The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness

Although she appears relatively late in The Ministry of Utmost Happiness, Tilo is arguably one of the novel’s two main characters (Anjum being the other). She was born out of wedlock to Maryam Ipe—a woman from a family of Syrian Christian descent. Because of the scandal, Maryam only “adopted” Tilo as her daughter some months later. This initial rejection leaves a lifelong mark on Tilo; according to Biplab—one of several men in love with her—Tilo gave off an air of “reckless aloneness,” remaining aloof in most interactions and never seeking to “please” those around her (158). In fact, he suggests she often did the opposite, deliberately cultivating an eccentric appearance:

Her long, thick hair was neither straight nor curly, but tangled and uncared for. […] She wore it down her back in a plait and sometimes twisted into an untidy knot at the nape of her long neck with a yellow pencil stuck through it. She wore no make-up and did nothing—none of those delightful things girls do, with their hair, or their eyes, or their mouths—to augment her looks. […] The first day I met her she was wearing white cotton pajamas and a hideous—the hideousness somehow deliberate—printed, oversized man’s shirt that didn’t seem to belong to her (157).

Roy fills in Tilo’s story in bits and pieces, often through the eyes of either Dasgupta or Naga—a former classmate of Dasgupta’s whom Tilo eventually marries. Although both men are fascinated by and in love with Tilo, neither feels he really knows or understands her. Eventually, it becomes clear that Tilo’s one deep and meaningful relationship is with Musa—a Kashmiri man she went to architectural school with. The two drifted apart after college but rekindle their romantic relationship years later, after Musa’s wife and child have died at the hands of the Indian Army, and after he himself has joined the fight for Kashmiri independence. However, Musa’s status as a “separatist” places him in constant danger, and Tilo herself is traumatized when she is caught up in a police raid. She is also still haunted by memories of her mother and aborts the child she had conceived with Musa, fearing she would prove an inadequate parent herself.

It’s as a kind of mother, however, that Tilo’s story intersects with Anjum’s, since Anjum sees Tilo “kidnap” a baby that was abandoned in downtown Delhi. Tilo’s reasons for doing so become clear when she names the baby “Miss Jebeen the Second” after Miss Jebeen the First—Musa’s daughter with his wife Arifa. Tilo sees in the unwanted child a chance for rebirth and brings her to live in Jannat Guest House, sharing parental responsibilities with Anjum. In this way, Tilo can finally make peace with her past, burying her mother’s ashes in the cemetery and finding that she can let go of her fear for Musa. Tilo’s story underscores the possibility of surviving trauma and living comfortably with one’s pain and differences.

Biplab Dasgupta (called Garson Hobart by Tilo and Das-Goose by Naga) is an intelligence officer employed by the Indian government. When first introduced, Dasgupta has just returned to Delhi from an assignment in Kabul. His marriage is strained and his wife is working overseas, accompanied by their two daughters; when Dasgupta pays a visit to the building he lets out, it becomes clear that the troubles in his relationship with his wife stem partly from the fact that he is in love with Tilo, who rents an apartment from him. The two have known each other since college, when they, Naga, and Musa were all working on a play together. He largely lost touch with her after leaving school, but their paths crossed when Tilo was arrested during a raid in Kashmir, where Dasgupta was posted at the time; Tilo appealed to Dasgupta for help and he secured her release. Years later, she contacted him when she was separating from her husband Naga and needed an apartment of her own.

Dasgupta realizes that Tilo only ever saw him as, at best, a friend; in fact, because of Dasgupta’s work, he has spent a substantial portion of his life at odds with Tilo’s on-again, off-again lover Musa, who is a Kashmiri separatist. Nevertheless, Dasgupta’s love for Tilo is so all-consuming that he feels he has “constructed [himself] around her”—something that arguably brings out his better qualities (153). For instance, despite his own cynicism, he respects Tilo’s more idealistic tendencies enough that he considers her marriage to Naga a “travesty”:

I didn’t think she would have been made privy to the relationship between her soon-to-be husband and the Intelligence Bureau. She would have thought she was marrying a campaigning journalist, seeker of justice, scourge of the establishment that had killed the man she loved. The deception made me angry, but of course I couldn’t be the one to disabuse her of that notion (186).

