The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

What was Estha sitting on?
On what they always sat on under the mangosteen tree.
Something gray and grizzled. Covered in moss and lichen,
smothered in ferns. Something that the earth had claimed. Not a
log. Not a rock.
Before she completed the thought, Rahel was up and
running. Through the kitchen, past Kochu Maria fast asleep.
Thickwrinkied like a sudden rhinoceros in a frilly apron.
Past the factory.
Tumbling barefoot through the greenheat, followed by a
yellow wasp.
Comrade Estha was there. Under the mangosteen tree. With
the red flag planted in the earth beside him. A Mobile Republic. A
Twin Revolution with a Puff.
And what was he sitting on?
Something covered with moss, hidden by ferns.
Knock on it and it made a hollow knocked-on sound.
The silence dipped and soared and swooped and looped in
figures of eight.
Jeweled dragonflies hovered like shrill children‟s voices in
the sun. Finger-colored fingers fought the ferns, moved the stones,
cleared the way. There was a sweaty grappling for an edge to hold
on to. And a One Two and.
Things can change in a day.
It was a boat. A tiny wooden vallom .
The boat that Estha sat on and Rahel found.
The boat that Ammu would use to cross the river. To love by
night the man her children loved by day.
So old a boat that it had taken root. Almost.
A gray old boatplant with boatflowers and boatfruit. And
underneath, a boat-shaped patch of withered grass. A scurrying,
hurrying boatworld.
Dark and dry and cool. Unroofed now. And blind.