The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

was taut and smooth. Under her hands her nipples wrinkled and
hardened like dark nuts, pulling at the soft skin on her breasts. The
thin line of down from her belly button led over the gentle curve of
the base of her belly, to her dark triangle. Like an arrow directing a
lost traveler. An inexperienced lover
She undid her hair and turned around to see how long it had
grown. It fell, in waves and curls and disobedient frizzy wisps–soft
on the inside, coarser on the outside–to just below where her small,
strong waist began its curve out towards her hips. The bathroom
was hot. Small beads of sweat studded her skin like diamonds.
Then they broke and trickled down. Sweat ran down the recessed
line of her spine. She looked a little critically at her round, heavy
behind. Not big in itself. Not big per se (as Chacko-of-Oxford
would no doubt have put it). Big only because the rest of her was
so slender. It belonged on another, more voluptuous body.
She had to admit that they would happily support a
toothbrush apiece. Perhaps two. She laughed out loud at the idea of
walking naked down Ayemenem with an array of colored
toothbrushes sticking out from either cheek of her bottom. She
silenced herself quickly. She saw a wisp of madness escape from
its bottle and caper triumphantly around the bathroom.
Ammu worried about madness.
Mammachi said it ran in their family. That it came on people
suddenly and caught them unawares. There was Pathil Ammai,
who at the age of sixty-five began to take her clothes off and run
naked along the river, singing to the fish. There was Thampi
Chachen, who searched his shit every morning with a
knitting-needle for a gold tooth he had swallowed years ago. And
Dr. Muthachen, who had to be removed from his own wedding in a
sack. Would future generations say, “There was Ammu–Ammu
Ipe. Married a Bengali. Went quite mad. Died young. In a cheap
lodge somewhere.”
Chacko said that the high incidence of insanity among Syrian
Christians was the price they paid for Inbreeding. Mammachi said
it wasn‟t.