This selection is a misnomer -- I picked up one-half of this book, a pamphlet called "The End of Imagination," in India in 2000. Roy's fiction has never really interested me; her work has always been trumped by Jhumpa Lahiri, a similar but more intriguing fictioneer. But Roy's polemics are breathtaking: She describes nuclear war -- and damns the Indian nuclear proliferation program -- in the most aggressive language I've ever read on the subject. She writes with the brutal conciseness of a quiet but outraged mother. She doesn't joke or exaggerate once; she states, with boiling simplicity, exactly how destructive a nuclear winter will be; and she adds, profoundly, that World War III will not only spell global genocide, but the annihilation of all our history and aspirations. The point of human existence will be moot; tens of thousands of years of evolution and development will mean nothing at all. Perhaps in spite of its bleakness, to know that this book was available in a Chennai bookstore is heartening. More heartening still: Salman Rushdie's novels were being sold in the same shop.

"My world has died and I want to mourn its passing."

Iconic, courageous, furious, blunt and gut wrenching amalgamation of social and political "truths"

"Did I hear someone say something about the world's biggest democracy?"

an eye opener account of: the never ending injustice of the rich against the poor; the powerful against the weak;

"Who are these gods that govern us? Is there no limit to their powers?"

the menace of nuclear weapons against the human civilisation; and the human greed against the survival of planet that we call home....

"This world of ours is 46,00 million years old.
It could end in one afternoon."

Roy is valiant, clear voiced, critical and fearless in her depiction of some of the darkest workings of the power structures prevalent in the modern world.

Dam(n)!

I will make myself very unpopular in India by saying the things I saying right now. but this is the fact that in present condition India have no other better writer on current political and socio - economic condition than Arundhati roy and P. Sainath. both are so good in what they are saying and writhing. They are politician, economist, lawyers, humanist, socialist, capitalist, religious, writer of rich as well as poor or etc. This book is a fifth in a row in a week written by Arundhati roy. Five books in just a week other than other book is an achievement for Arundhati roy. Because before that I haven't read her book. But currently I m also reading the God of small things. so you can imagine what kind of writer she is. And, how much she is touching my heart every day. The book start with small cute paragraph of her feeling after release of her Booker award winning fiction. The honest account on narmada dam is very heart touching. Although most of the paragraphs were appeared in The greater common good too but the additional paragraphs are quite astonishing. The cost we are paying for food, electricity, house, technology is so higher than what appears. The cost is not in just money or good or minerals but humans beings in millions. This is the cost of living. Once again I love you Arundhati roy for this book too.

There's wisdom in the second essay: The End of Imagination. If I may say so, the first, The Greater Common Good reads more like a report than a critical analysis of the situation (Narmada Bachao Andolan). If you must, read the second one. If you like Roy, you might even enjoy the first.

I decided to re-read Arundhati Roy's novel “The Ministry of Utmost Happiness” after reading Arundhati Roy's collection of essays "The Cost of Living". I used to read that novel in 2019. But at that time, I had a hard time following the plot. Feeling indirectly connected to various political, social, religious, caste, and other conundrums that seem to be simply thrust into a large basin without feeling that they are bound to one another. However, after reading two long essays in "The Cost of Living", I have more or less understood Arundhati Roy's political views. How his anxiety witnessed the various bloody events in his country, how he photographed India through glasses that were furious, sad, hopeless, cynical, anger that was fired at one point accompanied by a good argument.

Long before I learned that the dam project was a crucial issue in India through Arundhati Roy's book of essays, I remember reading a short story entitled "Guardians of the Dams" by an Indian writer; R.K. Narayan. Simple short stories. It tells the story of a dam guard who has a deep dialogue with a young woman in the middle of the night. Desperate because her life was overwritten by many misfortunes, the woman wanted to end her life at the dam. In the story, it is not explained whether the woman did not commit suicide or vice versa. Years later, the dam keeper meets a female figure who reminds him of the woman from that past night. The end of the story is also vague. It is unclear whether they are actually the same girl or not.

Aside from the good story, the fact that the short story "Guardians of the Dam" is the "first translated work" that I read, has left a deep impression to this day. At that time I did not know that R.K Narayan was an Indian writer. It's the short story; the first translation that accompanied my early acquaintance with the world of literature.

However, the meaning of "dam" in R.K. Narayan, who previously only reached me as a background story, now comes with a very different meaning. It's dangerous, it's dramatic, India's ravaged face. This new understanding was conveyed by Arundhati Roy from her book "The Cost of Living" which arrived from a long time ago, arrived too late because I just read it now. But strong enough to be a trigger for re-reading his novel "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness" which in most reviews is said to be Roy's novel which is difficult to understand compared to his previous novel, "The God of Small Things."

