This task assigned by Dr. Dilip Barad sir as part of flipped learning activity focuses on Arundhati Roy's novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, and is designed to move students through various cognitive levels of Bloom’s Taxonomy. By the end of this activity, students will be able to recall the complex non-linear narrative and the significance of various characters, as well as analyze key themes such as social marginalization, political resistance, and the fluidity of identity. Furthermore, the task encourages students to evaluate Roy’s narrative style and apply their understanding by creating their own interpretive projects, such as character maps or modern reimagining of the novel's themes.
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Activity A: The "Shattered Story" Structure
The Shattered Narrative: Trauma and Non-Linearity in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
The narrative structure of Arundhati Roy's The Ministry of Utmost Happiness is deliberately fragmented, non-linear, and polyphonic , functioning as a direct manifestation of the trauma experienced by its marginalized characters. The novel's guiding philosophical principle "How to tell a shattered story? By slowly becoming everybody. No. By slowly becoming everything" serves as both the justification and methodology for a narrative that rejects conventional linear progression in favor of an expansive, multi-perspectival approach that mirrors the fractured realities of contemporary India.
- The Non-Linear Timeline as a Symptom of Trauma
The novel's timeline jumps across decades and geographies from Aftab's birth in the 1950s to the 2002 Gujarat riots, from the insurgencies in Kashmir to the forests of Bastar creating a disorienting reading experience that reflects how trauma disrupts a character's internal sense of time . This is not merely a stylistic choice but a psychological necessity for representing lives too broken to fit into straightforward plotlines.
Internalized Conflict:
Nimmo Gorakhpuri articulates this most powerfully when she explains that while "normal" people experience external unhappiness like price rises or riots that eventually "settle down," for the Hijra community, "the riot is inside us. The war is inside us. Indo–Pak is inside us. It will never settle down." This internalized conflict means that trauma is not a historical event but an ongoing present reality, making linear narrative progression impossible.
Physical and Psychological Unravelling:
The depth of trauma is so profound that characters experience internal fragmentation. During his guerrilla training, Musa Yeswi feels his organs "murmur to each other" in a "regime of silence," with his pancreas whispering to his lungs, "Are you still there?" This visceral image captures how trauma alienates not just the self from society, but even one's organs from each other, creating a body and mind in pieces.
The 2002 Riots as Narrative Shatter Point:
Anjum's experience in the Gujarat riots acts as the novel's crucial "shatter point." Surviving a massacre while her friend Zakir Mian is killed left alive only as a "good luck charm" for the killers causes her to lose interest in the "glamour" of her former life. This trauma splits her narrative into an irreconcilable "before" and "after," leading her to shed her glamorous identity and eventually retreat from society entirely.
- The Transition: From Khwabgah to the Graveyard
The novel's spatial and temporal movement from the Khwabgah to Jannat Guest House reflects a fundamental shift from performative hope to a sanctuary for the broken, mirroring the narrative's progression from attempted coherence to embraced fragmentation.
Khwabgah (The House of Dreams):
Located in Old Delhi's walled city, this haveli was a community where those with "dreams that could not be realized in the Duniya" sought liberation. It represented a space built on performance, tradition, and collective identity a place of relative order and established social structures.
The Graveyard (Jannat Guest House):
After the trauma of the riots, Anjum can no longer reconcile herself with the Khwabgah's rules and expectations. She moves to a derelict graveyard, which she transforms into "Jannat" (Paradise) . Here, the boundaries between life and death are literally and metaphorically blurred rooms are built "around the graves," and guests sleep alongside the dead. This physical space becomes a "utopian bubble" outside the violence of the real "Duniya," a place where fragmentation is not something to overcome but the very foundation of community.
This transition from Khwabgah to graveyard mirrors the narrative structure itself: from an attempt at coherent community to an acceptance that wholeness is impossible and perhaps undesirable for those whose lives have been shattered by systemic violence.
- "Becoming Everything": Fragmentation as Narrative Methodology
The novel "becomes everything" by incorporating a vast array of documents, archives, and diverse voices police files, medical reports, private journals, asylum applications, first-person accounts, and third-person narratives. This polyphonic structure demonstrates that a single perspective or linear timeline cannot contain the scale of trauma depicted.