In some ways, this passage actually foreshadows the transformation that Dasgupta undergoes over the course of the novel; as he struggles to make sense of Tilo’s sudden departure from the apartment, he goes through her papers, learns the truth about Musa’s “death,” and finds himself sympathizing more and more with the Kashmiri cause. This change of heart, however, exacerbates his cynicism; he suspects that the violence in Kashmir will only end once India and Kashmir have destroyed one another entirely. He also slides into personal despair, losing his wife and job and drinking heavily. As the novel ends, Roy does hold out a bit of hope for Dasgupta, who has vague hopes of starting a radio station with Naga. It’s unclear whether this form of rebirth will ever be realized, however; Dasgupta’s final words—”But first I need a drink” (440)—suggest that he is too paralyzed by hopelessness to attempt a fresh start. In this way, the vision of India represented in Dasgupta’s story contrasts with that of a character like Anjum’s; where Anjum’s story suggests it is possible for India to move beyond its traumatic and divisive past, Dasgupta’s warns that the country may simply become stuck in a state of despair.

Musa is a Kashmiri militant involved in the struggle for Kashmiri independence. As a young man, he studied architecture in Delhi, but returned home after completing his degree, married a Kashmiri woman named Arifa, and had a daughter. He was sympathetic to separatism even at the time, which strained his relationship with his father—a building contractor who worked with the Indian Army and was friendly with Major Amrik Singh. However, it wasn’t until the death of his wife and child (“Miss Jebeen”) that Musa himself joined the fight, and then only because he faced certain death if he remained in his hometown.

This speaks to what Dasgupta describes as Musa’s “reticence” and “serenity” (160). Musa is not prone to violence or extremism by nature, and in fact does his best to temper these tendencies in the separatist movement, refusing to take part in any infighting and lamenting the need to “simply [them]selves, standardize [them]selves, reduce them[selves]” to square off against the “single-minded” and “monolithic” (377) Indian Army. In private, Musa reveals himself to be a compassionate and tender man, adopting Gulrez—a mentally disabled man—as his “brother” and helping him find a safe place to stay.

Musa’s deepest relationship, however, is with Tilo. The two met in college and share a bond that, according to Dasgupta, transcends mere romance:

I was never entirely sure what the relationship between Musa—Musa Yeswi—and Tilo really was. They were quiet with each other in company, never demonstrative. Sometimes they seemed more like siblings than lovers (160).

As a result, Tilo and Must effortlessly pick up their relationship where they left off when he contacts her nine months after his family’s death. Nevertheless, Musa’s commitment to Kashmiri independence prevents him from settling down with Tilo and gives their relationship a bittersweet quality. As the novel ends, he is planning to return to the fight, and he expects to be killed without ever seeing Tilo again:

He would leave for Kashmir the next morning, to return to a new phase in an old war from which, this time, he would not return. He would die the way he wanted to, with his Asal boot on. He would be buried the way he wanted to be—a faceless man in a nameless grave (443).

Naga is a security analyst and Tilo’s ex-husband. He went to college with Dasgupta and co-starred with him in a play that Tilo designed the set pieces for. At the time, Naga was handsome, charming, self-confident, and a bit of a womanizer. Part of his appeal lay in his rebelliousness; despite coming from a family of well-to-do diplomats, Naga dabbled in various radical groups and began his career as a leftist journalist. Over time, however, he began to work in closer cooperation with the Indian government, downplaying human rights violations on their request and transitioning fully to a supporter of the regime. Biplab suggests that this transformation wasn’t so much the result of hypocrisy or dishonesty as it was a byproduct of his “mercurial” nature; he notes that Naga had that “chameleon-like quality that good actors have—the ability to alter his physical appearance, not superficially, but radically, depending on who he had decided to be at that particular moment in his life” (161), and that the “decibel level” (166) of his opinions has never changed, even as the opinions themselves have.

