Events are the approximate days I started and finished reading a book. An ‘event’ spanning more than one day has a brief note about the book.
- This event has passed.
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
2022 @ 8:00 AM - 5:00 PM
I told someone I was working with last night that I kept setting Ministry down, because the Hijras weren’t a group I could easily identify with. Two and a half months later, the culture, the shared knowingness of the Hijras that Roy distributes as crescendos of compassion throught Ministry, dissolved my initial (American) masculine trepidation. The story of humanity, and people who have suffered extensively, ends (and begins) in a graveyard, which is a heavenly realm, and with innocence. Ministry is flavored like a korma, spices working together for an almost indescribable experience. Earthy, roasted, majestic, tragic, tender, with a bit of ‘what is that,’ Roy weaves together themes as old as the Mahabharata masterfully into modern myth. These hijroines and heros, the gods and goddessss of struggle, aren’t of old, or yore, or yonder, they are neighbors.