The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

Nothing that the world would miss.
A child‟s plastic wristwatch with the time painted on it
Ten to two, it said.
A band of children followed Rahel on her walk.
“Hello hippie,” they said, twenty-five years too late.
“Whatisyourname?”
Then someone threw a small stone at her, and her childhood
fled, flailing its thin arms.
On her way back, looping around the Ayemenem House,
Rahel emerged onto the main road. Here too, houses had
mushroomed, and it was only the fact that they nestled under trees,
and that the narrow paths that branched off the main road and led
to them were not motorable, that gave Ayemenem the semblance
of rural quietness. In truth, its population had swelled to the size of
a little town. Behind the fragile façade of greenery lived a press of
people who could gather at a moment‟s notice. To beat to death a
careless bus driver. To smash the windscreen of a car that dared to
venture out on the day of an Opposition bandh. To steal Baby
Kochamma‟s imported insulin and her cream buns that came all
the way from Bestbakery in Kottayam.
Outside Lucky Press, Comrade K. N. M. Pillai was standing
at his boundary wall talking to a man on the other side. Comrade
Pillai‟s arms were crossed over his chest, and he clasped his own
armpits possessively, as though someone had asked to borrow
them and he had just refused. The man across the wall shuffled
through a bunch of photographs in a plastic sachet, with an air of
contrived interest. The photographs were mostly pictures of
Comrade K. N. M. Pillai‟s son, Lenin, who lived and worked in
Delhi–he took care of the painting, plumbing, and any electrical
work for the Dutch and German embassies. In order to allay any
fears his clients might have about his political leanings, he had
altered his name slightly. Levin he called himself now. P. Levin.