“They all crossed into forbidden territory,
they all tempered with laws that lay down
WHO SHOULD WE LOVE, AND HOW, AND HOW MUCH!”
The novel, though being the debut of the writer, is also the pièce de résistance set in 1969 Kerala, India. The Cold War between right and left made the air of politics volatile, where Marxism blew through the veins of thousands.
The portrayal of childhood and the way of life of an Anglophile family has plotted the novel from the very inception. The story is capricious, and more or less, the timeline was not flowing at a constant rhythm. Say, going through the first chapter, you’ll guess whom you’ll find alive and whom you will lose throughout the journey. I liked this bold and unconventional approach to writing. And what awestruck me was the fact that it was the first novel of the writer.
The narrator particularly had a benign personality, and the narration would make you picture all of it crystal clear with your bare eyes. The narrator, while explaining Night in Ayemenem, said, “The Nights are clear but suffused with sloth and sullied expectation.” It felt as though watching a movie in the theater, which in my case being lucky was the very first edition of the book The God of Small Things.
We saw the story being told more or less through the journey of Rahel & Estha, two monozygotic twins living with their mother in their Grandfather, Imperial Entomologist Pappachis’ house, going to the Cochin Airport in the winter to pay homage to their cousin Sophie Mol along with her mother coming from London to pass their Christmas. Sophie Mol’s father Chako, an Oxford Graduate and currently the CEO of their family pickle business, was divorced with Mammachi (Sophie’s Mom) and still would and could crave for her love.
But the story more or less revolves around Ammu who loved the man, the God of Small Things her children loved by day. The love that would cost all they had and will return them a future written by debris.
The theme of the book, though small, minuscule, microcosm, ‘Love,’ helped everyone to taste bitter death. All of them had to suffer, had to die only because love was made to the wrong person, to the God of Small Things. Love and Death became inseparable and though the lovers were aware, knew it better than anyone else that they would love everything, everyone but still…
The God of Small Things was loved though partly with terror, partly with aching desire, and then she said it for the last time:
Naayley, Tomorrow
The tomorrow that never came!!!