Anjum is born intersex and named Aftab by Muslim parents who raise the child as a boy.

Aftab runs away from home to join the Khwabgah community of Hijras, taking the name Anjum and living as a woman.

Anjum adopts an abandoned toddler she names Zainab, longing to experience life as an ordinary mother.

Anjum is caught in anti-Muslim riots in Ahmedabad; her companion Zakir Mian is killed but she is spared because killing a Hijra is considered unlucky.

Traumatized by the riots, Anjum abandons the Khwabgah and moves into a Muslim cemetery, intending to wait there until she dies.

Anjum builds a real home among the graves and takes in Imam Ziauddin and a young man called Saddam Hussain as tenants.

An abandoned baby is found at the Jantar Mantar protests, and a mysterious woman slips away with the child before Anjum can claim her.

Intelligence officer Biplab Dasgupta returns to his apartment building and discovers his tenant S. Tilottama has vanished after taking a stolen baby.

Dasgupta recalls arranging Tilo's release after she was arrested in a military raid in Kashmir, using his army connections to free her.

Tilo marries journalist Naga shortly after her release from custody in Kashmir, on Musa's advice.

Musa's wife Arifa and young daughter Miss Jebeen are shot dead by Indian soldiers who open fire on a crowd attending a funeral in Kashmir.

Musa refuses Amrik Singh's public offer of whiskey, goes into hiding, and joins the Kashmiri separatist insurgency.

Tilo moves into Anjum's cemetery home, Jannat Guest House, with the baby she has named Miss Jebeen the Second.

Saddam and Zainab marry, and the community holds improvised burial ceremonies for Saddam's father and Tilo's mother's ashes.

Musa visits Tilo at Jannat Guest House for three days, and both understand he will likely die when he returns to the Kashmir conflict.

The Ministry of Utmost Happiness follows two characters whose lives converge across decades of Indian history. Anjum, an intersex Muslim woman, is raised as a boy before joining the Khwabgah community of Hijras, adopting a daughter named Zainab, and being left traumatized by anti-Muslim riots that kill her companion and drive her to make a graveyard her home. Meanwhile, Tilo—an elusive architectural student with deep ties to Kashmir—is arrested in a military raid, marries a journalist on a separatist's advice, and leads a fractured double life for fourteen years. The two threads collide when Tilo impulsively takes an abandoned baby from a public protest and seeks refuge at Anjum's cemetery home, Jannat Guest House, where the community eventually holds weddings and burial ceremonies for its found family. The Kashmir storyline reveals the deaths of Musa's wife and daughter at the hands of Indian soldiers and Musa's entry into the separatist movement. The novel closes with Musa visiting Tilo one final time, both of them aware he will not return from the fighting.

The headline events of Anjum's and Tilo's intertwined stories.

Delhi's white-backed vultures die out after ingesting diclofenac fed to cows, their passing unnoticed amid the city's modernization.

Anjum meets the blind Imam Ziauddin in the cemetery; the two wound each other with sharp words before forming an unlikely friendship.

Jahanara Begum secretly discovers baby Aftab is intersex and begins secretly praying for a cure at Hazrat Sarmad Shaheed's shrine.

Ustad Kulsoom Bi takes Anjum and other Hijras to a Sound and Light Show to point out a single fleeting laugh by a court eunuch in Indian history.

Anjum becomes a celebrated Hijra performer, appearing in foreign documentaries and news articles about India's Hijra community.

Saddam Hussain reveals to Anjum that his Dalit father was falsely accused of killing a cow and murdered by a mob.

Dr. Azad Bhartiya—the last person to see the abandoned baby before she vanished—is introduced as a long-term hunger striker at Jantar Mantar.

Saddam Hussain and Ishrat chase Tilo's autorickshaw on horseback through Delhi streets and leave a business card in her mailbox.

Dasgupta recalls how three men—himself, Naga, and Musa—all fell in love with the aloof architectural student Tilo during their college years.

Naga fetches Tilo from the Shiraz Cinema interrogation center after her Kashmir arrest, assuming the man killed in the raid was Musa.

Tilo separates from Naga after fourteen years of marriage, no longer able to bear living a double life between Delhi and Kashmir.