The one thing this fickleness doesn’t extent to is Naga’s love for Tilo. In large part, this is because she always remained somewhat closed off to him, even after years of marriage: “Naga married Tilo because he was never really able to reach her. And because he couldn’t reach her he couldn’t let her go” (221-22). Consequently, Naga is devastated when Tilo leaves him, and her departure causes him to reevaluate his life; the last the reader hears of him, he “has resigned from his paper and seems happier than [Dasgupta] remember[s] him ever being” (437). In some ways, his desire to start a radio channel or podcast with Dasgupta is, like Jannat Guest House, a form of refuge from the “Duniya,” with Naga trading a career based on political unrest for the simple pleasures of music.

Saddam Hussain is a young man who becomes one of Anjum’s tenants and (eventually) the husband of her adoptive daughter Zainab. By the time he arrives at Jannat Guest House, Saddam has sustained permanent damage to his eyesight; he has worked a number of odd jobs, including a stint as the guard for a large metallic piece of art that reflected the sun so brightly it nearly blinded him. This misfortune, however, hasn’t altered his basic temperament, which is inventive and optimistic; he is constantly looking for new money-making “enterprises,” selling trinkets and medicine outside a hospital and helping Anjum and Imam Ziauddin start their funeral business (82).

Despite his happy and easygoing nature, however, Saddam has a troubled past that he eventually reveals to Anjum. Saddam’s family were low-caste Hindus who made their living disposing of cow carcasses, and one day his father and several friends were murdered by a mob after being falsely accused of killing one of those cows. As a result, Saddam converted to Islam and swore revenge on the government official who had initially arrested his father. He also took the name “Saddam Hussain” after seeing a video of Saddam Hussein’s execution; he was impressed by Hussein’s composure and insists that if he himself “[has] to pay a price, [he] want[s] to pay it like that” (95). By the end of the novel, however, Saddam is able to lay aside his quest for vengeance; when he sees a group of workers like his father rising up in protest, he feels confident that he can pursue his own private happiness by marrying Zainab while others take on his cause.

Amrik Singh is an officer in the Indian Army whose presence looms over much of The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. He is posted in Kashmir and has a reputation for cruelty that even those on his own side find disturbing; he is eventually placed on desk duty after murdering a human rights lawyer (Jalib Qadri) he was simply supposed to detain. He proves equally dangerous in this role, forcing Musa to go into hiding through false shows of friendship, and later playing a role in Tilo’s arrest and Gulrez’s murder. He moved to the United States with his wife Loveleen and his two sons in the early 2000s, claiming asylum on grounds of political persecution. By this point, he was a broken man, and he eventually killed himself and his family in a murder-suicide. Musa reveals that he had tracked Singh down and, along with other Kashmiris, effectively driven Singh mad with guilt:

[Other Kashmiris] began to arrive in Clovis to see how the Butcher of Kashmir lived now. Some were journalists, some were writers, photographers, lawyers […] some were just ordinary people. They turned up at his workplace, at his home, at the supermarket, across the street, at his children’s school. Every day. He was forced to look at us. Forced to remember. It must have driven him crazy. Eventually it made him self-destruct (439). 

Gulrez is a developmentally disabled man whom Tilo meets while visiting Musa in Kashmir. He lives on a houseboat owned by a friend of Musa’s, cooking for the guests that occasionally come by. Musa later explains that he found this job for Gulrez because the world outside the boat was too dangerous and painful for someone like Gulrez to live in; he was “devastated” (371), for instance, when his prized pet rooster Sultan was killed by an army dog. Generally speaking, however, Gulrez is a cheerful, kind, and caring man who cares deeply for his “brother” Musa, and for the two kittens he has adopted. His sweetness makes his death an indictment of the brutality of the Indian occupation of Kashmir; as Musa puts it, “They don’t know what they’ve done. They really have no idea” (395). His death also plays a pivotal role in the novel’s plot, since he is mistaken for (or knowingly claimed as) the dreaded “Commander Gulrez”—that is, Musa.

