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when memory had only just begun, when life was full of Beginnings and no Ends, and Everything was Forever,
Thirty-one. Not old. Not young. But a viable die-able age.
Chacko was Mammachi’s only son. Her own grief grieved her. His devastated her.
Yet Estha’s silence was never awkward. Never intrusive. Never noisy. It wasn’t an accusing, protesting silence as much as a sort of estivation, a dormancy,
He began to look wiser than he really was. Like a fisherman in a city. With sea-secrets in him.
He dismissed the whole business as the Inevitable Consequence of Necessary Politics. The old omelette-and-eggs thing. But then, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai was essentially a political man. A professional omeletteer. He walked through the world like a chameleon. Never revealing himself, never appearing not to. Emerging through chaos unscathed.
the sound of passing trains, and the light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat.
she eventually admitted that she had done it to find out whether breasts hurt. In that Christian institution, breasts were not acknowledged. They weren’t supposed to exist (and if they didn’t could they hurt?).
Rahel drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge. With a Sitting Down sense.
He decided that since she couldn’t have a husband there was no harm in her having an education.
Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from a teabag.
in the pit of her stomach she carried the cold knowledge that, for her, life had been lived. She had had one chance. She made a mistake. She married the wrong man.
their wide-eyed vulnerability and their willingness to love people who didn’t really love them exasperated her and sometimes made her want to hurt them—just as an education, a protection. It was as though the window through which their father disappeared had been kept open for anyone to walk in and be welcomed.
It seemed so absurd. So futile. Like polishing firewood.
history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside.
The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that has made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves.”
