The God of Small Things

by Arundhati Roy

Locusts Stand I.

Rahel knew that this had happened because she had been hoping that it wouldn’t. She hadn’t learned to control her Hopes yet. Estha said that was a Bad Sign.

When Julie Andrews starts off as a speck on the hill and gets bigger and bigger till she bursts onto the screen with her voice like cold water and her breath like peppermint

At night Ammu read to them from Kipling’s Jungle Book. Now Chil the Kite brings home the night That Mang the Bat sets free—

They showed Miss Mitten how it was possible to read both Malayalam and Madam I’m Adam backwards as well as forwards. She wasn’t amused and it turned out that she didn’t even know what Malayalam was. They told her it was the language everyone spoke in Kerala.

She said she had been under the impression that it was called Keralese. Estha, who had by then taken an active dislike to Miss Mitten, told her that as far as he was concerned it was a Highly Stupid Impression.

To the twins there was hidden justice in the fact that the milk van had been reversing.

Mammachi said that what her grandchildren suffered from was far worse than Inbreeding. She meant having parents who were divorced. As though these were the only choices available to people: Inbreeding or Divorce. Rahel wasn’t sure what she suffered from, but occasionally

“That looks like Mercurochrome to me,” Ammu said, of his inordinately bright blood. “Congratulations,” Chacko said. “Spoken like a true bourgeoise.”

Moments like these the twins treasured, and threaded like precious beads, on a (somewhat scanty) necklace.

They had been blown off in Singapore in ‘42, within the first week of his running away from home to join the fighting ranks of the Indian National Army. After Independence he had himself registered as a Grade I Freedom Fighter and had been allotted a free first-class railway pass for life. This too he had lost (along with his mind), so he could no longer live on trains or in refreshment rooms in railway stations. Murlidharan had no home, no doors to lock, but he had his old keys tied carefully around his waist. In a shining bunch. His mind was full of cupboards, cluttered with secret pleasures. An alarm clock. A red car with a musical horn. A red mug for the bathroom. A wife with a diamond. A briefcase with important papers. A coming home from the

office. An I’m sorry, Colonel Sabhapathy, but I’m afraid I’ve said my say And crisp banana chips for the children. He watched the trains come and go. He counted his keys. He watched governments rise and fall. He counted his keys. He watched cloudy children at car windows with yearning marshmallow noses.

The homeless, the helpless, the sick, the small and lost, all filed past his window. ...

He was never sure which cupboard he might have to open, or when. He sat on the burning milestone with his matted hair and eyes like windows, and was glad to be able to look away sometimes. To have his keys to count and countercheck. Numbers would do. Numbness would be fine. Murlidharan mo...

Ammu said it was all hogwash. Just a case of a spoiled princeling playing Comrade! Comrade! An Oxford avatar of the old zamindar mentality—a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him for their livelihood.

Structurally—this somewhat rudimentary argument went—Marxism was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party, and the form and purpose of the journey remained similar. An obstacle race, with a prize at the end. Whereas the Hindu mind had to make more complex adjustments.

The trouble with this theory was that in Kerala the Syrian Christians were, by and large, the wealthy, estate-owning (pickle-factory-running), feudal lords, for whom communism represented a fate worse than death. They had always voted for the Congress Party.

The real secret was that communism crept into Kerala insidiously. As a reformist movement that never overtly questioned the traditional values of a caste-ridden, extremely traditional community. The Marxists worked from within the communal divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to. They offered a cocktail revolution. A heady mix of Eastern Marxism and orthodox Hinduism, spiked with a shot of democracy.

The airport shop, run by the Kerala Tourism Development Corporation, was crammed with Air India Maharajahs (small medium large), sandalwood elephants (small medium large) and papier-màché masks of kathakali dancers (small medium large). The smell of cloying sandalwood and terry-cotton armpits (small medium large) hung in the air.

In the Arrivals Lounge, there were four life-sized

cement kangaroos with cement pouches that said USE ME. In their pouches, instead of cement joeys, they had cigarette stubs, used matchsticks, bottle caps, peanut shells, crumpled paper cups and cockroaches. Red betel spitstains spattered their kangaroo stomachs like fresh w...

They looked as though if you pressed them they might say Mama in ...

She turned away from the screaming steel bird in the sky-blue sky that had her cousin in it, and what she saw was this: red-mouthed roos with ruby smiles moved cemently across the airport floor. Heel and Toe Heel and Toe Long flatfeet. Airport garbage in their baby bins. The smallest one stretched its neck like people in English films who loosen their ties after office. The middle one rummaged in her pouch for a long cigarette stub to smoke. She found an old cashew nut in a dim plastic bag. She gnawed it with her front teeth like a rodent. The large one wobbled the standing up sign that said Kerala Tourism Development Corporation Welcomes You with a kathakali dancer doing a namaste.

Another sign, unwobbled by a kangaroo, said: emocleW ot eht ecipS tsaoC fo aidnI.

And there they were, the Foreign Returnees, in wash’n’wear suits and rainbow sunglasses. With an end to grinding poverty in their Aristocrat suitcases. With cement roofs for their thatched houses, and geysers for their parents’ bathrooms. With sewage systems and septic tanks. Maxis and high heels. Puff sleeves and lipstick. Mixy-grinders and automatic flashes for their cameras. With keys to count, and cupboards to lock. With a hunger for kappa and meen vevichathu that they hadn’t eaten for so long. With love and a lick of shame that their families who had come to meet them were so… so … gawkish. Look

the way they dressed! Surely they had more suitable airport wear! Why did Malayalees have such awful teeth? And the airport itself! More like the local bus depot! The bird-shit on the building! Oh the spitstains on the kangaroos! Oho! Going to the dogs India is.

When long bus journeys, and overnight stays at the airport, were met by love and a lick of shame, small cracks appeared, which would grow and grow, and before they knew it, the Foreign Returnees would be trapped ou...

Chacko said he couldn’t take Rahel on his shoulders because he was already carrying something. Two roses red. Fatly. Fondly

And the Air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these, only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside.

“D’you know who Ariel was?” Baby Kochamma asked Sophie Mol. “Ariel in The Tempesti” Sophie Mol said she didn’t. “ ‘Where the bee sucks there suck I?” Baby Kochamma said. Sophie Mol said she didn’t. “ ‘In a cowslip’s bell I lie’?” Sophie Mol said she didn’t. “Shakespeare’s The Tempest?” Baby Kochamma persisted. All this was of course primarily to announce her credentials to Margaret Kochamma. To set herself apart from the Sweeper Class.

Ambassador Rahel wouldn’t come out of the curtain because she couldn’t. She couldn’t because she couldn’t. Because Everything was wrong. And soon there would be a Lay Ter for both her and Estha. Full of furred moths and icy butterflies. And deep-sounding bells. And moss. And a Nowl.

Velutha

Velutha

“And the other thing, Rahel,” Ammu said, “I think it’s high time that you learned the difference between CLEAN and DIRTY. Especially in this country.” Ambassador Rahel looked down. “Your dress is—was—CLEAN,” Ammu said. “That curtain is DIRTY. Those Kangaroos are DIRTY. Your hands are DIRTY.” Rahel was frightened by the way Ammu said CLEAN and DIRTY so loudly. As though she was talking to a deaf person.

outside Ayemenem they drove into a cabbage-green butterfly (or perhaps it drove into them).