The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

comfortable, committed friendship. For Chacko it was a way, the
only way, of remaining in touch with the mother of his child and
the only woman he had ever loved.
When Sophie Mol was old enough to go to school, Margaret
Kochamma enrolled herself in a teacher training course, and then
got a job as a junior schoolteacher in Clapham. She was in the staff
room when she was told about Joe‟s accident. The news was
delivered by a young policeman who wore a grave expression and
carried his helmet in his hands. He had looked strangely comical,
like a bad actor auditioning for a solemn part in a play. Margaret
Kochamma remembered that her first instinct when she saw him
had been to smile.
For Sophie Mol‟s sake, if not her own, Margaret Kochamma
did her best to face the tragedy with equanimity. To pretend to
face the tragedy with equanimity. She didn‟t take time off from her
job. She saw to it that Sophie Mol‟s school routine remained
unchanged–Finish your bomework. Eat your egg. No, we can‟t not
go to school.
She concealed her anguish under the brisk, practical mask of
a schoolteacher. The stern, schoolteacher-shaped Hole in the
Universe (who sometimes slapped).
But when Chacko wrote inviting her to Ayemenem,
something inside her sighed and sat down. Despite everything that
had happened between her and Chacko, there was nobody in the
world she would rather spend Christmas with. The more she
considered it, the more tempted she was. She persuaded herself
that a trip to India would be just the thing for Sophie Mol.
So eventually, though she knew that her friends and
colleagues at the school would think it odd–her running back to her
first-husband-just-as-soon as her second-one-had-died–Margaret
Kochamma broke her term deposit and bought two airline tickets.
London-Bombay-Cochin.
She was haunted by that decision for as long as she lived.
She took with her to her grave the picture of her little