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People‟s War joined the racks of broken airplanes in his
glass-paned cupboard. After Paradise Pickles closed down, some
rice fields were sold (along with their mortgages) to pay off the
bank loans. More were sold to keep the family in food and clothes.
By the time Chacko emigrated to Canada, the family‟s only
income came from the rubber estate that adjoined the Ayemenem
House and the few coconut trees in the compound. This was what
Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria lived off after everybody else
had died, left, or been Returned.
To be fair to Comrade Pillai, he did not plan the course of
events that followed. He merely slipped his ready fingers into
History‟s waiting glove.
It was not entirely his fault that he lived in a society where a
man‟s death could be more profitable than his life had ever been.
Velutha‟s last visit to Comrade Pillai–after his confrontation
with Mammachi and Baby Kochamma–and what had passed
between them, remained a secret. The last betrayal that sent
Velutha across the river, swimming against the current, in the dark
and rain, well in time for his blind date with history.
Velutha caught the last bus back from Kottayam, where he
was having the canning machine mended. He ran into one of the
other factory workers at the bus stop, who told him with a smirk
that Mammachi wanted to see him. Velutha had no idea what had
happened and was completely unaware of his father‟s drunken visit
to the Ayemenem House. Nor did he know that Vellya Paapen had
been waiting for hours at the door of their hut, still drunk, his glass
eye and the edge of his ax glittering in the lamplight, waiting for
Velutha to return. Nor that poor paralyzed Kuttappen, numb with
apprehension, had been talking to his father continuously for two
hours, trying to calm him down, all the time straining his ears for
the sound of a footstep or the rustle of undergrowth so that he
could shout a warning to his unsuspecting brother.
Velutha didn‟t go home. He went straight to the Ayemenem
House. Though, on the one hand, he was taken by surprise, on the