Arundhati
Roy (Suzanna Arundhati Roy, born November
24, 1961) is an Indian novelist and activist.
Her First novel "God of Small Things"
has become an international best-seller, and
in October 1997 won the coveted Booker Prize.
 Roy
was born in Shillong, Meghalaya to a Keralite
Syrian Christian mother and a Bengali Hindu
father, a tea planter by profession. She spent
her childhood in Aymanam, in Kerala, schooling
in Corpus Christi. She left Kerala for Delhi
at age 16, and embarked on a bohemian lifestyle,
staying in a small hut with a tin roof within
the walls of Delhi's Feroz shah Kotla and
making a living selling empty bottles. She
then proceeded to study architecture at the
Delhi School of Architecture, where she met
her first husband, the architect Gerard Da
Cunha.
Arundhati
met her second husband, filmmaker Pradeep
Kishen, in 1984, and moved into films under
his influence. She acted in the role of a
village girl in the award-winning movie Massey
Sahib, and wrote the screenplays for In Which
Annie Gives it Those Ones and Electric Moon.
She also wrote the screenplay for The 'Banyan
Tree', a television serial.
Roy
began writing The God of Small Things in 1992
and finished it in 1996. She received half-a-million
pounds in advances, and rights to the book
were sold in twenty-one countries. The book
is semi-autobiographical and a major part
captures her childhood experiences in Aymanam.
Contrary to some assumptions, Roy is not a
twin. This misinformation arose from the fact
that the character of Rahel is based on herself.
We see this in the physical description of
the character in her adulthood and also by
some of this character's interactions with
her mother, Ammu.
The
nutshell of the story
The
God of Small Things is about two children,
the two-egg twins Estha and Rahel, and the
shocking consequences of a pivotal event in
their young lives, the accidental death-by-drowning
of a visiting English cousin. In magical and
poetic language, the novel paints a vivid
picture of life in a small rural Indian town,
the thoughts and feelings of the two small
children, and the complexity and hypocrisy
of the adults in their world. It is also a
poignant lesson in the destructive power of
the caste system, and moral and political
bigotry in general.
In
response to India's testing of nuclear weapons
in Pokhran, Rajasthan, Roy wrote The End of
Imagination, a critique of the Indian government's
nuclear policies. It was published in her
collection The Cost of Living, in which she
also crusaded against India's massive hydroelectric
dam projects in the central and western states
of Maharashtra, Madhya Pradesh and Gujarat.
She has since devoted herself solely to non-fiction
and politics, publishing two more collections
of essays as well as working for social causes.
In
2002, Roy was convicted of contempt of court
by the Supreme Court in New Delhi for accusing
the court of attempting to silence protests
against the Narmada Dam Project, but she received
only a symbolic sentence of one day in prison.
Roy
was awarded the Sydney Peace Prize in May,
2004, for her work in social campaigns and
advocacy of non-violence.
In
June 2005 she took part in the World Tribunal
on Iraq.
 
Useful
links
About
Arundhati Roy
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