On the Delhi-based author’s 48th birthday.
[Text and pictures by Mayank Austen Soofi
November 24, 1961. That’s when Arundhati Roy was born. On her 48th birthday, The Delhi Walla presents a few Delhiwallas seen with The God of Small Things, Ms Roy’s first novel.
In Nizamuddin East (A Hindustani classical singer, his mother is always upset with him for not being as crazy for books as she is)
In Defence Colony Market (An India-born Tibetan, she has seen Julia Robert’s Pretty Woman more than a dozen times)
In Videocon Tower, Jhandewallan Park (A radio jockey, she loves talking about Jane Austen’s women and men, off the air)
In Nizamuddin Basti (A butcher by trade, he is in love with two girls)
In Connaught Place (Fond of Arundhati Roy’s political essays, he died of cancer in 2009)
In Kasturba Gandhi Marg (A Bombay-based book collector and seller, he can get you any book you want)
In Jorbagh (Thanks to her passion for EM Forster’s A Room With A View, she always address friends as ‘Dearest’)
Near Barakhamba (Although carrying the persona of a non-bookish South Delhi girl, she secretly reads Alice Munro)
In Lodhi Garden (A small-town boy, he aspires to be India’s most famous model)
In Majnu ka Teela (Inheritor of a Tibetan restaurant, he wants to make a new life in USA)
At St Stephen’s Chapel (Her life is not known)
In Nizamuddin Basti (One of the best qawwals in Nizamuddin Dargah, he is also a body-builder)
In Hanuman Road (A no-nonsense Bengali girl, she often hauls up people peeing on roadsides)
In Lodhi Garden (One of India’s bestselling novelists, he is in love with Arundhati Roy’s first novel)
In Nizamuddin East (A long-haired, soft-spoken sufi, he married a Hyderabad girl on Arundhati Roy’s 48th birthday)
In Ring Road (A convent-educated girl who grew up reading Sidney Sheldon, she married a Bombay boy on Arundhati Roy’s 34th birthday)
