CHAPTER - IV

THE GOD OF SMALL THINGS

Roy’s book is the only one I can think of among Indian novels in English

which can be comprehensively described as a protest novel. It is all about

atrocities against minorities, Small Things: children and youth, women

and untouchables.

– Ranga Rao

A remarkable aspect of postcolonial writing in English has been the pre-

occupation with the issues of women and downtrodden, both marginalized social groups

in the Third World countries. Both male and female writers have highlighted the

predicament of women and backward classes in conservative and tradition-bound

societies where both are treated as inferior and subjugated groups in hierarchical social

structure. Nuruddin Farah and Buchi Emecheta, for instance, have chronicled the

women’s experiences—the gender politics and sexual oppression—in the African

diaspora. During the last two decades some distinguished Indian English authors have

brought alive the underworld of Indian women’s lives. Novelists like Shashi Deshpande

(The Dark Holds No Terrors, If I Die Today and That Long Silence) and Githa Hariharan

(The Thousand Faces of Night and The Art of Dying) have focussed the problems of

women and underdogs who suffer from the worst sort of marginalization in the orthodox

and highly stratified Indian society. They have broken the ‘long silence’ which enwraps

one half of the society, and depicted the plight of women who are forced to accept the

doormat status and compelled to walk a tightrope for some means of survival. They have

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artistically challenged, and stressed the need for changing, the antiquated social laws

which have dictated human relationships from the magisterial days of Manu. In A Fine

Balance, Rohinton Mistry has highlighted the painful struggle of Indian untouchables for

survival in a hostile and caste-ridden society.

During the last decade of the twentieth century, some brilliant young women

writers in India have written much about their cause. As Mulk Raj Anand with his novel

Untouchable made a protest against the tradition that deprived many people of their

rights of legitimate living, women writers like Tasleema Nasreen and Githa Hariharan

have written remarkable novels upholding the very cause of women, the weaker section

of the society as understood so far. Tasleema Nasreen’s novel Lajja fiercely condemns

the oppression nurtured by the patriarchal ideology, while Githa Hariharan’s The

Thousand Faces of Night (1992) explores and rejects the man-made barriers, tradition,

male domination and male superiority. Similarly, in her first and famous novel The God

of Small Things, Arundhati Roy has criticised both casteism of Hindu Society and male

superiority in different walks of Indian life. In the words of Rama Kundu, ‘Roy tries to

sensitize this society to the cruelty of some of its traditions by artistically challenging

certain common age-old complacently held but dehumanizing social taboos. She also

shows how the women and the untouchable are both treated as impersonal and

subjugative objects (not decisive subjects) in this social structure: how things are decided

for both by the patriarchal ideology of an ancient culture which also cultivates the

hierarchal snobbery and violence of the ‘Touchables’ towards the ‘Untouchables’.

According to this critic, ‘Roy exposes the ugliness of the society by bringing two children

to react to it, since children are as yet uncorrupted and unwrapped by rigid social attitudes

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and can bring their pure response, however pained to an issue or an event; the children’s

pain serves as a powerful language of rejection of this system’(Patil 57).

Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things is a polysemic novel which can be

interpreted at several levels. It may be said that the novel is a satire on politics attacking

specifically the Communist establishment. It may be treated as a family saga narrating the

story of four generations of a Christian family. It may also be treated as a novel having

religious overtones: One may also call it a protest novel which is subversive and taboo-

breaking. It may also be treated as a love story with a tragic end. The novel gives good

dividends if studied from the viewpoint of childhood experience. In terms of stylistic

experimentation, it is the boldest novel of the Nineties as The Midnight's Children was of

the Eighties.

The God of Small Things throws light upon hierarchical structures of power, and

oppression at various levels in patriarchal societies. Arundhati Roy explores how these

differences of caste, class, gender,’ race, function through social institutions and the way

they affect human interactions and relationships. The novel really created a stir when it

first appeared and when it specially fetched the prestigious Booker Prize for literature.

