Suzanna Arundhati Roy won the Booker Prize in 1997 for her first novel, The God of Small Things .
The novel
is set in the backdrop of rain-soaked, green Kerala.
The story in this novel unfolds in the village Ayemanem on the
coast of river Meenachil, with the arrival of Rahel into her
ancestral house on a rainy day, after a long gap. The author
through her deft and skillful language draws a vivid and alluring
picture of the monsoon magic which transforms the landscape in the
village into a riot of green.
The novel is chiefly crafted in the form of Rahel's memories going back
into the past, to the magical world of her childhood spent in the
Ayemenem house. Rahel is presently a young lady in her early
thirties, divorced from her American husband and living in New Delhi.
The story at
moments dives deep into the past and then suddenly
surfaces into the present, taking the reader back and forth in time on
roller coaster ride. The arrangement of chapters in the novel is
somewhat unconventional, perhaps never tried by others so far.
Events which should have normally been narrated in a later part of the
novel find place in the initial chapters, sometimes lending an aura of
mystery, magic and suspense to the narrative. But when one finishes reading the
book suddenly everything falls into place and the story is vivid and
clear.
The language of the novel is another noteworthy aspect. It is
refreshingly new. The author has succeeded in creating her own special
genre of narrative, experimenting with words, dissecting, splicing and
merging words, to reveal new, hidden and charming meanings, which often
only children are able to see.
In the past, when Rahel was a child,
there were in her world, Estha, her twin brother or the 'dizygotic'
twin brother, her divorced mother Ammu, Chako Ammu’s brother who ran
the not-so-successful Paradise Pickles & Preserves, Mamachi - Chako
and Ammu’s mother, Baby Kochamma the unmarried aunt of Ammu and Chako,
KochuMaria the servant of the Ayemenem house, Velutha the young man who
worked in the Paradise Pickles company, Vellia Pappan – Velutha’s
father with a mortgaged eye, Velutha’s paralysed, bed-ridden brother
Kuttappan who always sings aloud from his bed in the
small dingy room
in the little laterite house with a low thatched roof.
Rahel and Estha’s mother Ammu is divorced from her alcoholic Bengali
husband and lives in her parental house, with her brother Chako and her
mother Mamachi. She is a lusty beautiful woman who falls for the charms
of Velutha the untouchable (low-caste) young man. They make love on the
bank of river Meenachil, on moonlit nights, they break the rules of the
society, as to who should love whom. They make love on the
riverbank in a little clearing left by
the small boat which was carried away by Rahel and Estha to Velutha’s
house. The little boat in which Rahel, Estha and Sophie Mol tries to
cross the surging river, but capsizes, causing the death of Sophie Mol,
Chacko’s daughter who had come down from England with Chako’s ex-wife
Margaret for a visit. Chako had met Margaret while he was at Oxford as
a student. Margaret was a waitress in a small restaurant in London,
frequented by Chako. They eventually fell in love and married. But
after the birth of Sophie Mol they divorced. Margaret married Joe, who
later died in a road accident leaving a “Joe shaped hole” in the
universe.
The adulterous liaison of Ammu with Velutha, the God of Small Things,
becomes known to all. Velutha goes into hiding, in the History House,
Karisaipu’s old, haunted bungalow on the other side of the river
Meenachil. Rahel, Estha and Sophie Mol on the fateful night decide to
cross the river to take shelter in the History House to escape from an
impending disaster, “to be prepared to be prepared for the worst, because any thing can happen any time”. But
their boat sinks killing Sophie Mol who did not know how to swim. Rahel
and Estha swim ashore take shelter in the History House. Police, on the
lookout for Velutha reach History House and cature Velutha and
‘recover’ the children who were thought to be kidnapped and held
hostage by Velutha. Velutha spews warm frothy blood and dies from the brutal beatings of the
‘polite’ Kottayam Police. Estha is then forced to tell lies to the
Police that he and his sister were kidnapped by Velutha so that the
Police could justify their act of brutality against Velutha.
The reason for the children’s escapade began with the terror that
seeped in to the mind of Estha from his encounter with the Orangedrink
Lemondrink Man in the Abhilash Talkies in Cochin. The Orangedrink
Lemondrink Man seduced Estha and sexually abused him, when Estha came
out of the theatre for a breath of fresh air, during the screening of
the film The Sound of Music which he went to watch alongwith his other
family members, during their trip to Cochin to receive Margaret
Kochamma and Sophie Mol coming from England. The Orangedrink Lemondrink
Man threatened
Estha that he would come to meet him at Aymenem.
Terror-striken Estha hatches the plan to escape to the other side of
the river, into the History House, alongwith Rahel and Sophie Mol.
The novel
has lot more characters in it. It has a liberal sprinkling of
Malayalam, the language of Kerala, in it. It has moments of fun,
moments of mystery, moments of trauma, moments of lust, moments of
treachery. It offers a bitter-sweet slice of Kerala to the reader.