Books and Cooks West
May/June 2000
The Cost of Living by Arundhati Roy
The Cost of Living by
Arundhati Roy
May 14, 2000, 6:00 PM
Vicki and Kevin's Place
Menu: Pizza, tzatziki, plum wine, & brownies.
Our rating: 4.17 cups of tea!
From Kirkus Reviews
In her first non-fiction work, award winning novelist Roy (The God
of Small Things, 1997) reveals the authoritarian paternalism of the Indian
state that lies behind a mask of benevolence. To Roy, India with all its
fissures and factions is a fictitious nation created by the state to
legitimate itself. Once the fiction is in place, the state can justify its
actions in the name of the common good no matter how injurious these
actions may be in reality. So it is with Indias undertaking of massive dam
and irrigation projects and its successful detonation of a nuclear bomb,
the subjects respectively of the two essays in this volume. The second
essay offers the bomb as an example of state arrogance and foolishness
whose potential consequences are obvious and terrible. In the first essay,
which will likely be more revelatory to American audiences, Roy focuses
her attention on the Naramada valley, home to 325,000 people, mostly of
minority tribes. When the building of a series of huge dams is completed
the valley will flood and all will lose their homes, becoming, in a
bloodless acronym, PAPs: Project Affected Persons. A whole way of life
will end as PAPs are relocated to dismal camps or end up in urban slums.
Roy clearly and bitingly demonstrates, however, that it is not at all
clear the project will do what it is supposed to. It may use more
electricity than it generates or destroy more farmland than it creates,
and those who are to receive drinking water may never have a drop reach
them. The Indian state goes on its haughty way, blithely dismissing all
doubts. Yet the people of the Naramada valley have organized and resisted,
and though the outcome is unclear, this resistance is what inspires Roy.
This resistance, not the state, is the home of Indian democracy, and she
urges the struggle to continue (royalties from the book are going to the
organization heading this struggle). With eloquent anger and careful
research, Roy expertly captures the faces of both folly and courage.
(Author tour) -- Copyright ©1999, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved.
Salman Rushdie
Arundhati Roy's polemic is necessary and important. She combines
brilliant reportage with a passionate, no-holds-barred commentary on two
great Indian betrayals masquerading as progress. I salute both her courage
and her skill.
The Books and Cooks The
Cost of Living Informal Reading Guide
(member-generated questions in no particular order -- coming after the
meeting)