The theme of the novel, indeed, touched the hearts of all critics across the world while its

language annoyed their concept of standards. However, like Mulk Raj Anand in his

Untouchable, Arundhati Roy’s fresh perspectives on an age-old tradition created waves

as rebellion against the social injustice meted out both to the downtrodden and to the

women. In this way, Roy using her lively original language, sensitive poetic style, deep

feelings, shocking emotions and a novel approach, has really achieved a mark of

eminence in helping us to overcome ‘man’s inhumanity to man’.

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The God of Small Things enacts the external drama of confrontation between the

powerful and the powerless. The author has desisted from making a woman’s

powerlessness as the central crisis. Both, men and women are projected as a victim or a

tyrant. It must be admitted that a women’s loss of power is treated very sympathetically,

and yet, there is no obsession with women’s ineffectual condition in society. The

psychological, economic and social problems that play a major role in the novel,

devastate men and woman alike.

It is a modern novel in its theme and the treatment of the theme, a postmodern

novel in its knotting and knitting of narrative threads, manipulation of expressive literary

forms and creative ’play’ with words, a feminist novel in the pity and terror that it evokes

for the condition of women in a particular cultural milieu, a political novel in its criticism

of the hypocrisy of the communist party, an autobiographical novel in the way the facts

of the author’s life have been distilled into a verbal artifact and so on. In fact the novel is

eminently amenable to multiple approaches and interpretations.

In The God of Small Things Arundhati Roy attempts to sensitize the male-

chauvinist and extremely traditional society to the cruelty of its treatment of women and

lowcaste people and register her protest against its dehumanizing taboos which thwart

individual’s dreams, longings and claims for justice and respectability. She brings a

freshness of imagination and linguistic inventiveness to bear on a long-abiding social ill

which our social reformers had stigmatized as the greatest blot on Indian culture, and

centuries of exploitation and suffering that have been the lot of Indian women and

untouchables. In his classic human document, Untouchable, Mulk Raj Anand had

denounced the complacent attitude of caste Hindus to the horror and ugliness of their

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unreasonable social customs and the suffering and exploitation of the untouchables who

have been driven to the periphery of the social structure and denied any human rights. By

presenting two innocent children as responders to the tragedy resulting from the rigidity

of petrified social mores nurtured by the patriarchal ideology of a caste-based culture that

cultivates snobbery and violence to maintain social order, Arundhati Roy condemns and

rejects the tyranny of this tradition for a story of her own. The anguish of the guilt-

stricken and grief-crazed children who are traumatized by the ‘Terror’ perpetuated by the

adult world serves as a powerful language of rejection of this authoritarian system that

has no place in it for dissent and for self-asserting individuals.

The God of Small Things is the story of lives caught in the web of social

relationships and the compulsions of history. The Ipes of Ayemenem are a large family of

caste Christians who in the criss-cross of their public and private interactions, reveal on

the one hand, the dynamics of the political and patriarchal, the economic and religious

hierarchies of power that constitute society, and on the other, the defined, delimited roles

of the individuals that constitute these hierarchies. The architectonic tension in the novel

builds along the interface between these two, showing up in the process, antagonisms

inherent in the very constitution of the two forces. The one cannot exist without the other,

yet the two are incompatible to a large extent.

Arundhati Roy through the means of storytelling questions the system of powers

and attempts to change it through the power embodied in literature. Kate Millet has

pointed out: ‘when a system of power is thoroughly in command, it has scarcely a need to

speak itself aloud when its working is exposed and questioned it becomes not only

subjected to discussion, but even to change’. It is very interesting to note that in the text

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Roy has carried out covertly the emasculation of men by women and also emasculation of

woman but not in the conventional derogatory sense. Her women learn to think and act

independently and take on the role of protector but in the process do not sacrifice their

feminine qualities.

