The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

(The west wind blew and swallowed his boat,)
An Airport-Fairy frock stood on the floor, supported by its
own froth and stiffness. Outside in the mittam, crisp saris lay in
rows and crispened in the sun. Off-white and gold. Small pebbles
nestled in their starched creases and had to be shaken out before
the saris were folded and taken in to be ironed.
Arayathi pennu pizhachu poyi,
(His wife on the shore went astray,)
The electrocuted elephant (not Kochu Thomban) in
Ettumanoor was cremated. A giant burning ghat was erected on the
highway. The engineers of the concerned municipality sawed off
the tusks and shared them unofficially. Unequally. Eighty tins of
pure ghee were poured over the elephant to feed the fire. The
smoke rose in dense fumes and arranged itself in complex patterns
against the sky. People crowded around at a safe distance, read
meanings into them.
There were lots of flies.
Kadalamma avaney kondu poyi.
(So Mother Ocean rose and took him away.)
Pariah kites dropped into nearby trees, to supervise the
supervision of the last rites of the dead elephant. They hoped, not
without reason, for pickings of giant innards. An enormous
gallbladder, perhaps. Or a charred, gigantic spleen.
They weren‟t disappointed. Nor wholly satisfied.
Ammu noticed that both her children were covered in a fine
dust. Like two pieces of lightly sugar-dusted, unidentical cake.
Rahel had a blond curl lodged among her black ones. A curl from
Velutha‟s backyard. Ammu picked it out.
“I‟ve told you before,” she said. “I don‟t want you going to
his house. It will only cause trouble.”
What trouble, she didn‟t say. She didn‟t know.
Somehow, by not mentioning his name, she knew that she
had drawn him into the tousled intimacy of that blue cross-stitch
afternoon and the song from the tangerine transistor. By not