The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

eeze. Adoor Basi, the most popular, best-loved comedian in
Malayalam cinema, had just arrived (Bombay-Cochin). Burdened
with a number of small unmanageable packages and unabashed
public adulation, he felt obliged to perform. He kept dropping his
packages and saying, “Ende Deivoinay! Lee sadhanangal! ”
Estha laughed a high, delighted laugh.
“Ammu look! Adoor Basi‟s dropping his things!” Estha said.
“He can‟t even carry his things!”
“He‟s doing it deliberately,” Baby Kochamma said in a
strange new British accent. “Just ignore him.”
“He‟s a filmactor,” she explained to Margaret Kochamma
and Sophie Mol, making Adoor Basi sound like a Mactor who did
occasionally Fil.
“Just trying to attract attention,” Baby Kochamma said and
resolutely refused to have her attention attracted.
But Baby Kochamma was wrong. Adoor Basi wasn‟t trying
to attract attention. He was only trying to deserve the attention that
he had already attracted.
“My aunt, Baby,” Chacko said.
Sophie Mol was puzzled. She regarded Baby Kochamma
with a beady-eyed interest. She knew of cow babies and dog
babies. Bear babies-yes. (She would soon point out to Rahel a bat
baby.) But aunt babies confounded her.
Baby Kochamma said, “Hello, Margaret,” and “Hello,
Sophie Mol.” She said Sophie Mol was so beautiful that she
reminded her of a wood-sprite. Of Ariel.
“D‟you know who Ariel was?” Baby Kochamma asked
Sophie Mol. “Ariel in The Tempest?”
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