The Ministry Of Utmost Happiness

In a brief Prologue, the narrator describes how Delhi’s flying foxes leave their home in the graveyard to fly around the city every evening. During the night, crows take their place in the graveyard, which used to be inhabited by “old white-backed vultures, custodians of the dead for more than a hundred million years” (5). The vultures, however, have died out as a result of ingesting too much diclofenac—a muscle relaxant given to cows to increase their milk production and meet the city’s growing demand for ice cream and other dairy products: “Not many noticed the passing of the friendly old birds. There was so much else to look forward to” (5).

A woman named Anjum lives in a Delhi graveyard, “endur[ing] […] casual cruelty [from passers-by] like a tree would—without flinching” (7). Anjum, it later emerges, is a Hijra who was born intersex. The narrator hints at this in the opening pages, explaining that a man Anjum once knew told her that her name spelled backwards was “Majnu”—a romantic hero from Middle Eastern folklore—only to realize he was mistaken:

Her name spelled backwards would be Mujna, which wasn’t a name and meant nothing at all.