One of the dominant socio-political concerns in Arundhati’s novel is the rigid

caste-structure to be seen in India. This caste-oriented rigidity sometimes plays havoc

with the innumerable innocent lives. The ‘bigness’ of ‘big things’ and ‘big people’ should

be read in their generous and compassionate understanding of ‘small things’ and ‘small

people’. Unfortunately, in the present-day Indian society, this is not to be, and the

inevitable consequence is tragic and claustrophobic. The weaker sections of our society—

like the paravans. The scheduled castes and the have-nots—inescapably suffer a good

deal in the process of caste-stratifications.

Typical themes in Indian fiction are said to be “the caste system, social attitude,

social and religious taboos, superstitions, notions superiority and inferiority”. The God of

Small Things deals with most of the mentioned themes along with the most elemental of

human emotions, i.e., love. It is true, the story of love is never complete; recounted many

times, it has never been told to the end because it has been, as Herman Melville says, “the

endless flowing river in the cave of man”. Arundhati Roy links her narrative of the

destinies of small things and their small gods caught in ‘a hopelessly practical world’ (34)

to the all-time epic stories that theme this conflict between self and society and between

the dispossessed individual and the empowered representatives of social hegemony. The

repeated association of river and sea, symbols of the eternal flow of life, with the

Ayemenem house and its inmates are significant from this point of view. All this lifts the

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characters above the smallness of their canvas and makes them representatives in the

eternal drama of the confrontation between the individual's desire and dignity and the

dominating structures of society. The business of art—that of lifting the common into the

uncommon, and the commonplace into the beautiful, of sculpting the mundane into the

felt truth of universal experience, is thus accomplished.

The novel is set in Ayemenem, a small village in Kerala. The plot and theme as it

unfolds with the stories of the characters specially Velutha, Ammu, Baby Kochamma,

Chacko and of course the unforgettable twins Rahel and Estha and the guest of special

honour Sophie Mol, is a microscopic representation of the macroscopic world. No doubt

certain incidents, topographical descriptions, reactions are typically Indian, but in general

the class conflict, gender bias, the story of love and hate, jealousy have universal

application.

There are three generations of men and women in the world created by Arundhati

Roy in her debut novel The God of Small Things. Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan

represent the generation born in pre-Independence Kerala. Mammachi and Pappachi also

belong to the same generation. They have sometimes impulses and urges that defy the

age-old norms of patriarchy but they are not able to make a decisive choice and have their

way in a largely traditional society. Margaret Kochamma and Ammu represent the

intermediate generation that defies the dominate sexual norms of the time and the latter in

particular, pays a heavy price for doing so. Rahel and Estha represent the contemporary

generation born in post-Independence Indian that doesn’t seem to have any feudal,

patriarchal hang-over and lives a life free from inhibitions and repressions of Syrian

Christians in Kerala.

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Arundhati Roy depicts Ayemenem, where the moss green Meenachal river flows,

through the town and the canals rowed by women and children on their way to market,

and forms a backdrop which is far removed from the tumultuous happenings of other

modern novels. Her references to food, clothing, landscape, political climate at that time,

all references to the region are exploited for non-regional purposes. It is out of this adroit

use of regional touches that Roy creates a universal story of love and tragedy told through

the eyes of seven year old twins. The style is one of an extremely self conscious person

who has extraordinary control over it and the language she uses is full of literary

allusions. Roy’s humour and feel for the language brings out the irony and pathos in the

novel. She twists the language to suit her own story telling. She has invented a new idiom

and vocabulary to tell the story of Mammachi, Sophie Mol, Estha, Rahel, Ammu and

Velutha.

