God Of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

I read the God of Small Things from Arundhati Roy back in late 2013. I had to go read the plot summary again since it has been quite a while, however I still recall some characters of the work especially Baby Kochamma. Now that I read breezed past the plot summary I realize how dark this book really is with the story.

Some excepts from the book where the fraternal twins Estha and Rahel go through tumultuous childhood experiences and observe their family members.

Context: Ammu Ipe married (unknowingly) an alcoholic and abusive person as a way to escape her extremely aggressive father. However, she comes back to her family after she leaves her husband.

When she looked at herself in her wedding photographs, Ammu felt the woman that looked back at her was someone else. A foolished jewelled bride. Her silk sunset-coloured Sari shot with gold. WHite dots of Sandalwood paste over her arched eyebrows. Looking at herself like this, Ammu’s soft mouth would twist into a smaller, bitter smile at the memory - not of the wedding itself so much as the fact that she had permitted herself to be so painstakingly decorated before being led to the gallow. It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.

Context: Baby Kochamma, as a character has been carrying her failed goals of not being able to marry Father Mulligan (a priest) from the past and drags that failure throughout her life. Not to mention, the conservative attitude that was part of the Indian Society regarding tradtions and casteism add nothing but vile thoughts.

She subscribed wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter (Ammu) had no position in her parent’s home. As for a divorced daughter - according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage - Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject.

Context: Pappachi is the ill-tempered father of Ammu Ipe and maternal grandfather of the fraternal twins Estha and Rahel. He has a skirmish with his son Chacko regarding some aspect.

“I never want this to happen again” he told his father. “Ever”. For the rest of that day Pappachi sat in the Verandah and stared stonily out at the ornamental garden ignoring the plates of food that Kochu Maria (house cook and maid) brought him. Late at night he went into his study and brought out his favourite mahogany rocking char. He put it down in the middle of the driveway and smashed it into little bits with a plumber’s monkey wrench. He left it there in the moonlight, a heap of varnished wicker and splintered wood. He never touched Mammachi (his wife) again. But he never spoke to her either as long as he lived. When he needed anything he used Kochu Maria or Baby Kochamma (his sister) as intermediaries. He bought the sky-blue Plymouth from an old Englishman in Munnar. He became a familiar sight in Ayemenem, coasting importantly down the narrow road in his wide car, looking outwardly elegant but sweating freely inside his woollen suits. He wouldn’t allow Mammachi or anyone else in the family to use it, or even sit in it. The Plymouth was Pappachi’s Revenge.

Context: Kathakali is an indian classical dance form, where stories are manifested as a form of play with traditional apparels and the male artists dress up elaboratively.

It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of great stories is that they have no secrets. The great stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear it again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know that they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the great stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t and yet you want to know again.

That is their mystery and their magic.

To the Kathakali Man, these stories are his children and his childhood. He has grown up within them. They are the house he was raised in, the meadows he played in. They are his windows and his way of seeing. So when he tells a story, he handles it as he would a child of his own. He teases it. He punishes it. He sends it up like a bubble. He wrestles it to the ground and lets it go again. He laughes at it because he loves it. He can fly you across hours to examine a wilting leaf. Or play with a sleeping monkey’s tail. He can turn effortlessly from the carnage of war into the felicity of a woman washing her hair in a mountain stream. From the craftly ebullience of a Rakshasha (Demon) with a new idea into a gossipy Malyali (South Indian Native speaking Malayalam language) with a scandal to spread. From the sensuousness of a woman with a baby at her breast into the seductive mischief of Krishna’s Smile. He can reveal the nugget of sorrow that happiness contains. The hidden fish of shame in a sea of glory. He tells stories of gods, but his yarn is spun from the ungodly, the human heart.