A twelvefold path to Famedom aka Arundhati Roy's celebrity status

Of late, life is beginning to get a little hmm…stagnant. Work has been a bit slow and all the adrenaline rush that I seem to get nowadays is from running up the stairs. Rather expected- because when one is despairing endlessly for an incomprehensible degree () in an obscure field, one is too preoccupied with life’s miseries and unfairness to care about personal ambition. Once the degree lands in ones hand though, one has nothing much to be miserable about. But then, together with the lack of abject despair, comes annihilation of all illusions of fame and glory that had driven one into the dreaded path of a graduate student’s life. So one gloomy Sunday afternoon, my personal counselor, Lord and master gave me the mantra of re-birth. I have been told that I should re-look at my aspirations, re-evaluate my goals in life and re-chart my life plan. That and the soporific aftermath of a scrumptious meal prepared by the Lord and master set me thinking.

I know I want to be famous and I don’t want to wait too long. Opportunely, that very day, I chanced upon one of the most reputed voices that represent the spirit of those fortunate millions among us who do not think before they speak. Case in point: Arundhati Roy. Instantly, everything fell in place. I decided to look into the path to success and fame she had taken as my inspiration. What of science you say? Well, that’s MORE exotic than being a half-graduate of architecture isn’t it? Although me having received my degree as opposed to her bohemian skew of having forsaken it midway might act against me. Nevertheless, I made a game plan and it goes like this.

Step # 1 of passageway to glory – Take the most controversial film of your day and “thoda twist karo”. Rules – none. Just use patronizing, cynical and mocking tone and talk about “the state”. If possible, add a few “C” words. In her case, she thought that Sekhar Kapoor “misrepresented” Phoolan devi . Get all the free publicity that you can ever muster. Trust me, in the long run, this will do you so well, you will actually gloat about it in later times I swear!

Step # 2 of passageway to glory –Be photographed with contemporary icons of Indian writers in English the likes of Rushdie and Anita Desai before your first work gets published. Look here for the date of the photograph (May 30, 1997) and here for the date of first publication (9th June, 1997) Make waves with the highest advance ever offered for a book by someone who had no claim to literary fame before (save the phenomenal advance). In short, know your market and your media well.

Step # 3 of passageway to glory – Write your little autobiography embellished with the most “playing to the firang” themes of child molest, forbidden romance between a “lower caste” guy and an “upper caste” woman, death of a child and subsequent guilt and of course the quintessential backdrop of communism. And you might just get lucky and win the Booker (1997) for the one work of fiction that you have graced humanity with, despite what anyone might think about your book. It greatly helps that you are Indian woman who is not a hopeless Hindu (what about me then, you ask? I can always claim to be an agnostic, can I not?)!

Step # 4 of passageway to glory – Immediately after you win the booker prize announce that you might never write fiction again, that you are exhausted and that you have "nothing more to give". I bet I will love this part – After all, I haven’t known much of pepper creepers and rattle snakes that rub themselves on rocks! Continue giving interviews and talk about how people keep comparing you to famous writers (In her case, “It's not just Rushdie that I'm compared to. There's Garcia-Marquez, Joyce...and Faulkner. Yes, I'm compared to Faulkner the most. But I've never read Faulkner before!” )

Step # 5 of passageway to glory – Take to an “NGO” issue and no matter whether you truly understand the implications of say, building a dam, or not; just scream your throat off and man- will the world stand up and listen! Come on, you have just won the booker! Doesn’t matter what the environmentalists think of the publicity you give them – they must be knocking mad!

Step # 6 of passageway to glory – Get involved in every issue that grabs headlines. Scream. Believe in nothing but your language. Hate everything under the sun – globalization, war, nuclear weapons, dams, privatization, fundamentalism (but only the non-obvious types, someone who bombs the Indian parliament is not a terrorist for heaven’s sake, don’t you know?!), George Bush, Indian government. Scream.

Step # 7 of passageway to glory - And when people tell you are muddled up, tell them that while you are entitled to your opinions and can scream them off India’s rooftop to let the whole world know about the ugliness of the system. Surely, no one who condemns you or your arguments can possibly be 1) morally conscious 2) right 3) intellectual 4) non-bigoted and hence no one but you has any claim to expressing ones opinions on everything under the sun. When people tell you that your opinions are not informed, are shallow and are even factually incorrect, you say.... “Oh, I didn’t make that mistake, it was just wrong sources that I quoted from?” And btw, you should also claim that they are all jealous of you – because, who knows, they might be thinking that you are just "some pretty woman who wrote a book." (In all honesty, I don’t know how I could muster any courage to say that- me who cannot even look into the mirror without wincing. But hey, you have to do what you have to do. Collarbones or no collarbones).

Step #8 of passageway to glory – Take up every prize that comes your way no matter that one of them is sponsored by a government that is a key ally of the US (Australia) in its war against terror about whichyou just cannot and will not stop screaming. Scream and refuse to take the desi awards though because, it stands for the Indian government.

Step # 9 of passageway to glory –Scream that you want to go to jail. Talk about egalitarianism but when you actually are jailed, pay the fine rather than spend the time in jail with others who have been arrested together with you for the “cause”

Step # 10 of passageway to glory – While you are screaming, do keep a watch on the media in the west to which you play. You should always gain their attention, no matter what. You may cry and rant and rave and give out oodles of information about how the establishment is out to get you jailed, when all you have done is to defy the supreme court of your country. Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. They are jealous of me. They are afraid of me. I am too clever for them. I have too much money. I look too beautiful. I can’t substantiate many of my rants against the bloody establishment. They hate me. Oh they hate me because…India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs.. .

Step # 11 of passageway to glory – Announce that you will write fiction again, after all.

Step # 12 of passageway to glory – If no one stands up and takes notice of your re-entry into fiction, scream. Take up the most controversial matter of the time. Remember the mantra? Remember the mantra -India is a land of horrendous creatures with caste system and nuclear bombs. Add a new horror this time around - the hindutva movement ( Even the hardcore paki-philes have been driven to cry out for freedom from India into Pakistan simply by the Hindus, who else?)

By now, you would have no chouice but to have made it to the headlines of a thousand newspapers/websites. Millions will applaud your courage and vision. And you will be a woman, my daughter! While I try my newfound 12-fold path to glory, you guys check these out..

Royisms: handy quotes to famedom

“No, I don't feel responsibility because that's such a boring word”

“I thought, thank God the BJP is corrupt, thank God someone’s taken money, imagine if they had been incorruptible, only ideological, it would have been so much more frightening. To me, pristine ideological battles are really more frightening“

"When NATO bombed Yugoslavia, a tiger in the Belgrade zoo got so terrified that it started eating its own limbs. The people of the Narmada valley will soon start eating their own limbs” htm
“If you live in America or Europe it is almost impossible to really believe that another world is possible. Over there, anybody who talks about life beyond capitalism is part of a freak show, they’re just considered nuts and weirdos, going through teenage angst”

“I went there and became a mad molecule floating around”

“…Purana Qila, which is the Old Fort, which houses the Delhi zoo. And it was really from there that — and, of course, it wasn’t a public meeting. It was the caged animals and some caged CEOs that he addressed. And then he went to Hyderabad, and I think he met a buffalo there, some special kind of buffalo..”

“I was the worst thing a girl could be: thin, black, and clever”

And finally, the killer stroke!

“I don't see a great difference between The God of Small Things and my works of nonfiction. As I keep saying, fiction is truth. I think fiction is the truest thing there ever was. My whole effort now is to remove that distinction”