Lolita and Arundhati Roy

I haven't read God of Small Things. I'd almost bought it at an used book store 10 years back, was leafing through it - till I saw Nabokov's Lolita a few feet away. Two sentences and I was hooked; if you like prose stylists, it's a no contest. The wily old exile was head and shoulders above Roy. Lolita was also Rs 20 versus God's Rs 100, so...
I've read some of Roy's essays in Outlook, they're brilliant. Unlike most writers who retreat to a govt-sponsored apartment in Asiad Village, occasionally showing up at school talent contests to award prizes, here was someone willing to stick out her neck and call a spade a spade.
But that is where it stops, at the name calling. After the brilliant first few paras (Capitalism is bad, corporates are evil, ban all nuclear weapons, India is a police state, etc.), she suddenly stops. And goes back to the beginning.
And you scratch you head and wonder if there's more, perhaps.
No. The movie's over, grab an auto and go home.
So you ask well-informed friends, But is she offering a solution? A glimpse of a solution, even?
They reply, 'But it's not her job to offer solutions, she's an artist, she points out the flaws, the layers. Layers you would never read about in the mainstream, corporate-funded press'.
They have a point. If I talk about the execrable state of some Gurgaon roads, the chief minister can't turn around and say, 'But do you have a solution?'
Agreed. But then, if you look at less prominent writers in the less prominent press like Economic & Political Weekly (epw.in), they offer far more depth, analysis and understanding of historical perspectives. They're ruthless when it comes to pulling up the state, but do not take rigid, all-or-nothing stands, beginning to end.
They can't write half as well as Roy, but then if I want to read prose I'll go for Nabokov.
End of story.
What I find more interesting at this point is Roy's detractors. There are two types.
The first one, urbane and intelligent, is represented by Ramachandra Guha ('She's hysterical'). Roy takes care of them herself ('That's the point.')
The second is more pan Indian, more rooted, and is led by Nitin Gadkari ('Arrest her'); Roy ignores them. Partly because she doesn't write for them, partly there is no serious substance in their 'sedition' arguments. And the govt. won't arrest her in a hurry - someone called Obama is coming, remember? And how can you embrace globalisation and muzzle writers at the same time? You wouldn't be called a 'wise man' in international forums, and Manmohan knows it.
I fit into neither type, and I suspect there are more like me.
We don't think Roy has a moral core to her arguments. We don't think she understands or cares for the bigger picture, from the pov of a peasant in a Naxalite-infested village, or a dam-affected villager in Gujarat. We don't think the end justifies the means. We don't think most activists on the ground get along with her, because she hijacks agendas. And finally, we don't think she's saying anything original - we've heard everything before.
But we believe she has a right to say what she's saying, because India is far more democratic than we give it credit for. The new India welcomes dissent, unlike the old India ruled by the Gandhis. (The Gandhis still rule it, in a way, but you and I have a bigger say in affairs than at any point in the past.)
'India doesn't need an Arundhati Roy, she needs 1000s of them,' someone wrote. True. Maybe an intelligent dissenter will emerge, from them.
An intelligent dissenter at some point engages - if you close the door on engagement, you close the door on the solution.
That's it. End of story. Now we'll grab an auto and go home.
We'll read a bit of her next Outlook story, but we'd rather reserve our brains for Rajnikanth or Karvachauth jokes on Twitter.
P.S. If you liked Lolita, you should try Pale Fire. Heavy.