Tilo's Archive as Narrative Bridge:
Tilo's character functions as a crucial link between the novel's fragmented storylines. Her apartment is described as an archive of "recoveries"—mud-caked documents, photos, and letters salvaged from the flood of history, including files on the "disappeared" like the Romanian dancer Renata and the militant Commander Gulrez. Her narrative is itself a "collection of fragments" because her life has been a series of "unravellings" caused by her experiences in Kashmir and her complex relationship with her mother. This archival quality extends to the novel itself, which reads as much like assembled documents as traditional fiction.
Musa's Indistinct Outline:
Musa Yeswi, whose life is destroyed by the death of his wife and daughter, becomes a "shadow at high noon" present but barely visible. His story emerges not through straightforward biography but through glimpses, code names, and the items he leaves behind: fake passports, half-written letters, photographs. This fragmented revelation mirrors how trauma makes coherent self-narrative impossible.
- Connecting Tilo and Anjum: The Found Baby as Nexus
The narrative "becomes everything" by weaving the apparently separate arcs of Tilo (Kashmir) and Anjum (Old Delhi) through the pivotal appearance of a baby at Jantar Mantar , demonstrating how Roy constructs meaning through connection rather than linear causality.
Tilo's Perspective:
Tilo's story is introduced through first-person "Landlord" chapters that establish her as both participant and archivist of the violence in Kashmir. Her relationship with Musa connects her intimately to the insurgency and its human costs.
The Baby as Convergence Point:
At Jantar Mantar, a protest site where "protesters tell their stories... to lighten their burden," a baby is suddenly abandoned on the pavement. Tilo abducts the child (later named Miss Udaya Jebeen ) to protect her from police and the state orphanage system. This act of maternal protection bridges two seemingly unconnected narrative threads.
Converging at Jannat:
The baby provides the essential link between Tilo's world of Kashmiri insurgency and Anjum's world of the urban marginalized. When Tilo eventually brings the baby to Jannat Guest House, she and Anjum become "mothers" alongside the biological mother, Revathy (a Maoist guerrilla). This convergence demonstrates the novel's central argument: the shattered story finds its form not through linear progression but through unexpected connections and collective care.
- The Graveyard as Narrative Anchor and Synthesis
Despite or perhaps because of the jumping timeline, the Jannat Guest House serves as both physical and narrative anchor where these shattered pieces eventually converge. It functions as an "impenetrable fortress" not of exclusion but of radical inclusion, where the boundaries between living and dead, human and animal, past and present are deliberately blurred.
By "becoming everything" a funeral parlor, a zoo for injured animals, a home for "falling people," and a gathering place for Hijras, Dalits, orphans, and activists the graveyard embodies the novel's structural principle. The narrative gathers disparate survivors into a single, inclusive space that is not a state of bliss but a communal way of managing "predictable, reassuring sorrow."
Conclusion: The Necessity of Fragmentation
The structure of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness ultimately argues that a linear, "clean" narrative would constitute a lie in a world as violent and fragmented as the one Roy depicts. The novel demonstrates that wholeness is neither possible nor desirable for those whose lives have been shattered by state violence, communal riots, military occupation, and social marginalization.
The only way to tell a truthful story is to remain "shattered" and "unconsoled," allowing the narrative to expand until it encompasses "everything" not just human perspectives but the landscape itself, the dead as well as the living, the archive and the imagination. The novel's fragmented structure is thus not a failure of coherence but a moral imperative: to respect the reality of trauma by refusing the false comfort of resolution.
By the novel's end, these shattered pieces have not been "repaired" into a traditional whole. Instead, they coexist in their brokenness, "closing ranks" around each other to form a community built not on wholeness but on mutual recognition of shared fragmentation. This "Ministry of Utmost Happiness" suggests that survival in a shattered world requires not the restoration of linear narrative but the creation of spaces both literal and textual where the broken can gather and, in their gathering, become everything.
Activity B: Mapping the Conflict (Mind Mapping with NotebookLM)
Activity C: Automated Timeline & Character Arcs (Auto-mode with Comet)
Anjum’s and Saddam’s journeys in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness are parallel movements from personal trauma into a fragile, improvised community of outcasts at the graveyard guest house.
Anjum / Aftab: lifeline as a timeline
Birth as Aftab
- Born in Old Delhi to Jahanara Begum and Mulaqat Ali, Aftab is intersex and initially raised as the long-awaited “son” in the family.
- Jahanara loves Aftab intensely but also carries fear and secrecy about the child’s body, which shapes Aftab’s early sense of self.
