Arundhati Roy Archives - An Insight into my Hindside

Continuing my series, as promised. In this post, I present the books I read in February 2023, in sequence.

Book	Author	My Rating
Midnight’s Children	Salman Rushdie	7/10
The All Bengali Crime Detectives	Suparna Chatterjee	6/10
Love Unlocked	Kavita Bhatnagar	4/10
The Ministry of Utmost Happiness	Arundhati Roy	9/10

Books I read in February 2023

Summary

At the end of January, I started reading Salman Rushdie. Compared to Arundhati Roy, I immediately found the writing much easier and funnier, too. However, I found the book much longer than it needed to be. I completely lost the plot in Book 3 where Saleem, the protagonist loses his memory and becomes a dog/tracker for the army (owing to his superior sense of smell) in the CUTIA unit. I skipped the chapters around this phase completely.

After the huge book that was Midnight’s children, I wanted to read something lighter and less well known. So when Amazon recommended me “The All Bengali Crime Detectives“, from a virtually unknown author Suvarna Chatterjee, I gave it a go. I found the story engaging, but found the setting of middle class Kolkata quite depressing.

From there, I went on to read another lesser known book Love Unlocked. It was about marital discord between a wife and her in-laws; always bickering. Eventually, when threatened with divorce by her husband, she mends her ways and learns to live with her in-laws.

I really Lol-ed at this one — I really Lol-ed hard at this one

Not only does she become a doting daughter-in-law, she develops excellent house-keeping skills, starts cooking meat and even becomes pregnant to please her in-laws. She even gets her adopted sister to come and do household chores for her in-laws.

Not trying my luck with unknown authors further, I went back to Arundhati Roy.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness was hands down one of the best books I have ever read. I would rate it 10/10 if not for the silliness of having real life politicians in the book but with slightly modified names (Kejriwal is Aggarwal, Modi is Lalla and Manmohan Singh is the trapped rabbit)

I also gave Kindle Unlimited a shot, but realised that the books on there are not the books I wanted to read and cancelled it soon after.

As promised, I took up reading again. In this post, I present the books I read in January 2023, in sequence.

When I started reading (after a gap of many years), I was in throes of medication withdrawal. Reading books made things easier.

I went to few of the biggest book stores in the city and was disappointed to see the slim selection of English books available, especially from Indian authors. I was also surprised to see how expensive English books were. Eventually, I decided to buy a Kindle instead.

I was a bit apprehensive and thought that maybe after so many years I may not be able to read after all. but to my relief, it all came back pretty easily. Below are the books I read in January 2023.

Book	Author	My Rating
The Lowland	Jhumpa Lahiri	9/10
Interpreter of Maladies	Jhumpa Lahiri	6/10
The Namesake	Jhumpa Lahiri	8/10
Unaccustomed Earth	Jhumpa Lahiri	9/10
The God of Small Things	Arundhati Roy	9/10

Books I read in January 2023

The book I chose to start the year with, turned out to be one of the best books I have ever read. The rest of Jhumpa’s books all had common themes. Expatriate Bengalis in America, cheating Bengali wives, neglected parents, children adjusting to their new lives in America. Also, people who don’t seem to do “real work’ after moving to America, but studying for years, writing thesis and dissertations.

From there, I moved on to Arundhati Roy. Initially I found her writing more complicated and convoluted. The timeline was disjointed. Also I couldn’t keep track of the 20 characters introduced within the first 2 pages. But eventually the novel gripped me and I enjoyed reading it.

Be back next month!

Earth bound misfit, I