The ‘Social Space’ of the Cemetery in Arundhati Roy’s The Ministry of Utmost Happiness

Lefebvre's notion of ‘producing space' as opposed to what he says is the widely held idea that ‘empty space' is prior to whatever ends up filling it forms the basis of study for this paper. Positing that space is a social product, Lefebvre goes on to discuss the contours of the production of this space. Within such a framework the paper tries to examine the notion of space as produced in Arundhati Roy's latest novel The Ministry of Utmost Happiness. It delves especially on the space of the cemetery trying to understand not just the discourse that creates the space but also the changing dimensions of the space within the novel. The cemetery in the novel becomes a home for Anjum, a transgender and several others like her who are rejects of the mainstream society. However, the way the home extends itself, swallowing the graves as it grows indicates a kind of production where the marginalized starts producing and extending its boundaries over the mainstream. Thus the social space of the cemetery in the novel acquires new dimensions and an earlier discourse associated with that space- a discourse of death, loss, grief and pain gets displaced with a different discourse of home, life, joy etc. The cemetery is therefore not just examined as a mental space but also as a social space as propounded by Lefebvre and the paper attempts to consider different possibilities in examining this space