The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

his name on it) that lay open on the bedroom floor.
The room to which, years later, Rahel would return and
watch a silent stranger bathe. And wash his clothes with crumbling
bright blue soap.
Flatmuscled, and honey colored. Sea-secrets in his eyes. A
silver raindrop on his ear.
Esthapappychachen Kutappen Peter Mon.
Chapter 12.
Kochu Thomban
The sound of the chenda mushroomed over the temple,
accentuating the silence of the encompassing night. The lonely,
wet road. The watching trees. Rahel, breathless, holding a coconut,
stepped into the temple compound through the wooden doorway in
the high white boundary wall.
Inside, everything was white-walled, moss-tiled and moonlit.
Everything smelled of recent rain. The thin priest was asleep on a
mat on the raised stone verandah. A brass platter of coins lay near
his pillow like a comic-strip illustration of his dreams. The
compound was littered with moons, one in each mud puddle.
Kochu Thomban had finished his ceremonial rounds, and lay
tethered to a wooden stake next to a steaming mound of his own
dung. He was asleep, his duty done, his bowels empty, one tusk
resting on the earth, the other pointed to the stars. Rahel
approached quietly. She saw that his skin was looser than she
remembered. He wasn‟t Kochu Thomban anymore. His tusks had
grown. He was Vellya Thomban now. The Big Tusker. She put the
coconut on the ground next to him. A leathery wrinkle parted to
reveal a liquid glint of elephant eye. Then it closed and long,
sweeping lashes re-summoned sleep. A tusk towards the stars.
June is low season for kathakali. But there are some temples
that a troupe will not pass by without performing in. The
Ayemenem temple wasn‟t one of them, but these days, thanks to