Marginal voices in the writings of Arundhati Roy , the birth of a Genre in Indian English Soham Bose , M.A.

Jadavpur University
Roy in her two well known books on politics and society of India that is The Algebra of Infinite Justice and listening to Grasshoppers celebrates the voice of the marginal as the mode of only communication with the world. The anger, resentment and the bloody wails of her narrative are often understood as the prophecies of a modern day Sybil. But the complex birth of a Genre, that ismarginalised voices in polished urbane prose- is understandably more complex and intricate than a black and white view of it. I call this genre the Popular Marginal-where the voices of the marginal take up a central space in the narrative and become celebrated as the popular- popular anger the popular despair. But, does it truly depict the grizzly anger of the streets or is it only fancily packaged grievances for the elite and the fashionable, to decorate the storefronts of their intellectual world? Do these marginal voices actually exist in a sort of suspension, locked within the polished prose of the author? Or do the voices really emerge out into the open to be heard in their salt and tear truths? This paper is an attempt to analyse this strange and conflicting triangle between the form the urban journalistic reporting, the content the grievances of the marginal, the language English (that is vastly different from the vernaculars the grievances are uttered in) in Indian English?