Discovery of Khwabgah and becoming Anjum
- As Aftab becomes aware that the body and desires do not fit the “boy” role, Aftab is drawn to the hijras and eventually joins the Khwabgah, a house of hijras led by Kulsoom Bi.
- In Khwabgah, Aftab takes the name Anjum, claims a hijra identity, learns community codes, and finds both belonging and constraint inside this separate world.
Motherhood and the Gujarat trauma
- Anjum adopts a child, Zainab, and experiences a form of chosen motherhood that expands her emotional world beyond hijra kinship.
- On a religious trip to Gujarat, Anjum and Zakir Mian are caught in communal violence; Zakir is killed, and Anjum survives only because killing hijras is considered bad luck, leaving her deeply traumatized.
Withdrawal from Khwabgah to the graveyard
- After Gujarat, Anjum returns altered, fearful for Zainab, and her attempts to “protect” the child create conflict with Ustad Kulsoom Bi and others in Khwabgah.
- She leaves Zainab in Saeeda’s care and walks out of Khwabgah, choosing to live in a graveyard behind a government hospital, where she begins an extended period of isolation and psychic breakdown.
Building Jannat Guest House and new kinship
- In the graveyard, Anjum slowly constructs a dwelling around ancestral graves, which becomes Jannat Guest House and Funeral Services a hybrid of home, shelter, and workplace.
- The place attracts those who are socially discarded poor, marginalized, and politically damaged people and Anjum shifts from being simply a victim of violence to a maker of an alternative, precarious “utopia” at the cemetery’s edge.
Saddam Hussain: lifeline as a timeline
Witnessing his father’s lynching (cow-protection violence)
- Born Dalit and poor, the character later called Saddam Hussain first appears as a young man whose father, a cow trader, is lynched by gaurakshaks (cow-protection vigilantes) while he watches.
- This violence marks him with rage, grief, and a burning, deferred desire for revenge against the police officer and system that allowed the lynching.
Renaming himself “Saddam Hussain”
- After the lynching, he adopts the name Saddam Hussain in admiration of the executed Iraqi leader, whose televised hanging he watches repeatedly, using that image as a fantasy of reversed power and retribution.
- The new name becomes armor: a self-chosen identity that signals defiance and gives him a mythic script of resistance, even as he remains materially vulnerable and jobless.
Drifting and arriving at the graveyard
- Saddam drifts through casual, precarious work and subaltern spaces in Delhi, carrying with him the story of his father’s death and his plan to one day kill the responsible police officer.
- His wandering eventually leads him to the same graveyard where Anjum has built her makeshift home, bringing a Dalit victim-of-lynching narrative into contact with Anjum’s hijra survivor-of-pogrom narrative.
Meeting Anjum and reshaping the graveyard home
- When Saddam encounters Anjum in the graveyard, he is the first to suggest that she formalize what she has built charge for guests and for funeral services nudging her toward naming the place Jannat Guest House and turning survival into a micro-economy.
- Living and working alongside Anjum, Saddam becomes part of a new, improvised family of the excluded, and his arc shifts from solitary revenge-quest to participation in a shared, fragile community of care and resistance.
How their arcs intersect
From separate traumas to common space
Anjum’s trajectory runs from being born as Aftab and finding a gendered home in Khwabgah to being expelled by state and mob violence into the graveyard.
Saddam’s trajectory runs from caste-marked lynching trauma and a borrowed militant name to the same graveyard, where his and Anjum’s histories cross in a space literally made of the dead.
From victims to makers of an alternative world
Together at Jannat Guest House, Anjum and Saddam help assemble a community of hijras, Dalits, political fugitives, and abandoned people, turning a graveyard into a marginal but living social world.
Their arcs show how extreme violence Gujarat pogrom, cow-protection lynching pushes characters out of formal society and simultaneously forces them to invent new forms of kinship and home at the edges of the city and the nation.
Activity D: The "Audio/Video" Synthesis (Multimedia with NotebookLM
Symbols of utmost Happiness
Here are E- Content Video resources Summaries
Part 1| Khwabgah | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
The video provides an in-depth analysis of the narrative complexity and character intersections within Arundhati Roy’s novel, specifically focusing on the first part, "Khwabgah". The story begins in a graveyard using elements of magic realism, where the protagonist is described as living "like a tree". The discussion traces the backstory of Anjum, who was born as Aftab with both male and female genitals—a revelation that caused her mother to feel she was falling through a "crack between the world she knew and ones she did not know existed". This struggle for identity highlights a lack of societal language for the third gender, leading the characters to find that external conflicts, such as riots and the "Indo-Pak" war, are actually internalized within their own bodies. The Khwabgah (House of Dreams) is established as a sanctuary distinct from the "Duniya" (the outside world), where marginalized individuals can exist outside the standard gender binaries of the status quo.
