Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch, Brooklyn Academy of Music

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch, Brooklyn Academy of Music

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

The party secrets.

[Photos by Paulsta Wong; text by Mayank Austen Soofi]

As an Arundhati Roy fan, The Delhi Walla went last year to the faraway South Indian town of Ayemenem, the setting of her first novel, The God of Small Things.

You can see the evidence of my visit here.

Early this year, I managed to gain entry into the society of fashionable people in Delhi as they discreetly gathered to celebrate Ms Roy’s second novel, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.

You can see the evidence here.

A few weeks later I was in London to experience Ms Roy novel’s official launch in the crowded Gothic-style Union Chapel (the next day Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn address his last election rally from the same stage).

You can see the evidence of my presence here.

On June 19, Ms Roy launched her novel at the Brooklyn Academy of Music in New York City. Thousands of people gathered in the venue.

Alas, I cannot show you the proof of my presence there.

Travelling to New York was too expensive for me.

Even so, it is strange and marvellous to discover that a writer whose writing I connect so hyperlocally to my insignificant part of the world also resonates with people who belong to other vastly different worlds.

Fortunately, I can still show you the scenes of the New York launch. Thanks to photos of the excellent Paulsta Wong that I received just last evening. (See below!)

But when will Ms Roy’s own city–Delhi–see a public event on her second novel?

So unfair.

Arundhati Roy sighting

1.

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

2. (Eve Ensler with Arundhati Roy)

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

3.

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

4.

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

5.

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music

6.

Netherfield Ball – The Super-Duper Crowded Show at Arundhati Roy’s New York Book Launch , Brooklyn Academy of Music