I think it is really necessary to get closer to the author's autobiography in order to better understand his works. One of them also reads his non-fiction works as I applied in this reading, connecting "The Cost of Living" with "The Ministry of Utmost Happiness.”

This is non-fiction by Arundhati Roy. In this book, the author explains how modern-day human is developing technology like dams and the atomic bomb and how humans are trying to play god. You will learn something new by reading this book. Everyone should read this book at least once. Checkout this article i found online about 10 Best Arundhati Roy Books. https://dailybugle.in/best-arundhati-...

Massive dams and nuclear bombs. Not the most uplifting of topics, these twin plagues of India and many other places besides, but Arundhati Roy, winner of the Man Booker Prize for her debut novel, n  The God of Small ThingsnThe Cost of Living, takes on these two enormous subjects in this small book that's lost no relevance in the 15 years since its original publication.

"There's nothing new or original left to be said about nuclear weaponry," she writes, "...[but] silence would be indefensible." What's more, Roy raises passionate political nonfiction to an art form. Take one of my favorites sentences from n  #SmallBooksMonthnThe Cost of Living, a heartbreaking turn of phrase that's so gorgeous it threatens to distract from the potential for mass fatality it intends to convey: "Our planet will bristle with beautiful missiles."

Roy isn't coy. In recalling a conversation with a friend, she describes "success" as, in part, "To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue beauty to its lair." This book does exactly that, and the tenuous result -- an inimitable balance between the beauty of her writing and the deeply depressing facts of her subject matter -- sets this unique writer's nonfiction in a league of its own.

(Quoted from n  #SmallBooksMonthn)

Excellent. But I’ve read it before.

I finally read this - have been meaning to for years. A great quick read, and you're made to feel like you're having a frank conversation with Roy, instead of being preached to, like many essays feel to me. I think everyone should read this - even though it is a little late!

Roy has an incredibly irritating writing style. Her first essay, regarding the costs of large dams, is frequently interrupted by near-stream-of-consciousness pop psychology babbles on global culture that waste space and are uninformative. She also wastes time and pages on moral exhortations ---
I understand that 50 million is a large number without her needing to spend 3 pages bludgeoning me over the head of the ethical import of displacing that many people. Additionally, the essay needed to be more technical; she wasted a golden opportunity to present information on the (technical) environmental impacts of damns to a reading public. Importantly, without the technical information it is impossible to present a cogent argument. Is it just the multi-use dams that are bad? What about only hydroelectric dams? Given that you basically have three choices for power generation --- burning coal, nuclear power, hydroelectric --- what do you pick? What is the better irrigation technology? I am sure these large dams are not the answer, but reading her essay I have no answers to these questions. Finally, her repeated comparisons between living in a slum and living in a Nazi death camp are tiresome and offensive. There are numerous slum dwellers in India who have experienced cataclysmic social violence (e.g., pogroms, riots, state-sanctioned murder, etc.). I am fairly certain if you ask them whether they prefer living in a pogrom vs. daily life in a slum they will choose the latter. A good writer would be able to convey the misery of the rehabilitation camps without resorting to tired comparisons.

Her second essay is less about nuclear bombs and more a critique of fascist undercurrents in Indian nationalism. It is better than the first and prescient given the rise to power of the Hindu lynch mob. Here, too, though she falls into tired cliches of the Indian intellectual class. She is terrified of what Indian society will do with the nuclear bomb given the large masses of "illiterate" people who know nothing of the consequences of the bomb. Her fear is misplaced; she has far more to fear from her bourgeois fascist neighbor who cheers the army of rapists in Kashmir and articulates support for lynch mobs. Most illiterate people in India live in rural areas and are sophisticated voters who focus on redistributive schemes and empowering governments who will bring tangible benefits to their communities. Rarely are they voting on 'the Pakistan threat', whatever that may be. It is the urban lynch mobs, who contain many literate people, who are more worrisome. This tired narrative of the brutality/ignorance of the poor/uneducated is old: similar narratives exist about Partition violence. Then too it was the educated urban middle class who formed and armed militias and partook in the bloodshed.

There are two major essays here. The first one deals with Narmada river project and it’s huge impact on the displaced communities, most of them adivasis. It rightly raises a point of long term impact of such large scale modern “development” projects. Do we need electricity and irrigation, absolutely. But have we calculated it’s cost? Probably not. The second is an anti-nuclear program rhetoric. It’s too idealistic in nature and an argument of humanity just doesn’t fly in an increasingly inhuman world. Overall, a good read. Especially the first essay.