The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

sudden silence from inside.
Kuttappen wasn‟t expecting anyone.
Estha and Rahel pushed open the door and went in. Small as
they were, they had to stoop a little to go in. The wasp waited
outside on the lamp.
“It‟s us.”
The room was dark and clean. It smelled of fish curry and
woodsmoke. Heat cleaved to things like a low fever. But the mud
floor was cool under Rahel‟s bare feet. Velutha‟s and Vellya
Paapen‟s bedding was rolled up and propped against the wall.
Clothes hung on a string. There was a low wooden kitchen shelf on
which covered terra-cotta pots, ladles made of coconut shells arid
three chipped enamel plates with dark-blue rims were arranged. A
grown man could stand up straight in the center of the room, but
not along its sides. Another low door led to a backyard, where
there were more banana trees, beyond which the river glimmered
through the foliage. A carpenter‟s workstation had been erected in
the backyard.
There were no keys or cupboards to lock.
The black hen left through the backdoor, and scratched
abstractedly in the yard, where woodshavings blew about like
blond curls. Judging from her persona1ity~ she appeared to have
been reared on a diet of hardware: hasps and clasps and nails and
old screws.
“Ayyo, Mon! Mol! What must you be thinking? That
Kuttappen‟s a basket case!” an embarrassed, disembodied voice
said.
It took the twins awhile for their eyes to grow accustomed to
the dark. Then the darkness dissolved and Kuttappen appeared on
his bed, a glistening genie in the gloom. The whites of his eyes
were dark yellow. The soles of his feet (soft from so much lying
down) stuck out from under the cloth that covered his legs. They