Despite the major role they play in the novel’s plot, the two Miss Jebeens are more symbols than characters. This is partly due to their young age; Miss Jebeen the First (Musa’s daughter by his wife Arifa) dies just before her third birthday, and The Ministry of Utmost Happiness ends with Miss Udaya Jebeen (the adoptive daughter of Tilo and Anjum) approximately the same age. In this way, Roy underscores the possibility of rebirth even in the most terrible circumstances. The first Miss Jebeen’s extreme youth and total innocence—she is shot while watching a funeral procession with her mother—highlight the indiscriminate cruelty and violence of the war in Kashmir, as well as the destructiveness of India’s broader religious and ethnic divisions. By contrast, the second Miss Jebeen is born out of these very tensions: she was conceived when her mother Revathy was arrested as a communist militant and raped, she was abandoned in the midst of public demonstrations protesting everything from the displacement of indigenous peoples to government corruption, and she is raised in Jannat Guest House by (among others) a Muslim Hijra, the Christian lover of a Kashmiri militant, and a low-caste Hindu who has since converted to Islam. Udaya’s birth and upbringing reflect both the worst and best of India’s religious, political, and ethnic divisions, which is why so many characters look to her as a symbol of hope for the future.

Revathy is a Maoist militant from southeastern India, and the biological mother of Miss Jebeen the Second, whom she abandons in a crowd of protesters in downtown Delhi. Her reasons for doing so become clear in the letter she sends to Azad Bhartiya, which arrives after Revathy’s own death: the child, whom she named Udaya, was the product of gang rape at the hands of the police. Revathy’s life was one of hardship even before this experience; her father abused her mother, and she herself was discriminated against for having darker skin than either of her parents. She was raised largely by her grandfather, who instilled in her the communist beliefs that solidified when she later went to college. However, despite her loyal service first as an activist and later as a soldier, Revathy’s comrades have very little patience with the PTSD she suffers after being raped, or in fact her broader experiences of misogyny: “Women join [the Party] because they are revolutionaries but also because they cannot bear their sufferings at home. Party says men and women are equal, but still they never understand” (431). She nevertheless remains committed to the cause, and Anjum, Tilo, and Saddam “bury” her letter wrapped in a red flag out of respect for her beliefs.

Azad Bhartiya is one of the protesters assembled at Jantar Mantar during the “summer of the city’s resurrection” (105). Unlike many of the protesters, however, he has been living in the neighborhood for 11 years, leaving only to attend seminars—although he possesses numerous degrees, his PhD is continually “pending” (130). He has also been on a hunger strike throughout this period, surviving by eating a small meal every few days; as he explains in the pamphlets he keeps beside him, he does this as a statement:

I am against the Capitalist Empire, plus against US Capitalism, Indian and American State Terrorism/All Kinds of Nuclear Weapons and Crime, plus against the Bad Education System/Corruption/ Violence/ Environmental Degradation and All Other Evils (130).

He is an acquaintance of Tilo’s, who helps him print his pamphlets, and is there when she takes the baby who becomes Miss Jebeen the Second. He also sees Anjum trying to find the baby and advises Tilo to seek refuge at Jannat Guest House, where he himself later becomes a frequent guest; like many of that building’s residents, Azad Bhartiya is an eccentric with a fundamentally good and generous heart.

