Customer Reviews

The Cost of Living

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4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

In her newest offering Arudhati Roy , the writter of the widely known and multi-awarded The God Of Small Things presents a deep , careful study on the impact " progress " has made on the life of thousands of people in her country . She describes an India with many cultural and racial entities where the goverment keeps building huge dams in the valley of Naramada with no certain strategy and essential reasons . What she seems to be asking is this : " even if these dams are useful , does it eventually worth sacrificing so many people's lifes and houses for them ? " . In the end the book wins the reader not so much because of Roy's writing style but thanks to the power of her own personallity . She's a young , beutiful and wealthy woman who never forgets though the poor part of her country's population . Instead , she keeps standing by them with her writtings and her actions .

The title reprises the astonishingly closing chapter of THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS, perfectly appropriately. At its spooky best, writing risks offering readers something very close to the heart's cry of a bright fellow human. This writing is very very close. Sufficiently exasperated, too.

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.

Arundhati Roy has a wonderful way of writing. This woman could write about absolutely anything at all and I think I will still enjoy it. She has a naturally earnest free flowing poetic yet precise language. She has the ability to choose her words so well as to get the exact picture or impression she wants us to see. Truly she paints with her words.

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.

Ms. Roy captures the essence of the technological problems of the planet today. We humans like to think of ourselves as "Masters of the Universe." When, in fact, we are flawed creatures who do things without the wisdom to see the long-term consequences of our actions - be they building a dam or nuclear weapon.

It is not lost on this reader, that the "father" of the atomic bomb quoted the lines of Shiva when he first saw his weapon exploded - "I am become death, the destroyer of worlds." We humans are good at destruction; sometimes it even looks like building.

While Ms. Roy's prose is a bit less poetic than that found in "The God of Small Things," her passion makes up for the linguistic power. She is calling out the leaders, not only of India, but also of the world, to reconsider the consequences of what they are doing to the earth and its peoples. All of these actions, of course, in the names of progress and national defense.

It is not likely that Ms. Roy's writings will change the governments. But perhaps they will open your eyes as they did mine, to the realities of what we are doing on and to this planet. At the beginning of the 21st century we are again looking at the exploitation of the earth that nurtures us to the point where it may no longer support us.

Contrary to what one of the reviewers above would have us believe, this in fact is a great book. It takes some courage to go with an open mind and curiosity and come back with the facts. It is very easy (and convenient) for people with cosy lives to dimsiss disturbing details about the real injustices done to India's poor in the name of developement because doing otherwise would force one to examine ones own life and that in turn can lead to a lot of discomfort.

However it is well worth remembering that an unexamined life is not worth living. If we want to continue to mainatain a facade in the name of Developement while constantly sweeping the dirt under the rug, we must realize that sooner or later the bulge is going to show and the stench is going to be unbearable. Guess what? It is showtime. The ugliness and calousness with which we pursue "Development" is now out in the open. Now is as good a time as any for all of us to ask ourselves, what is the basis for all that we do in the name of Development and who are we helping develop anyway? The answers may lead to discomfort and may force us to give up our preconceived notions and prejudices. If enough people do this perhaps in the long run we will be the better for it.

Read this book, think and act.

Arundati Roy turns from fiction, momentarily, we hope, to non-fiction.

That is not to say that 'The Cost of Living' lacks power of imagination. The book consists of two short essays that centre on two very problematic situations in the current India- and they are issues worth writing about.

The essay that most enthralled me (much to do with it being in the news a lot) was the essay which dealt with India's nuclear testing, and the tension it has created not only in the region, but in the world. She investigates the Wests' hypocrisy- do they have a right to lambast the Indians, when they themselves have done the same thing- the exact same thing? It is very interesting.

Like the great novelist she is, Roy writes with compassion, an intense focus, and is very articulate. It is worth reading this book even if you have no interest in Indian politics, because it is a matter of life and death, hypocrisy, possible armageddon and the hole that humankind insists on digging itself into.

Strongly reccommended.

I found Roy's essays fascinating, but the first, on India's massive dam projects, interested me the most. By the MOST conservative estimates, 33 million people have been displaced by these projects since partition in the late 1940's. It is difficult for a Westerner to grasp the magnitude of this problem. Think about the populations of New York and California, for example, and then we can begin to understand it.

This is the one of the most beautiful stories I have read. A. Roy paints a picture of rural India which is tragic, yet beautiful. This book had made me thirsty for more. I highly recommend this it.

Not a book that would wow the reader with eloquence, but a passionate and serious account of two examples of the folly of massive state-sponsored projects "for the people's good."

What not enough reviewers have taken into account is the book's implicit indictment of modern Western thought, culture & politics on India's -- and Pakistan's -- people.

India & Pakistan are at war primarily because of the original British plan for Partition that created separate Hindu and Muslim states. Skillful Western diplomacy that has played one off against the other for fifty years keeps passions high and these two nations at each other's throats -- to neither's benefit.

By playing India & Pakistan off each other, each nation has been unable to break free from Soviet-style planning and join the rest of the developed world. They instead measure progress by 1940s and 1950s standards, both Soviet and Western, and the results, as outlined by Roy in this book, are devastating.

Now, the World Bank and IMF (whom Roy despise) are propping up the smaller middle-class at the great expense of most of India's population. 600 million illiterates; poor sanitation, hygiene, family planning & health care; and a completely corrupt economy are the problems -- yet Roy shows clearly that the state is moving in a direction farther away from solutions.

The West must take a great deal of responsibility for this, and the passion of Roy can't help but move one to action.

Arundhati Roy's essays present a simplistic view of the issues involved in development and in defence. (You need to invest on security, India has some very dangerous neighbors.) Roy's analysis of why India's development has been slow is just plain wrong. Basically, she parrots the Marxist view, which refuses to recognizes that India's problem is its bureaucracy.