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had the keys. She called through the door to ask Ammu whether she had any idea where the children might be. She tried to keep the panic out of her voice, make it sound like a casual enquiry. Something crashed against the door. Ammu was incoherent with rage and disbelief at what was happening to her–at being locked away like the family lunatic in a medieval household. It was only later, when the world collapsed around them, after Sophie Mol‟s body was brought to Ayemenem, and Baby Kochamma unlocked her, that Ammu sifted through her rage to try to make sense of what had happened. Fear and apprehension forced her to think clearly, and it was only then that she remembered what she had said to her twins when they came to her bedroom door and asked her why she had been locked up. The careless words she hadn‟t meant. “Because of you!” Ammu had screamed. “If it wasn‟t for you I wouldn‟t be here! None of this would have happened! I wouldn‟t be here! I would have been free! I should have dumped you in an orphanage the day you were born! You‟re the millstones round my neck!” She couldn‟t see them crouched against the door. A Surprised Puff and a Fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo. Bewildered Twin Ambassadors-of-God-knows-what Their Excellencies Ambassadors E. Pelvis and S. Insect. “Just go away!” Ammu had said. “Why can‟t you just go away and leave me alone?!” So they had. But when the only answer Baby Kochamma got to her question about the children was something crashing against Ammu‟s bedroom door, she went away. A slow dread built up inside her as she began to make the obvious, logical and completely mistaken connections between the night‟s happenings and the missing children. The rain had started early the previous afternoon. Suddenly the hot day darkened and the sky began to clap and grumble.
Kochu Maria, in a bad mood for no particular reason, was in the kitchen standing on her low stool savagely cleaning a large fish, working up a smelly blizzard of fish scales. Her gold earrings swung fiercely. Silver fish scales flew around the kitchen, landing on kettles, walls, vegetable peelers, the fridge handle. She ignored Vellya Paapen when he arrived at the kitchen door, drenched and shaking. His real eye was bloodshot and he looked as though he had been drinking. He stood there for ten minutes waiting to be noticed. When Kochu Maria finished the fish and started on the onions, he cleared his throat and asked for Mammachi. Kochu Maria tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn‟t go. Each time he opened his mouth to speak, the smell of arrack on his breath hit Kochu Maria like a hammer. She had never seen him like this before, and was a little frightened. She had a pretty good idea of what it was all about, so she eventually decided that it would be best to call Mammachi. She shut the kitchen door, leaving Vellya Paapen outside in the back mittam, weaving drunkenly in the driving rain. Though it was December, it rained as though it was June. “Cyclonic disturbance,” the newspapers called it the next day. But by then nobody was in any condition to read the papers. Perhaps it was the rain that drove Vellya Paapen to the kitchen door. To a superstitious man, the relentlessness of that unseasonal downpour could have seemed like an omen from an angry god. To a drunk superstitious man, it could have seemed like the beginning of the end of the world. Which, in a way, it was. When Mammachi arrived in the kitchen, in her petticoat and pale pink dressing gown with rickrack edging, Vellya Paapen climbed up the kitchen steps and offered her his mortgaged eye. He held it out in the palm of his hand. He said he didn‟t deserve it and wanted her to have it back. His left eyelid drooped over his empty socket in an immutable, monstrous wink. As though everything that he was about to say was part of an elaborate prank. “What is it?” Mammachi asked, stretching her hand out, thinking perhaps that for some reason Vellya Paapen was returning the kilo of red rice she had given him that morning.
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Arundhati Roy God of Small Things
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locked. The front verandah bare. Un
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meant for. Free funerals. Of course
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made. Lying broken on the hot churc
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desk and approached Ammu with his b
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still, tea-colored puddles the way
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his life, Khubchand, who had the be
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usiness as the Inevitable Consequen
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sternmouthed nuns seated behind her
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look straight, though it wasn‟t.
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would ask to try on their slippers
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the westernmost verandah of the Kal
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found that the senior sisters monop
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peaked red cap. Baby Kochamma spent
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with a towel). She even locked her
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difficulty that their family had wi
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Still, to say that it all began whe
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RejOice, And again I say rej-Oice.
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money to raise a suitable dowry, no
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She didn‟t notice the single Siam
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welcomed. To Ammu, her twins seemed
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a high-wax shoulder polish. Sometim
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Ammu said that the billboard made t
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told that his moth had finally been
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effeminate pout-the kind that child
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and despise ourselves.” “Marry
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Earth Woman‟s eye. That Worse Thi
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Ammu said. Chacko said, “What‟s
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know what Malayalam was. They told
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Chacko lit a Charminar. He inhaled
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hair. Estha wondered how that could
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percent of Kerala‟s population we
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Kerala was reeling in the aftermath
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A bun. A banana. Another balled fis
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Memory was that woman on the train.
