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A nagging sound started up in his head. The sound of passing trains. The light and shade and light and shade that falls on you if you have a window seat. He sat even straighter. Still, he could see her. Grown into their mother‟s skin. The liquid glint of her eyes in the dark. Her small straight nose. Her mouth, full-lipped. Something wounded-looking about it. As though it was flinching from something. As though long ago someone–a man with rings–had hit her across it. A beautiful, hurt mouth. Their beautiful mother‟s mouth, Estha thought. Ammu‟s mouth. That had kissed his hand through the barred train window. First class, on the Madras Mail to Madras. “Bye, Estha. Godbless,” Ammu‟s mouth had said. Ammu‟s trying-notto-cry mouth. The last time he had seen her. She was standing on the platform of the Cochin Harbor Terminus, her face turned up to the train window. Her skin gray, wan, robbed of its luminous sheen by the neon station light. Daylight stopped by trains on either side. Long corks that kept the darkness bottled in. The Madras Mail. The Flying Rani. Rahel held by Ammu‟s hand. A mosquito on a leash. A Refugee Stick Insect in Bata sandals. An Airport Fairy at a railway station. Stamping her feet on the platform, unsettling clouds of settled station-filth. Until Ammu shook her and told her to Stoppit and she Stoppited. Around them the hostling-jostling crowd. Scurrying hurrying buying selling luggage trundling porter paying children shitting people spitting coming going begging bargaining reservation-checking. Echoing stationsounds. Hawkers selling coffee. Tea. Gaunt children, blond with, malnutrition, selling smutty magazines and food they couldn‟t afford to eat themselves. Melted chocolates. Cigarette sweets. Orangedrinks.
Lemondrinks. Coca Cola Fanta icecream rose milk. Pink-skinned dolls. Rattles. Love-in-Tokyos. Hollow plastic parakeets full of sweets with heads you could unscrew. Yellow-rimmed red sunglasses. Toy watches with the time painted on them. A cartful of defective toothbrushes. The Cochin Harbor Terminus. Gray in the stationlight. Hollow people. Homeless. Hungry. Still touched by last year‟s famine. Their revolution postponed for the Time Being by Comrade E. M. S. Namboodiripad (Soviet Stooge. Running Dog,). The former apple of Peking‟s eye. The air was thick with flies. A blind man without eyelids and eyes as blue as faded jeans, his skin pitted with smallpox scars, chatted to a leper without fingers, taking dexterous drags from scavenged cigarette stubs that lay beside him in a heap. “What about you? When did you move here?” As though they had had a choice. As though they had picked this for their home from a vast array of posh housing estates listed in a glossy pamphlet A man sitting on a red weighing machine unstrapped his artificial leg (knee downwards) with a black boot and nice white sock painted on it. The hollow, knobbled calf was pink, like proper calves should be. (When you re-create the image of man, why repeat God‟s mistakes?) Inside it he stored his ticket. His towel. His stainless-steel tumbler. His smells. His secrets. His love. His hope. His madness. His infinnate joy. His real foot was bare. He bought some tea for his tumbler. An old lady vomited. A lumpy pool. And went on with her life. The Stationworld. Society‟s circus. Where, with the rush of commerce, despair came home to roost and hardened slowly into resignation.
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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
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“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
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Love-in-Tokyo. She heard a nun‟s
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eceipt for the dues that Velutha pa
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What was Estha sitting on? On what
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Here they learned to Wait. To Watch
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The boat-on-legs approached the hut
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sudden silence from inside. Kuttapp
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“Has Chacko Saar‟s Mol come?”
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Hey Mr Monkey Man Why‟s your BUM
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He squeezed the water out of it (sa
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His skin was salty. Hers too. He le
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“I was happy,” Ammu said, and r
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mentioning his name, she sensed tha
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was taut and smooth. Under her hand
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The bedroom with blue curtains and
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his name on it) that lay open on th
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up-like a bubble. He wrestles it to
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soft and womanly, a man with breast
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mother. The air grew warmer. Less d
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Comrade Pillai. Ayemenem‟s egg-br
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side of her face, making her cheekb
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Page 232 and 233: Margaret Kochamma was physically at
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Page 236 and 237: had the keys. She called through th
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
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Page 252 and 253: they hung down on either side of he
Page 254 and 255: snacks. Comrade Pillai, grateful fo
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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
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Page 268 and 269: silver. It took him only a few minu
Page 270 and 271: expeditions across the river and th
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Page 278 and 279: But this time, for Ammu and her two
Page 280 and 281: The Kottayam Police. A cartoonplato
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Page 286 and 287: Still they brought out the handcuff
Page 288 and 289: “ssenetiloP,” he said. “ssene
Page 290 and 291: The sight of Baby Kochamma made the
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Page 296 and 297: erths green. The floor green. The c
Page 298 and 299: “And Real Teachers teaching.”
Page 300 and 301: irds go to die? Why don‟t dead on
Page 302 and 303: chair below the moldy, button-eyed
Page 304 and 305: She didn‟t see the knob of his he
Page 306 and 307: with an equal measure of pain. As t
Page 308 and 309: what seemed like an eternity, but w
Page 310: He died of natural causes. That fir
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