Kulsoom Bi is the head of the Khwabgah—the community of Hijras that Anjum joins as a teenager. Kulsoom Bi is a Hijra herself but is now elderly and acts as a mentor and manager for the younger women, who, in a show of respect, address her as “Ustad” Kulsoom Bi (“Ustad” is an honorific typically used to address male teachers or experts). She is a firm and practical woman who doesn’t hesitate to draw attention to Anjum’s surliness and depression in the aftermath of the attack in Gujarat. She does so, however, because she cares about the well-being of those under her care and works to instill in her charges a sense of pride in their identity as Hijras. She takes each new Hijra to a sound and light show on Indian history just to point out the moment when a eunuch can be heard laughing:

‘There!’ Ustad Kulsoom Bi would say, like a triumphant lepidopterist who has just netted a rare moth. ‘Did you hear that? That is us. That is our ancestry, our history, our story. We were never commoners, you see, we were members of the staff of the Royal Palace’ (55).

Ziauddin is a blind imam who becomes friends with Anjum after she moves into the cemetery. Ziauddin can be conservative in his views, and the two sometimes bicker with one another; however, they share a common bond of loneliness, and Ziauddin is the first person to move in when Anjum constructs a real house and begins taking in tenants. Furthermore, Ziauddin comes to play a central role in making Jannat Guest House a refuge for people with nowhere else to go, leading funeral services for those whom other burial grounds reject (prostitutes, Hijras, etc.), and even agreeing to “bury” a shirt representing Saddam Hussain’s father: “Imam Ziauddin demurred a little at the unorthodoxy of the proceedings, but eventually agreed to say the prayers” (419).

Hameed Khan (more typically referred to as “Ustad Hameed”) is the music teacher Anjum took lessons with as a young child. Anjum’s voice makes her a favorite pupil of Hameed’s, so when other students begin to tease her, he arranges for her to have private lessons. Even after Anjum gives up singing entirely, the two remain good friends. In fact, Ustad Hameed is Anjum’s “most regular visitor” when she first moves into the cemetery:

While the light died (or was born) and Ustad Hameed’s gentle voice ranged over the ruined landscape and its ruined inhabitants, Anjum would sit cross-legged with her back to Ustad Hameed on Begum Renata Mumtaz Madam’s grave. She would not speak to him or look at him. He didn’t mind. He could tell from the stillness of her shoulders that she was listening. He had seen her through so much; he believed that if not he, then certainly music, would see her through this too (69-70). 

Nimmo Gorakhpuri is the youngest of the Hijras living at the Khwabgah when Anjum initially discovers it:

She was short and chubby with thick, curly hair, stunning eyebrows curved like a pair of scimitars, and exceptionally thick eyelashes. She would have been beautiful but for her fast-growing facial hair that made the skin on her cheeks look blue under her make-up, even when she had shaved. Nimmo was obsessed with Western women’s fashion and was fiercely possessive of her collection of fashion magazines (26).

Nimmo makes friends with Anjum (still known as Aftab at that point), but has left the Khwabgah by the time Anjum herself moves in. However, she reconnects with Anjum after the latter has moved into the cemetery, by which point Nimmo herself has become wealthy as a goat-magnate. From that point on, she is a frequent visitor at Jannat Guest House, helping first Anjum and later Tilo recover from their experiences through her cheerful and friendly demeanor.

Zainab is Anjum's (and later Saeeda’s) adoptive daughter. Anjum found her as an abandoned 3-year-old and, having dreamed of being a mother for years, quickly became devoted to her. As Zainab grew older, Anjum did her best to indulge her wishes at every turn; for instance, when it became clear that Zainab had a “passion” for animals, Anjum bought her a goat and a rooster, and took her on frequent trips to the zoo. Anjum blossomed under this attention, becoming a “cheeky young lady with rowdy, distinctly bandicoot-like tendencies” (35). Zainab and Anjum’s relationship suffered as Anjum became obsessive about Zainab’s safety and jealous of her affection for another Hijra (Saeeda). However, the two are eventually able to reconnect as Zainab grows older and Anjum heals from her traumatic experiences; Zainab (now a student of fashion design) becomes a frequent visitor of Jannat Guest House, strikes up a relationship with Saddam Hussain, and eventually marries him.

