The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

White termites on their way to work.
White ladybirds on their way home.
White beetles burrowing away from the light.
White grasshoppers with whitewood violins.
Sad white music.
A white wasp. Dead.
A bntrlewhite snakeskin, preserved in darkness, crumbled in
the sun.
But would it do, that little vallom?
Was it perhaps too old? Too dead?‟
Was Akkara too far away for it?
Two-egg twins looked out across their river.
The Meenachal.
Graygreen. With fish in it. The sky and trees in it. And at
night, the broken yellow moon in it.
When Pappachi was a boy, an old tamarind tree fell into it in
a storm. It was still there. A smooth barkiess tree, blackened by a
surfeit of green water. Driftless driftwood.
The first third of the river was their friend. Before the Really
Deep began. They knew the slippery stone steps (thirteen) before
the slimy mud began. They knew the afternoon weed that flowed
inwards from the backwaters of Komarakom. They knew the
smaller fish. The flat, foolish pallathi, the silver paral, the wily,
whiskered koori, the sometimes karimeen.
Here Chacko had taught them to swim (splashing around his
ample uncle stomach without help). Here they had discovered for
themselves the discotinected delights of underwater fatting.
Here they had learned to fish. To thread coiling purple
earthworms onto hooks on the fishing rods that Velutha made from
slender culms of yellow bamboo.
Here they studied Silence (like the children of the Fisher
People), and learned the bright language of dragonflies.