| [from arundhati roy's speech, "come september"]
"In early May 1988, I left home for three weeks. While I was away,
I met a friend of mine whom I've always loved for, among other
things, her ability to combine deep affection with a frankness
bordering on savagery. [Laughter]
"I've been thinking about you", she said..."about The God of Small
Things -- what's in it, what's over it, under it, around it, above
it??"
She fell silent for a while. I was uneasy and not at all sure that I
wanted to hear the rest of what she had to say. She, however, was
sure that she was going to say it. "In this last year - less than a
year actually - you've had too much of everything - fame, money,
prizes, adulation, criticism, condemnation, ridicule, love, hate,
anger, envy, generosity - everything. In some ways it's a perfect
story. Perfectly baroque in its excess. The trouble is that it has, or
can have, only one perfect ending." Her eyes were on me, bright,
with a slanting, probing brilliance. She knew that I knew what she
was going to say. She was insane.
She was going to say that nothing that happened to me in the
future could ever match the buzz of this. That the whole of the rest
of my life was going to be vaguely dissatisfying. And, therefore,
the only perfect ending to the story would be death. [Laughter] My
death.
[Laughter]
You've lived too long in New York, I told her. There are other
worlds. Other kinds of dreams. Dreams in which failure is
feasible. Honorable. Sometimes even worth striving for. Worlds in
which recognition is not the only barometer of brilliance or human
worth. There are plenty of warriors that I know and love, people far
more valuable than myself, who go to war each day, knowing in
advance that they will fail. True, they're less successful in the most
vulgar sense of the word, but by no means less fulfilled.
The only dream worth having, I told her, is to dream that you will
live while you're alive and die only when you're dead.
"Which means exactly what", she said, looking a little annoyed.
[Laughter]
I tried to explain, but didn't do a very good job of it because
sometimes I need to write to think. So I wrote it down for her on a
paper napkin and this is what I wrote:
To love. To be loved. To never forget your own insignificance. To
never get used to the unspeakable violence and the vulgar disparity
of life around you. To seek joy in the saddest places. To pursue
beauty to its lair. To never simplify what is complicated or
complicate what is simple. To respect strength, never power.
Above all, to watch. To try and understand. To never look away.
And never, never, to forget.
Roy: Thank you. [Applause]
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