The narrative transition from the Khwabgah to the Jannat Guest House is triggered by the profound trauma of the 2002 Gujarat riots. Anjum, who had achieved a level of "glamour" and success at the Khwabgah and even adopted a daughter named Zainab, is forever changed after witnessing the death of her companion, Zakir Mian, during the violence. This traumatic experience causes her to abandon her previous life, adopt male attire, and move to a derelict graveyard near a government hospital. There, she collaborates with a contractor to build the Jannat Guest House, a space where rooms are literally constructed around graves, allowing the living to coexist with the dead. The video emphasizes that this structure serves as a narrative anchor, reflecting how shattered lives can eventually gather into a new, inclusive community that exists on the margins of history.
Part 2 | Jantar Mantar | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
This video provides an analysis of the second part of Arundhati Roy’s novel, focusing on the character Saddam Hussain and the central protest site of Jantar Mantar. Saddam Hussain, a permanent guest at Anjum's Jannat Guest House, is a Dalit from Haryana (originally named Dayachand) who adopted a Muslim name after witnessing his father's brutal lynching by a mob on the false suspicion of cow slaughter. His backstory serves as a critique of modern Indian society, highlighting caste-based discrimination in the medical field where Dalit workers handle chores upper-caste doctors find "impure" and the corruption of the security agency culture that exploits the poor. Saddam’s choice of name was inspired by the dignity he saw in the Iraqi leader during his execution, reflecting his own deep desire for vengeance against the officer responsible for his father’s death.
The narrative then shifts to Jantar Mantar, a famous protest site in New Delhi that serves as a representation of the country's various remote struggles. The video describes a convergence of marginalized groups, including the "Mothers of the Disappeared" from Kashmir, Manipuri activists protesting against AFSPA, and survivors of the Bhopal gas tragedy. During an anti-corruption rally led by an "old Gandhian" and a character named Mr. Agarwal (representing Arvind Kejriwal), a newborn baby is suddenly discovered abandoned on the footpath. A conflict ensues when Anjum attempts to claim the child, facing opposition from those who believe a Hijra should not raise a baby; however, by the time the police arrive, the baby has mysteriously disappeared, ending the episode on a cliffhanger.
Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
This video analyzes the final sections of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, focusing on the shift to first-person narration and the convergence of various political struggles. The narrative transitions to two chapters titled "Landlord," narrated by Biplab Dasgupta, an Intelligence Bureau officer who provides the backstory of his college friends: Tilo, Musa, Naga, and Hariharan. This section explores the Kashmir conflict, specifically through Musa Yeswi, who becomes a militant after his wife and daughter are killed by a single bullet during a security encounter. The video highlights Tilo’s role as the central link, revealing that she was the one who rescued the abandoned baby from Jantar Mantar and eventually brought her to the Jannat Guest House on the advice of Dr. Azad Bhartiya.
The video further details the fate of the "cruel" Captain Amrik Singh, who fled to the United States to seek asylum but ultimately murdered his family and himself due to the psychological trauma and the constant fear of being hunted by militants like Musa. Musa explains that while his group did not kill Singh, they created the environment of fear that led to his self-destruction, a metaphor Musa applies to the future of India's occupation of Kashmir. Finally, the video discusses the revelation of the baby’s biological mother, Revathy, a Maoist guerrilla whose story of state-sanctioned violence is told through a long letter. The novel concludes with the baby, Udaya Jebeen, being raised by "six fathers and three mothers," symbolizing the "stitching together" of different marginalized groups including those from the Kashmiri, Maoist, and Hijra struggles into a single, protective community
Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
This video concludes the analysis of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, focusing on how disparate, "shattered stories" from locations like the Khwabgah, Jantar Mantar, and Kashmir finally converge,. The central argument of the video is that the only way to tell such a fragmented story is by "slowly becoming everything," a narrative strategy that allows the book to encompass the vast complexities of India including its political battles, internal wars, and marginalized identities,.