Saeeda is a Hijra who joins the Khwabgah after Anjum has already been there for some time. She is younger than Anjum and consequently more influenced by Western culture and thought; for instance, she describes herself as a “transperson” in addition to the more traditionally Indian “Hijra.” Her more Westernized demeanor allows her to “[edge] Anjum out of the Number One spot in the media. […] The exotics didn’t suit the image of the New India—a nuclear power and an emerging destination for international finance” (42). All of this, combined with the fact that Zainab takes a liking to Saeeda, makes Anjum jealous and suspicious of her. Saeeda, however, is actually a very considerate and friendly person who does her best to ensure that Zainab and Anjum continue to have a relationship even after Anjum leaves the Khwabgah; eventually Anjum overcomes her mistrust and the two women become friends.

Jahanara Begum is Anjum’s mother. She and her husband, Mulaqat Ali, had waited years to have a son, so when she discovered that Anjum was intersex she was so distressed she initially kept her discovery a secret and simply prayed for Anjum to be “healed.” Nevertheless, she remains a loving mother for the duration of her life, continuing to cook for Anjum even after she leaves home, and meeting with her whenever she can. She is eventually buried alongside her husband in the cemetery where Anjum establishes Jannat Guest House, with Imam Ziauddin conducting the service.

Mulaqat Ali is Anjum’s father, Jahanara Begum’s husband, and “a doctor of herbal medicine, and a lover of Urdu and Persian poetry” (16). He takes a great deal of pride in his family history, which he claims to be able to trace back to an emperor named Changez Khan, and “welcome[s] visitors into his tiny rooms with the faded grace of a nobleman” (18). Like his wife, Mulaqat Ali had waited a long time to have a son, and when he learns the truth about Anjum, he immediately “embark[s] on the cultural project of inculcating manliness in Aftab” (21). When Anjum joins the Khwabgah, she and Mulaqat Ali become estranged. Nevertheless, he is buried in the cemetery where Anjum makes a home for herself.

Mr. D. D. Gupta is a former client of Anjum’s who remains friendly with her even after she leaves the Khwabgah; during her early days in the cemetery, he supplies her with a cell phone, housing materials, and hot meals. Around the same time, Gupta’s job as a building contractor takes him to Baghdad: a war zone where there is money to be made in blast walls. He returns years later, sickened by the violence he saw in Iraq, and rekindles his friendship with Anjum:

He no longer had the stomach for blast walls, or for that matter for any kind of business enterprise, and was delighted to see how the desolate, ravaged specter that he had left behind when he went to Iraq had blossomed and prospered (406).

Ishrat is a Hijra who spends some time living at Jannat Guest House. She is with Anjum on the day Miss Jebeen the Second appears in Jantar Mantar, and, along with Saddam Hussain, tracks Tilo back to her apartment later that night. She remains on good terms with Anjum afterward and is present at Saddam and Zainab’s wedding. Ishrat is very good-looking and is often referred to in the novel as “Ishrat-the-Beautiful.

Jalib Qadri doesn’t ever appear in the novel himself, but his death play an important role in Major Amrik Singh’s story. Because Qadri was a famed lawyer and civil rights activist, Singh was instructed to detain him during a trip Qadri was making to Kashmir. Singh, however, ended up killing both Qadri and anyone who had witnessed the murder or taken part in it as an accomplice. The army couldn’t punish Singh outright for fear that he would reveal confidential material in retaliation, but his actions did relegate him to desk duty.

ACP Pinky is the female interrogator who “questions” Tilo, beating her up and shaving her head to humiliate her. She is a brutal woman in general but has personal reasons for being cruel to Tilo; she fears Tilo might have captured the attention of Amrik Singh, with whom ACP Pinky is having an affair.