The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

have to tell him, won‟t I? I can‟t tell a lie, can I?” She patted the
chair next to her “Here, come and sit down-”
Four cheeks of two obedient bottoms squeezed into it.
“I‟ll have to tell them how it was strictly against the Rules
for you to go alone to the river. How you forced her to go with you
although you knew that she couldn‟t swim. How you pushed her
out of the boat in the middle of the river. It wasn‟t an accident, was
it?”
Four saucers stared back at her. Fascinated by the story she
was telling them. Then what happened?
“So now you‟ll have to go to jail,” Baby Kochamma said
kindly. “And your mother will go to jail because of you. Would
you like that?”
Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at her
“Three of you in three different jails. Do you know what jails
in India are like?”
Too heads shook twice.
Baby Kochamma built up her case. She drew (from her
imagination) vivid pictures of prison life. The cockroach-crisp
food. Thechhi-chhi piled in the toilets like soft brown mountains.
The bedbugs. The beatings. She dwelled on the long years Ammu
would be put away because of them. How she would be an old,
sick woman with lice in her hair when she came out–if she didn‟t
die in jail, that was. Systematically, in her kind, concerned voice
she conjured up the macabre future in store for them. When she
had stamped our every ray of hope, destroyed their lives
completely, like a fairy godmother she presented them with a
solution. God would never forgive them for what they had done,
but here on Earth there was a way of undoing some of the damage.
Of saving their mother from humiliation and suffering on their
account. Provided they were prepared to be practical.
“Luckily,” Baby Kochamma said, “luckily for you, the police
have made a mistake. A lucky mistake.” She paused. “You know
what it is, don‟t you?”
There were people trapped in the glass paperweight on the