The Cost of Living [Paperback]

Ms. Roy is Indian, or some kind of vigorous hybrid, as if Mohandas K. Ghandi & Molly Ivins & James Joyce & Mary Wollstonecraft had somehow mixed up together, which is amusing to consider at the conceptual stage plus makes for plumb interesting salty reading. Arundhati Molly Saint Mary Magdelene Bloom Mahatma Roy? As Joyce himself may have claimed (if online resources are to be trusted), perhaps grimacing very much like Mona Lisa, "Molly Bloom was a down-to-earth lady. She would never have indulged in anything so refined as a stream of consciousness." Whether or not Joyce was strictly fair, Roy shares, with Mary Wollstonecraft's daughter Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley & a few others, a concern about the usual effects of mankind's most Promethean notions. What hath we wrought now, again? Terrifying!

A natural wide ranging curiosity lightly mitigated by rather sketchy professional architect training leads where it leads? Roy can perform research, calculate costs so accurately that narrow experts may scream. Her Indian heritage might suggest this/that to USA gentle readers who have perused any good translations of the straight responses offered by some American Indians (Pachgrantschilias, Red Jacket, Pontiac, Osceola, Tecumseh, Black Hawk, Sitting Bull, Joseph, Black Elk, many others) as dutiful civilized soldiers exterminated/dislocated balky natives who hesitated to clear the way for a ruthless expansion we called Manifest Destiny, then (we might rename this progress continentalization, now?). Arundhati Roy walks/writes/lives in beauty. The English language rarely gets a writer like her, perhaps since English-speaking cultures hardly ever, maybe practically never, want one.

Roy used her amazing writing skills and sensitivity so very well in her fantastic work, The God of Small Things. Here she uses the same skills and more aiming primarily at her own people asking them to re-examine 2 strongly held views. As non-Indian I thoroughly enjoyed both essays of this book.

The first essay deals with the construction of river dams in India since the independence in 1947. Roy set about in a very systematic way to establish the true cost of the dams in terms of human suffering. She focused on one project in particular but her research was wide ranging and indeed she had to dig into several completed projects to establish true benefits and costs. Roy's central message is that the price paid by an oppressed native minority is way too high and the alleged benefits to India are low. Where this essay is truly universal, at least applicable to so many third world countries in the post colonial era, is in its research for a definition for her own country, identity and common good and modes of opposition to this common good! Roy was also highly unimpressed with the western approach to 3rd world development projects but her approach was a times too general and sweeping.

The Second article, probably far more universal, is the nuclear weapons article. Roy's analysis of the policies of the Congress party and the BJP nationalists leading to the 1998 explosions shows great insight and clarity of mind. She categorically opposes the bomb as weapon of peace and she totally rejects the overwhelming support of her people for the bomb and the Indian nuclear tests. Having traveled to India shortly after the Indian and Pakistani explosions I was horrified with the attitude of "our bomb was better than theirs" and this is the first work that I personally have seen that takes on this subject with such force. Roy's opposition leaves no prisoners behind. It is hard to overstate the courage of Roy on this issue given the level of tension between Hindu India and Islam within India itself and across the borders.

I strongly recommend this wonderfully written book to anyone interested in issues related to regional conflicts and postcolonial development.