Name: Arundhati Roy
Age: 41
Nationality: Indian
Claim to fame: Peace activist par excellence

PEACE activist and a pretty successful author, Arundhati Roy was recently in Pakistan on a three-city tour of the country. Her travels took her to Lahore, Islamabad and eventually to Karachi. In all her three outings, she was the key speaker talking about peace in South Asia. A staunch anti-nuclear activist, her presence in the city was enough to cause a stir among those familiar with her work. It made an even bigger buzz with those for whom Arundhati Roy’s presence proved to be the social event of the year.

Raised in the southern Indian state of Kerala, controversy has almost always dogged Arundhati’s career. From challenging a film producer as well as the Indian Supreme Court, she has been in the thick of things for quite some time now. She caused uproar when she claimed in an article that Shekhar Kapur’s movie, Bandit Queen, insulted Phoolan Devi, once India’s most wanted woman.

Even her Booker Prize winning inaugural novel, The God of Small Things, was not spared and its sexual contents brought her the spotlight that she didn’t want. Eventually, she ended up in jail, if only for a day, for contempt of the Indian Supreme Court. She was protesting against the Court’s decision to go ahead with the controversial Narmada Dam project.

Nevertheless, fame and fortune embraced her when she became the first Indian author to claim the Booker Prize. Apart from her literary contributions, that include film scripts and newspaper articles, her work for the millions of Indians who have over the years been displaced by various development projects, brought her recognition as an environment activist.

It were these thoughts and staunch anti-nuclear sentiments that the former aerobics instructor and a trained architect voiced in her 35-minute speech in Karachi. However, her central message was peace, and she emphasized that foreign investments will not solve our problems. It is dialogue with the urge to find peace between the two neighbours that will.

A sizable crowd was there to listen to her golden words. Still more were there just for the fun of it. The rich pedigree of Karachi was out in force with its silks, chiffon and the like, realizing little that the gust herself was wearing coarse cotton. Anyway, these were the ones who occupied a majority of the available seats.

For others, an afternoon out in the open on a Sunday was just too much to bear, as many were found sleeping at the seminar. Some were even snoring. Perhaps they failed to find the kind of entertainment Arundhati Roy was referring to when, addressing the religious bigots and their anti-women rhetoric, she said, “You don’t know what you are missing, boys!”