The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

fringes. They were both giggling with their hands over their
mouths. Margaret Kochamma‟s mother was looking away, out of
the photograph, as though she would rather not have been there.
Margaret Kochamma‟s father had refused to attend the wedding.
He disliked Indians, he thought of them as sly, dishonest people.
He couldn‟t believe that his daughter was marrying one.
In the right-hand corner of the photograph, a man wheeling
his bicycle along the curb had turned to stare at the couple.
Margaret Kochamma was working as a waitress at a cafâ‚ in
Oxford when she first met Chacko. Her family lived in London.
Her father owned a bakery Her mother was a milliner‟s assistant.
Margaret Kochamma had moved out of her parents‟ home a year
ago, for no greater reason than a youthful assertion of
independence. She intended to work and save enough money to put
herself through a teacher training course, and then look for a job at
a school. In Oxford she shared a small flat with a friend. Another
waitress in another cafâ.
Having made the move, Margaret Kochamma found herself
becoming exactly the kind of girl her parents wanted her to be.
Faced with the Real World, she clung nervously to old
remembered rules, and had no one but herself to rebel against. So
even up at Oxford, other than playing her gramophone a little
louder than she was permitted at home, she continued to lead the
same small, tight life that she imagined she had escaped.
Until Chacko walked into the cafâ one morning.
It was the summer of his final year at Oxford. He was alone.
His rumpled shirt was buttoned up wrong. His shoelaces were
untied. His hair, carefully brushed and slicked down in front, stood
up in a stiff halo of quills at the back. He looked like an untidy,
beatified porcupine. He was tall, and underneath the mess of
clothes (inappropriate tie, shabby coat) Margaret Kochamma could
see that he was well-built. He had an amused air about him, and a
way of narrowing his eyes as though he was trying to read a
faraway sign and had forgotten to bring his glasses. His ears stuck