Arundhati Roy: news about her
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Barbara Love
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The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

"Trapped in the bog of a story that was and wasn't theirs. That had set out with the semblance of structure and order, then bolted like a frightened horse into anarchy"(Roy 224). The God of Small Things' author Arundhati Roy uses these enigmatic words to describe her main characters near the middle of their story. This is a family story of Estha and Rahel, unidentical twins, and the fateful events of one day in 1969. This is a story of India, of a fateful, boggy history that traps its people on an anarchic plateau where structure and order are no longer secure and where there seems to be no individual escape from the collective story. The deftly crafted fractured-time narrative circles around the mystery of the dramatic death of the twin's nine-year-old visiting cousin, Sophie Mal, the fact of which is disclosed from the first. Roy uses a solid historical base and a marvelous combination of repeated motifs to communicate the dilemma of a people in the midst of a "blind date with history"(267).

Proprietors of the Paradise Pickle Factory in Ayemenem, the Ipe family are characterized as a family of anglophiles, the deceased grandfather having held the post of Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute before Independence. Now the twins live with their divorced mother Ammu, their uncle Chacko, their grandmother Mammachi-the family's matriarch, and their great-aunt Baby Kochamma. Chacko is Oxford educated and divorced from his English wife Margaret, the mother of Sophie Mol. The fact of ownership, of property, separates the family from their neighbors' Communistic leanings and hopeless, fearful post-Independence lives.

Margaret and Sophie Mol come to spend the holidays in India shortly after the death of her second husband Joe. They come to Recover from the Shock. Although their arrival brings a new set of tensions into an already uniquely dysfunctional family, no one is prepared for the cataclysmic events that follow the accidental drowning of Sophie Mol. The majority of the narrative adds the depth of detail to the family's story leading up to and since her death. Present time is twenty some years later. The twins have been separated since shortly after the death. Their reunion finds them hollow, empty beings whose lives have been forever scarred by the events of that day. One of the repeated motifs that Roy uses in the book is the idea that things can change in a day. Each of the novel's main characters at some point embraces the idea that things can and do change in a day -- Estha and Rahel, Ammu, and the story's change-point character, Velutha.

Velutha is a Paravan worker in the pickle factory, a member of the untouchable class. He is a mechanical genius and master carpenter, brought close to the lives of the family because of his valuable role in the factory and as handy man around the house. He is beloved by the twins, and finally becomes lover to their mother. Their secret affair has just been brought to light on the day when Sophie drowns. He is unjustly accused of kidnapping the children and of murdering Sophie. The police beat him to death, exacting the type of justice demanded of an untouchable who dares step out of his place in history. Roy ties this entire complicated story together with several repeated thematic ideas that continually point to the inevitable toll of history.

One of the comparisons that Roy calls into play is India's ever-present fascination with the Rama story. In a protracted scene the adult twins watch kathakali dancers in a midnight temple frenzy as they retell much Rama's tale. The reader realizes, as do the twins, that they are Karna, abandoned by their mother and destined to live violent, unfulfilled lives as he was. As they see vengeful, blood thirsty Bhima "searching for the beast that lives in him"(225), they realize along with Comrade Pillai who brings them to the temple and interprets for them, that man is often more bestial than any wild creature. Their lives have been forever altered by a hatred so inhuman that it is common only to man among all beasts. The twins are India's history.

Kunti invokes the Love Laws in the Rama story, to gain compliance from Karna, seeking his promise not to harm his brothers. The Love Laws are an important repeated idea in the story. There are important laws about love, about who should be loved, and how, and how much. Everyone finds out how dangerous it is to break those laws. The twins find out by loving both Velutha and their mother too much and blame themselves for their destruction. Adult Ammu clearly knows the Love Laws and yet cannot save herself from loving the only man who ever truly loves her and her children and comes to blame herself for his destruction. Velutha has no doubt about the outcome should he break the Love Laws and yet, "had he known that he was about to enter a tunnel whose only egress was his own annihilation, would he have turned away? . . . Who can tell?"(315). Early in the story the narrator attempts to pin point the scientifically exact time that the troubles all began. In a series of regressive steps the conclusion is that it really began before all the history that Chacko recites to the twins. That it really all began in the days when the Love Laws were made. They are all trapped by inescapable historical mores that were laid down at the beginning of time. Roy says "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"(54).

Sense of history resounds throughout the story. Chacko's fascination with the historical leads him to embrace the past and to fancy himself a part of contemporary history. He will not wait for his workers to rise in rebellion against their oppressive employers. He, the proprietor himself, will unionize them and help them work towards justice. In the end he is only somewhat too late as the workers take advantage of the injustice of Velutha's death and rise against the factory owners.

The History House is the central historical representation in the novel. A house where history happened once, abandoned now. A house where history happens now, where Ammu and Velutha meet in dangerous liaison, where two children look for safety as they flee the whimsical emotions of the adults in their lives, where one child is not quite strong enough to swim against the current and is swept away. Where "history's henchman, sent to square the books and collect the dues from those who broke its laws"(292) exact cold justice from a man whose only crime is the fact of his birth. Roy introduces the twins' preoccupation with the history house early in the story, adding to the myth bit-by-bit, until it is obvious that it will play an important part in the history of the family. The reader is not surprised that the story culminates at the history house with "history in live performance"(293) as the police find Velutha there and beat him while the children watch. It seems fitting in this tale of history's cost, that the horrendous climax takes place in a location so obviously representative of the country's history. This paper is written by Barbara Love.

The God of Small Things is the novel's most visible repeated motif. Beginning with the title, Roy hints at the meaning in these words throughout the story. Little by little it becomes apparent that Velutha is the God of Small Things. Ammu has a dream that includes herself and a man on a bizarre stage before an indifferent audience. As she wakes she realizes the man is Velutha and Velutha is the God of Small Things. They are acting out their story in front of the indifferent audience of fated history. The narrator repeatedly alludes to him, "The God of Loss. The God of Small Things. He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors"(250). This is Velutha's life. Because he is untouchable he counts for nothing. Nothing he does matters. When something important, wonderful, comes into his life, comes to him and Ammu together, "instinctively they stuck to the Small Things"(320). There could be no big things in their lives, no future, no plans. Big things bring with them loss. Because he breaks the Love Laws, because he crosses the line between small things and big things, because he is part of "when history slipped up"(314), the ultimate loss comes to Velutha. Their involvement with this God of Small Things, this God of Loss, brings loss into the life of Ammu, and into the lives of the two-egg twins Estha and Rahel. Their loss is inextricably tied to the collective history of their society's loss. In an interview for "The Progressive" in early spring 2001, Roy said, "The God of Small Things is a book where you connect the very smallest things to the very biggest: whether it's the dent that a baby spider makes on the surface of water or the quality of moonlight on a river or how history and politics intrude into your life, your house, your bedroom"(Barsamian 35). Her book magnificently demonstrates the interrelated history of loss that comes to a people bound by their history's small things.

Works Cited

Barsamian, David. "Arundhati Roy." The Progressive 65(April 2001): 33-9.
Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. New York : Random House, 1998.