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Entomology who first noticed little
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Vellya Paapen‟s good intentions q
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emember Velutha when he left. But i
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though they had successfully conclu
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eyelids the light was bright and ho
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and Rahel thought it was a nice pho
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Anabs-urd Litt-le Bird Is popping o
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them with the boys‟ luggage, his
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white-tiled bathroom, with sea-secr
Page 90 and 91:
“Will you be okay?” Ammu said,
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grandmother‟s cans, Estha Alone o
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eathing people and hairoil. And old
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In the lobby, the orangedrinks were
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Estha went behind the Refreshments
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and pointy shoes. “You mustn‟t
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the question. I cannot love them. I
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“No. Thank you.” Estha looked a
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hostess‟s heart trapped in a bear
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window. He could taste the hot, sal
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“Goodnight,” Estha said, too si
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Those last few tortured nights befo
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wondered idly if it had indeed been
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He stayed in constant touch with th
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no more than a swollen drain now. A
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labeled with edifying placards that
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Rahel tried to walk past unnoticed.
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“That is most unfortunate,” he
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efore the doctor saw him, and to co
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pressed together, smiles frozen on
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Chacko, who usually wore a mundu, w
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Heel and Toe Heel and Toe Long flat
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Ammu said, “Can you see her, Rahe
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eeze. Adoor Basi, the most popular,
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And Later became a horrible, menaci
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It would bea. “All right,” Ammu
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Ambassador Estha and Ambassador Rah
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“I‟m not,” Rahel said. “You
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Baby Kochamma suggested a car song.
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with spit, and taken half the paper
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and I was Little Nehru. Ammu had co
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white, it means it isn‟t ripe. Wh
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of the eternal fire became a red ro
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Nine steep steps led from the drive
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despised her anyway. Shopkeeper‟s
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on her behind. Kochu Maria‟s fan
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were let down. The gauze doors of t
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Even after her cornea transplant, M
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The man or her own child. Or just t
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“Where‟s Estha Mon?” Velutha
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And truth be told, it was no small
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“Oower Kochamma,” the Blue Army
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Kochamma, who didn‟t answer. “V
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Little Girls Playing. Sweet. One be
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spent a whole day saying. She and E
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Gloom swallowed the garden. Whole.
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performed in the front verandah and
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fire till fruit is soft. Sqweeze ou
Page 186 and 187: Love-in-Tokyo. She heard a nun‟s
Page 188 and 189: eceipt for the dues that Velutha pa
Page 190 and 191: What was Estha sitting on? On what
Page 192 and 193: Here they learned to Wait. To Watch
Page 194 and 195: The boat-on-legs approached the hut
Page 196 and 197: sudden silence from inside. Kuttapp
Page 198 and 199: “Has Chacko Saar‟s Mol come?”
Page 200 and 201: Hey Mr Monkey Man Why‟s your BUM
Page 202 and 203: He squeezed the water out of it (sa
Page 204 and 205: His skin was salty. Hers too. He le
Page 206 and 207: “I was happy,” Ammu said, and r
Page 208 and 209: mentioning his name, she sensed tha
Page 210 and 211: was taut and smooth. Under her hand
Page 212 and 213: The bedroom with blue curtains and
Page 214 and 215: his name on it) that lay open on th
Page 216 and 217: up-like a bubble. He wrestles it to
Page 218 and 219: soft and womanly, a man with breast
Page 220 and 221: mother. The air grew warmer. Less d
Page 222 and 223: Comrade Pillai. Ayemenem‟s egg-br
Page 224 and 225: side of her face, making her cheekb
Page 226 and 227: out on either side of his head like
Page 228 and 229: hooting, helpless laughter. Meanwhi
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Page 232 and 233: Margaret Kochamma was physically at
Page 234 and 235: comfortable, committed friendship.
Page 238 and 239: “It‟s his eye,” Kochu Maria s
Page 240 and 241: thoughts with unctuous oils. She bl
Page 242 and 243: makes fishermen pray. At the Kottay
Page 244 and 245: could not possibly be, unconnected.
Page 246 and 247: When Margaret Kochamma saw her litt
Page 248 and 249: still asleep. Chacko, on his way to
Page 250 and 251: cupboard stood next to the table. I
Page 252 and 253: they hung down on either side of he
Page 254 and 255: snacks. Comrade Pillai, grateful fo
Page 256 and 257: the house, or perhaps from the mome
Page 258 and 259: “Yes. He is good worker,” he sa
Page 260 and 261: completely. “That may be,” he s
Page 262 and 263: People‟s War joined the racks of
Page 264 and 265: een flattened into a neat illustrat
Page 266 and 267: appreciation, and went to the door.
Page 268 and 269: silver. It took him only a few minu
Page 270 and 271: expeditions across the river and th
Page 272 and 273: had gone) to divest his sister-in-l
Page 274 and 275: to a change of faith. Fifteen years
Page 276 and 277: A nagging sound started up in his h
Page 278 and 279: But this time, for Ammu and her two
Page 280 and 281: The Kottayam Police. A cartoonplato
Page 282 and 283: slow death of dancers. The toy hist
Page 284 and 285: history‟s henchmen. Sent to squar
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Still they brought out the handcuff
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“ssenetiloP,” he said. “ssene
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The sight of Baby Kochamma made the
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policeman‟s desk. Estha could see
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mangled genie invoked by a modern l
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erths green. The floor green. The c
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“And Real Teachers teaching.”
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irds go to die? Why don‟t dead on
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chair below the moldy, button-eyed
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She didn‟t see the knob of his he
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with an equal measure of pain. As t
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what seemed like an eternity, but w
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He died of natural causes. That fir
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