Tilo discovers she is pregnant by Musa but chooses an abortion, fearing she will damage a child as her own mother damaged her.

In a daze after the abortion, Tilo wanders into a graveyard and lies down crying on a grave—the same cemetery where Anjum will later build her home.

Dasgupta loses his job and marriage and slides into alcoholism while obsessively reading and organizing the papers Tilo left behind.

Anjum carries Miss Udaya Jebeen through the nighttime city streets, stopping under a streetlight to introduce the baby to the stars above Delhi.

This pool traces the supporting details and secondary beats that enrich the novel's main arcs. It opens with the prologue's image of Delhi's vultures dying unnoticed as a consequence of modernization, before following Anjum from Jahanara Begum's secret prayers at a saint's shrine through Anjum's rise to celebrity as a celebrated Hijra performer. Key figures are introduced in their supporting roles—Dr. Azad Bhartiya as a witness to the baby's disappearance, and Saddam Hussain as a Dalit whose father was murdered by a mob. Tilo's private struggles are illuminated from the edges of the narrative: her separation from Naga after fourteen years, her abortion of Musa's child, and her mother's incoherent final days. Dasgupta's slow personal collapse as he obsesses over the papers Tilo left behind rounds out the novel's middle sections. The pool closes with Anjum carrying Miss Udaya Jebeen through nighttime Delhi in a quiet moment of fragile peace.

Secondary scenes and character moments that fill out the full story.

Mulaqat Ali learns Aftab is intersex and takes the child to a doctor, resolving to fund surgery to raise Aftab as a conventional boy.

The physical changes of puberty horrify Aftab so completely that he stops singing and resolves to flee his family for the Khwabgah.

Anjum grows jealous of younger Hijra Saeeda after Zainab bonds with her, suspecting Saeeda of cursing Zainab with her illnesses.

Saddam Hussain converts to Islam and takes the name Saddam Hussain after watching a video of Saddam Hussein meeting his execution with composure.

Gujarat ka Lalla's Hindu nationalist forces flood the Jantar Mantar protest and silently co-opt the hunger striker's movement overnight.

Dasgupta finds files in Tilo's apartment documenting that Amrik Singh killed himself, his wife, and their sons in a murder-suicide in California.

Dasgupta discovers Tilo secretly kept years of hidden documentation about Kashmir atrocities—photos, notebooks, and case files—in his rented apartment.

Naga's covert collaboration with Indian intelligence is revealed, showing that Tilo's marriage to him was founded on a hidden deception.

Tilo arrives at Musa's Kashmir houseboat and meets Gulrez, the mentally disabled caretaker Musa has taken under his protection.

A military raid on the houseboat results in Gulrez being shot dead by Amrik Singh and his body falsely claimed as that of militant Commander Gulrez.

Musa meets Tilo at a Kashmiri safe house after her arrest, urges her to marry for protection, and promises to find her when the war ends.

Saddam takes the Jannat Guest House community to a shopping mall built over the field where his father was murdered, demanding a proper memorial.

A posthumous letter from Revathy arrives revealing she is Miss Jebeen the Second's biological mother, who conceived the child through rape during police detention.

Musa reveals to Dasgupta that he organized Kashmiris to silently haunt Amrik Singh at his home and workplace in California until Singh self-destructed.

Tilo finds she can finally make peace with Musa's likely death, having discovered a home and purpose at Jannat Guest House.

This pool focuses on the hidden truths and decisive moments that alter the course of the novel's events. It begins with the private crises shaping Anjum's early life—her father's plan to surgically erase her intersex body, the horror of puberty, and the jealousy that fractures her bond with Zainab. A political turning point arrives when Gujarat ka Lalla's Hindu nationalists silently co-opt the Jantar Mantar protest movement from within. Dasgupta's exploration of Tilo's apartment yields two revelations: her secret archive of Kashmir atrocities and Amrik Singh's California murder-suicide. The Kashmir chapters then deliver their most devastating moments—Tilo's meeting with Gulrez on the houseboat, the raid that kills him and leads to her arrest, and Musa's desperate counsel at a safe house. The pool closes with the community receiving Revathy's posthumous letter naming her as Miss Jebeen the Second's biological mother, Musa revealing how he drove Singh to ruin, and Tilo finally making peace with Musa's likely death.