The God of Small Things - Get a Free Blog

Earth Woman‟s eye. That Worse Things had happened. That
Worse Things kept happening. But they would find no comfort in
the thought.
Chacko said that going to see The Sound of Music was an
extended exercise in Anglophilia.
Ammu said, “Oh come on, the whole world goes to see The
Sound of Music . It‟s a World Hit.”
“Nevertheless, my dear,” Chacko said in his Reading Aloud
voice, `Never. The. Less.”
Mammachi often said that Chacko was easily one of the
cleverest men in India. “According to whom?” Ammu would say.
“On what basis?” Mammachi loved to tell the story (Chacko‟s
story) of how one of the dons at Oxford had said that in his
opinion, Chacko was brilliant, and made of prime ministerial
material.
To this, Ammu always said “Hal Ha! Ha!” like people in the
comics. She said:
(a)Going to Oxford didn‟t necessarily make a person clever.
(b)Cleverness didn‟t necessarily make a good prime minister.
(c)If a person couldn‟t even run a pickle factory profitably,
how was that person going to run a whole country?
And, most important of all:
(d)All Indian mothers are obsessed with their sons and are
therefore poor judges of their abilities.
Chacko said:
(a)You don‟t go to Oxford. You read at Oxford.
And
(b)After reading at Oxford you come down .
“Down to earth, d‟you mean?” Ammu would ask. “That you
definitely do. Like your famous airplanes.”
Ammu said that the sad but entirely predictable fate of
Chacko‟s airplanes was an impartial measure of his abilities.
Once a month (except during the monsoons), a parcel would