Review: The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

“A novel of real ambition must invent its own language, and this one does," John Updike in The New Yorker

You read it and you see Kerala. See the culture of lower caste Hindus and Anglo Indians. You hear the sounds of the ocean and backwaters. I know most of us bibliophiles have read this gem. Please share your thoughts with me.

If you ever read poetry in prose … You know what I mean. This is once such book which transports you to the backwaters of Kerala and let you see it in all its beauty and ugliness.

I didn’t know what fraternal twins were. I am sure you wise people already know. This is story of two fraternal twin brother and sister- Rahel and Esthappen and their mother Ammu. You will be horrified and furious on the unfairness of the tragedy what their life was.

You and me both see and hear what the author sees and hears. But we don’t have the capacity to put it in words. Great authors have that capacity. Arundhati did it marvellously in GoST.

Best part is language. She writes prose but in a poetic language. She plays with words like little children play with toys. She is genius of word play.

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”

Is sex outside marriage is always bad or is it a protest against the oppressive societal norms and miserable life circumstances? People involved in illicit sex know deep down that it is wrong socially but deep down they feel it is right.

"The scurrying, hurrying, boatworld was already gone. The White termites on their way to work. The White ladybirds on their way home. The White beetles burrowing away from the light The White grasshoppers with whitewood violins. The sad white music.

All gone.

Leaving a boat-shaped patch of bare dry earth, cleared and ready for love. As though Esthappen and Rahel had prepared the ground for them. Willed this to happen. The twin midwives of Ammu’s dream.

Ammu, naked now, crouched over Velutha, her mouth on his. He drew her hair around them like a tent. Like her children did when they wanted to exclude the outside world. She slid further down, introducing herself to the rest of him. His neck. His nipples. His chocolate stomach. She sipped the last of the river from the hollow of his navel. She pressed the heat of his erection against her eyelids. She tasted him, salty in her mouth. He sat up and drew her back to him. She felt his belly tighten under her, hard as a board. She felt her wetness slipping on his skin. He took her nipple in his mouth and cradled her other breast in his callused palm. Velvet gloved in sandpaper. At the moment that she guided him into her, she caught a passing glimpse of his youth, his youngness, the wonder in his eyes at the secret he had unearthed and she smiled down at him as though he was her child. Once he was inside her, fear was derailed and biology took over. The cost of living climbed to unaffordable heights; though later Baby Kochamma would say it was a Small Price to Pay. Was it? Two lives. Two children’s childhoods. And a history lesson for future offenders. Clouded eyes held clouded eyes in a steady gaze and a luminous woman opened herself to a luminous man. She was as wide and deep as a river in spate. He sailed on her waters. She could feel him moving deeper and deeper into her. Frantic. Frenzied. Asking to be let in further. Further. Stopped only by the shape of her. The shape of him. And when he was refused, when he had touched the deepest depths of her, with a sobbing, shuddering sigh, he drowned. She lay against him. Their bodies slick with sweat. She felt his body drop away from her. His breath become more regular. She saw his eyes clear. He stroked her hair, sensing that the knot that had eased in him was still tight and quivering in her. Gently he turned her over on her back. He wiped the sweat and grit from her with his wet cloth.



He lay over her, careful not to put his weight on her. Small stones pressed into the skin of his forearm. He kissed her eyes. Her ears. Her breasts. Her belly. Her seven silver stretchmarks from her twins. The line of down that led from her navel to her dark triangle, that told him where she wanted him to go. The inside of her legs, where her skin was softest. Then carpenter’s hands lifted her hips and an untouchable tongue touched the innermost part of her. Drank long and deep from the bowl of her. She danced for him. On that boat-shaped piece of earth. She lived. He held her against him, resting his back against the mangosteen tree, while she cried and laughed at once. Then, for what seemed like an eternity, but was really no more than five minutes, she slept leaning against him, her back against his chest.

Seven years of oblivion lifted off her and flew into the shadows on weighty, quaking wings. Like a dull, steel peahen. And on Ammu’s Road (to Age and Death) a small, sunny meadow appeared. Copper grass spangled with blue butterflies. Beyond it, an abyss.

Slowly the terror seeped back into him. At what he had done.

At what he knew he would do again.

And again.

She woke to the sound of his heart knocking against his chest. As though it was searching for a way out. For that movable rib. A secret sliding-folding panel. His arms were still around her, she could feel the muscles move while his hands played with a dry palm frond. Ammu smiled to herself in the dark, thinking how much she loved his arms—the shape and strength of them, how safe she felt resting in them when actually it was the most dangerous place she could be. He folded his fear into a perfect rose. He held it out in the palm of his hand. She took it from him and put it in her hair. She moved closer, wanting to be within him, to touch more of him. He gathered her into the cave of his body. A breeze lifted off the river and cooled their warm bodies. It was a little cold. A little wet. A little quiet. The Air. But what was there to say?

An hour later Ammu disengaged herself gently…

I have to go.


Did you ever wonder what makes the Ramayana and Mahabharat great stories of all time? Why we can't get enough of these. Arundhati answers it:-

“...the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.”

A very strong statement on caste system, hypocrisy of Indian society, misogynistic attitude. A must read for every Indian and all others too.

In the words of Arundhati :-

"To me the god of small things is the inversion of God. God's a big thing and God's in control. The god of small things...whether it's the way the children see things or whether it's the insect life in the book, or the fish or the stars - there is a not accepting of what we think of as adult boundaries. This small activity that goes on is the under life of the book. All sorts of boundaries are transgressed upon. At the end of the first chapter I say little events and ordinary things are just smashed and reconstituted, imbued with new meaning to become the bleached bones of the story. It's a story that examines things very closely but also from a very, very distant point, almost from geological time and you look at it and see a pattern there. A pattern...of how in these small events and in these small lives the world intrudes. And because of this, because of people being unprotected.. the world and the social machine intrudes into the smallest, deepest core of their being and changes their life." - Arundhati Roy

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