Arundhati Roy and New Inscription on Autumn Leaves
Aligarh Muslim University, India
ABSTRACT
New writings hold new truths and new hopes, as well. Arundhati Roy proves that once more. The God of Small things to The Ministry of Utmost Happiness weave an India and the world from North to South, from little joys to big agonies, small acts to huge rewards, grand shows to petty hearts…She once again speaks of the subalterns, the subjugated, the dismissed and the obliterated, the blinds and the hide-outs how the fists of resistance do not come down, the wish for rights, the dreams for dignity do not dim even as they bleed and endure like trees would treat witherings and autumns. Her works speak of high born ‘laltains’, the low born ‘mombatties’, the nowhere persons called eunuchs, orphans and the disowned; while worrying over drying river beds, dying birds and poachings rampant: she at least, wakes one up to the world! That’s the new writing which gives space to the unsaid and sheds light on the unrevealed. The history house doors are opened, the worm cans of Kasmir Military camps and Militant hide outs which indulge in something similar, the difference being the intention only which is a hair line one. We hear Dickens to Spivak in these new inscriptions. If Aftab is Anjum, then Anjum is the people called India, people called the world who are divided over caste, class, colour and deformity which no person inflicts on oneself. He/ she is the man/woman who is oppressed and yet builds up a world out of ruins. Her living in the graveyard, sleeping and waking up on graves of her blood relations is the metonymy for Kashmir- the burning paradise where people do not die; they are either killed or shoveled up to darkness and anonymity,while the living also die a hundred deaths every now and then. Solace is the new holy grail!
KEYWORDS
fiction, facts, violence, politics, subaltern, rights