The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

the house, or perhaps from the moment Comrade Pillai had arrived,
had undergone a curious process of invalidation. Like a general
who had been stripped of his stars, he limited his smile. Contained
his expansiveness. Anybody meeting him there for the first time
might have thought him reticent. Almost timid.
With a street-fighter‟s unerring instincts, Comrade Pillai
knew that his straitened circumstances (his small, hot house, his
grunting mother, his obvious proximity to the toiling masses) gave
him a power over Chacko that in those revolutionary times no
amount of Oxford education could match.
He held his poverty like a gun to Chacko‟s head.
Chacko brought out a crumpled piece of paper on which he
had tried to sketch the rough layout for a new label that he wanted
comrade K. N. M. Pillai to print. It was for a new product that
Paradise Pickles & Preserves planned to launch in the spring.
Synthetic Cooking Vinegar. Drawing was not one of Chacko‟s
strengths, but Comrade Pillai got the general gist. He was familiar
with the logo of the kathakali dancer, the slogan under his skirt that
said Emperors of the Realm of Taste (his idea) and the typeface
they had chosen for Paradise Pickles & Preserves.
“Design is same. Only difference is in text, I suppose,”
Comrade Pillai said.
“And the color of the border,” Chacko said. “Mustard instead
of red.” –
Comrade Pillai pushed his spectacles up into his hair in order
to read aloud the text. The –lenses immediately grew fogged with
hair oil.
“Synthetic Cooking Vinegar,” he said. “This is all in caps, I
suppose.”
“Prussian Blue,‟ Chacko said.
“Prepared from Acetic Acid?”
“Royal blue,” Chacko said. “Like the one we did for green
pepper in brine.”
“Net Contents, Batch No., Mfg date, Expiry Date, Max Rd
Pr. Ri... same Royal Blue color but c and Ic?”