The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

“Revolution is not a dinner party. Revolution is an
insurrection, an act of violence in which one class overthrows
another.”
And so, having bagged the contract for the Synthetic
Cooking Vinegar labels, he deftly banished Chacko from the
fighting rank of the Overthrowers to the treacherous ranks of the
To Be Overthrown.
They sat beside each other on steel folding chairs, on the
afternoon of the Day that Sophie Mol Came, sipping coffee and
crunching banana chips. Dislodging with their tongues the sodden
yellow mulch that stuck to the roofs of their mouths.
The Small Thin Man and the Big Fat Man. Comic-book
adversaries in a still-to-come war.
It turned out to be a war which, unfortunately for Comrade
Pulai, would end almost before it began. Victory was gifted to him
wrapped and ribboned, on a silver tray. Only then, when it was too
late, and Paradise Pickles slumped softly to the floor without so
much as a murmur or even the pretense of resistance, did Comrade
Pillai realize that what he really needed was the process of war
more than the outcome of victory. War could have been the stallion
that he rode, part of, if not all, the way to the Legislative
Assembly, whereas victory left him no better off than when he
started out.
He broke the eggs but burned the omelette.
Nobody ever learned the precise nature of the role that
Comrade Pillai played in the events that followed. Even
Chacko–who knew that the fervent, high-pitched speeches about
Rights of Untouchables (“Caste is Class, comrades”) delivered by
Comrade Pillai during the Marxist Party siege of Paradise Pickles
were pharisaic–never learned the whole story. Not that he cared to
find out. By then, numbed by the loss of Sophie Mol, he looked out
at everything with a vision smudged with grief. Like a child
touched by tragedy, who grows up suddenly and abandons his
playthings, Chacko dumped his toys. Pickle Baron-dreams and the