A Question for Arundhati Roy

Dear Arundhati-didi :

I have read your books and your essays. Come September, and The Road to Harsud have moved me the most. Angered me the most. And woken me the most sharply, to the "...absolute, relentless, endless, habitual, unfairness of the world." While I do not presume that you will ever read this, I would still like to put a question to you.

What can I do, and how should I be feeling?

We live, as you say, in the world of "spurious choice". I can choose to buy Big Business out of business, but is what I buy instead organic, or local, or fair trade? Which one is to be traded off against the other one? And in the millions of choices I make everyday, this bottle of water vs. that drink vs. thirst, I am then exhausted. This exhaustion, I realize, is the ultimate weapon of Big Business. (I object to the use of that phrase, it doesn't seem fair to be sizeist. But I do acknowledge that Big = Powerful, most of the time, in economic terms.) This exhaustion, this feeling, at age 25, that I would like to curl up under a tree and look at the sky, or be with a lover, or damn-it-all, drink the Coke that my uneducated childhood has addicted me to. To remember what it is like to Not Know.

But of course, I can never go back. And if I did, I would regret it. Therefore, the question is - can I meaningfully go forward? Can I make any difference by leading a different life? (I don't require an answer to know that I must lead a different life anyway.)

And in the background of all of this, there is the unrelenting, absurd and nameless terror, anger and frustration that the world wrenches out of me. Terror, anger and frustration were further than the edges of the universe when I was growing up. Now, they are constant, darkly glittering, burning cold companions. Ruthlessly invasive and unforgiving. I say they are nameless because they are directed at everything - and therefore at nothing, meaningfully. Who should I be angry at? George W. Bush and Shell? Or the endlessly recursive set of circumstances that make George Bush and Shell possible? And the terror and shock, when I realise that time and space are illusions even in this purely mental exercise - at the heart of the circumstances making George W. Bush and Shell possible, is the individual. Me. Where I spend my money and how, where I laugh with my friends over coffee and whether or not I smoke and where I buy my clothes.

So: Caught as we all are in this endless circle, this going-nowhere-fast spiral, I can only Scream.
What can I do, and what should I feel?