Key themes and character resolutions discussed in the video include:
• The Dung Beetle (Guih Kyong): A significant portion of the video is dedicated to the metaphor of the dung beetle, referred to as "Gu-ustani Ji",. The beetle symbolizes hard work, beauty, and an environment-friendly existence; it represents a humble but "emancipated" creature that lives in harmony with the earth, much like the residents of the graveyard who have found peace outside the "Duniya",.
• Tilo’s Recoveries: Tilo’s character is defined by her collection of "recoveries" salvaged items such as mud-caked files, photographs of the dead, and personal letters,. These fragments serve as a physical archive of the "shattered" history of Kashmir and the victims of state violence, such as the taxi driver Mumtaz Afzal Malik,.
• Resolution of Revenge: The character of Saddam Hussain reaches a turning point where he moves beyond his "revenge drama". While he originally intended to marry for the sake of his vendetta, he eventually prioritizes his role in the communal life of the graveyard and the upbringing of the baby, Udaya Jebeen.
• The "Impenetrable Fortress": The novel ends on a note of "contentment and compassion". The baby, Udaya Jebeen, becomes the "stitch" that holds everyone together, being raised by an unconventional family of "six fathers and three mothers" within the graveyard,.
Ultimately, the video explains that the Jannat Guest House functions as a "Ministry of Utmost Happiness" precisely because its residents live for each other and themselves, rather than for the state or societal expectations, creating a sanctuary where "shattered" people can find a sense of belonging,.
Video 5. Symbols and Motifs | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
This video provides an analysis of the key symbols and motifs in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, beginning with the anti-corruption movement at Jantar Mantar and its use of the "Gandhi image" to represent a temporary hope for uniting people of different beliefs,. The discussion highlights how this movement eventually led to a shift in government and a subsequent loss of the ability to openly question power through data and RTI,. Another central symbol is the Jannat Guest House, which functions as a "utopian bubble" for characters who cannot live in the "Duniya" (the outside world), effectively blurring the boundaries between life, death, and paradise,.
The video further explores the Kashmir conflict through the symbol of movie theaters, which were shut down during the insurgency and repurposed by the military as interrogation centers,. The motif of motherhood is analyzed as a complex issue, contrasting the inclusive, non-biological parenting of Anjum and Tilo with the biological mother who leaves her child to fight for her motherland, as well as the nationalistic icon of "Bharat Mata",,. Finally, the video discusses the use of body imagery and internal organs such as Musa’s organs whispering to one another to reflect the extreme internal strife and alienation that characters feel as a result of their trauma,.
Video 6. Thematic Study | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy
The video provides a comprehensive thematic study of Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, focusing on the paradoxical "nature of paradise" found in the Jannat Guest House and its graveyard setting. It explores the challenges of coexistence and diversity, noting that while the novel envisions a harmonious world, the reality for marginalized characters is often a struggle against the "cost of modernization" and progress, where land acquisition and gentrification displace the poor to benefit the wealthy. The sources suggest that paradise in this context is not a religious afterlife but a secular attempt to create a fairer, shared world on earth through social and political struggle.
The discussion further analyzes the novel’s fragmented, non-linear structure, asserting that "shattered stories" about broken people can only be told by "slowly becoming everything" rather than following traditional storytelling conventions. A significant portion of the video critiques the entanglement of religion and power, highlighting how political leaders exploit religious sentiments to gain and maintain control, which ultimately threatens the safety and liberty of all citizens. Despite these heavy themes of corruption and violence, the video concludes that the novel remains a story of resilience and hope, symbolized by the humble dung beetle and the collective parenting of the baby, Udaya Jebeen.
Reference
Barad , Dilip. “Flipped Classroom Worksheet: The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.” Researchgate, Jan. 2026, www.researchgate.net/publication/399801292_Flipped_Learning_Worksheet_on_The_Ministry_of_Utmost_Happiness. Accessed Jan. 2026.
DoE-MKBU. (2021a, December 28). Part 1 | Khwabgah | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-29vE53apGs
DoE-MKBU. (2021b, December 28). Part 2 | Jantar Mantar | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gr1z1AEXPBU
DoE-MKBU. (2021c, December 28). Part 3 | Kashmir and Dandakaranyak | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cIKH_89rML0
DoE-MKBU. (2021d, December 28). Part 4 | Udaya Jebeen & Dung Beetle | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VH5EULOFP4g
DoE-MKBU. (2021e, December 30). Symbols and Motifs | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbBOqLB487U
DoE-MKBU. (2021f, December 30). Thematic Study | The Ministry of Utmost Happiness | Arundhati Roy [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NYSTUTBoSs
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