till the very last page.
In Arundharti Roy's writing, I witnessed new heights of malleability, scope, and power of language, gaining faith in the possibility of telling my story with the cards that I was dealt.
"I've always been slightly short with people who say, 'You haven't written anything again,' as if all the nonfiction I've written is not writing."
There is no doubt of Roy's genius for fiction writing, yet she only wrote two novels ten years apart, and instead engaged in tumultuous activism and wrote much non-fiction in the form of political essays. For a short while following the publication of The God of Small Things and its winning of The Man Booker Prize, Roy was seen as a global representative of "Brand India", which she brought to an abrupt end by criticising the nuclear testing initiatives of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), then a great source of national pride. In interviews, she had expressed that her heart lies with writing fiction, but with everything wrong with the world and the terrible things happening every day, she cannot step out of it, craft literature, and still live with herself.
The result is a turbulent life of controversy, mortal threat and charges of prosecution. I cannot help thinking of the glamorous opportunity cost of her choice. Currently, she faces prosecution over a speech she made about Kashmir in 2010. Previously, Roy's campaign against the Narmada dam project in Gujarat led her to be ruled in criminal contempt, and she was jailed for a "symbolic" day in 2002. On November 16, 2023, in a video address to the Munich Literature Festival, Arundhati Roy made a speech in solidarity with the Gazan people, and with the millions around the world marching for a ceasefire.
Instead of using her gifts to tell beautiful escapist stories and enjoy the glamorous fruits of it, Arundhati Roy chooses, for her empathy, to write political essays grounded in ugly reality.
I am an avid follower, and needless to say, admirer, of Arundhati Roy's work. She speaks of the world, the politics and the heartbreak of it, through her no-nonsense perspective and scathing expression that lays the agenda bare before us, revealing with wondrous simplicity all of its concealed conspiracy. Roy is an immense contributor to the continual growth of our people.
It is a real privilege to grow with Arundhati Roy.
Amrin Tasnim Rafa is a writer, student, and intern at Star Books and Literature. Reach out to her at [email protected].
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