The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

just a twinkle in her eye,” Chacko said grandly, lying on his bed,
staring at the ceiling.
When he was in this sort of mood, Chacko used his Reading
Aloud voice. His room had a church-feeling. He didn‟t care
whether anyone was listening to him or not. And if they were, he
didn‟t care whether or not they had understood what he was
saying. Ammu called them his Oxford Moods.
Later, in the light of all that happened, twinkle seemed
completely the wrong word to describe the expression in the Earth
Woman‟s eye. Twinkle was a word with crinkled, happy edges.
Though the Earth Woman made a lasting impression on the
twins, it was the History House–so much closer at hand–that really
fascinated them. They thought about it often. The house on the
other side of the river.
Looming in the Heart of Darkness.
A house they couldn‟t enter, full of whispers they couldn‟t
understand.
They didn‟t know then that soon they would go in. That they
would cross the river and be where they weren‟t supposed to be,
with a man they weren‟t supposed to love. That they would watch
with dinner-plate eyes as history revealed itself to them in the back
verandah.
While other children of their age learned other things, Estha
and Rahel learned how history negotiates its terms and collects its
dues from those who break its laws. They heard its sickening thud.
They smelled its smell and never forgot it.
History‟s smell.
Like old roses on a breeze.
It would lurk forever in ordinary things. In coat hangers.
Tomatoes. In the tar on roads. In certain colors. In the plates at a
restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes.
They would grow up grappling with ways of living with
what happened. They would try to tell themselves that in terms of
geological time it was an insignificant event. Just a blink of the