The Syrian Christians, who populate the region of Ayemenem and Kottayam

found quite an unlikely ally in their quest for the English language and the Empire. The

community tried to master the language and send its children to proper English colleges

in Chennai-like the characters in the book. All this finds resonance in the book, which

caricatures the western world her characters inhabited. The Imperial entomologist, the

Rhodes Scholar, Elvis records, the Plymouth car, playing Handel’s water music on the

violin were all very much part of that western world view of the community. The novelist

employs a “circuitous narrative so that events emerge elliptically and out of chronological

sequence. She cannily uses cinematic techniques- time, shifts, endless fast forwards and

reversals, rapid editing-simultaneously to accelerate and delay the coming disaster”

(Cowley 28).

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Apart from the narrative style and language, she shows tremendous

skill in portraying the oppression of characters at different levels of society. She

introduces the power structure in society and shows how the more powerful victimise the

less powerful as there is gender oppression, oppression of the lower caste, subjugation of

children, police atrocity, and the hypocrite Marxist leader Mr. Pillai who too doesn't

leave the opportunity to oppress anybody for personal gains. It is also ironical that the

Church makes a distinction between lower caste and upper caste. When Ammu marries

outside her caste, she is an outcaste unaccepted by the Syrian Christians. She doesn’t

even get a proper burial after her death. It is also ironical to see Mr. Pillai using Marxism

for personal gains rather than for poor labourers or the lower caste. Mr. Pillai refuses to

help Velutha when the latter needs his help saying “Party was not constituted to support

workers’ indiscipline in their private life” (287). Marxism which was committed to the

eradication of caste system by providing equal status to the labourers in the society is

heard echoing Mr. Pillai’s words that it couldn't fight for it was Velutha’s personal

matter. Such a discrepancy in Mr. Pillai’s acts and ideals brings out the hypocrisy of such

Marxists.

The structure of society presented in The God of Small Things is apparently

patriarchal and man is the controller of the sexual, economic, political and physical

power. The power of the husband is not questioned by Mammachi. For her, patriarchy

creates an “enclosure through marriage.” “A desire for equity in marriage” account for

the desire for equity in power sharing. Unfortunately a woman is generally truncated,

maimed and enfeebled by the institution of marriage. Pappachi enjoys thrashing his wife

either with brass vase or his “ivory handled riding crop” (181). Mammachi’s physical

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vulnerability and Pappachi’s supremacy are established in a conventional manner but

Mammachi’s dogged determination to continue the activities of the pickle factory,

suggests her rebellion against total subordination. Her entry into the business world, the

man’s world forbidden for woman, is a clear indication of the power she enjoys.

Pappachi’s futile attempts to undermine her image of a loving dutiful wife by sewing

shirt buttons in presence of visitors are a poly often used by an authority to condemn a

woman. Arundhati Roy rejects these customary methods but through an alternate

possibility points out the inevitability of the situation. Mammachi’s physical abuse is

stopped by Chacko’s superior physical power. One day “he twisted his father’s hand” and

said, “I never want this to happen again” (48). A woman always needs a protector: father,

husband, son. This idea returns us to the tenets of Manusmriti. Chacko becomes his

mother’s saviour in one way but in another, he joins the team of exploiters when he

transfers the ownership of the pickle factory to his name. He turns the venture into a

‘partnership’ and his “mother is informed that she was the sleeping partner” (57). He

begins to refer to it as “my factory” (57). Mammachi despite her initial hard work, is

reverted to the status of “economically mute”. Mammachi’s and Ammu’s loss of power is

indicated very definitely but Pappachi’s and Chacko’s metaphorical impotency also is

insinuated very cleverly. The Oxford educated Rhodes scholar Chacko is discarded by his

English wife for a ‘better man’. ‘His blue-eyed daughter refuses to accept him as her

father. She insists “Joe’s my dad” (151). Chacko’s failure to manage the pickle factory

profitably also undermines the role of the powerful bread earner. Pappachi’s loss of

authority over his wife, son, daughter with pension and age is total.

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It is tempting to see The God of Small Things as a novel which deals with,

subaltern groups and individuals, for set in the centre of the narrative are the oppressed

and marginalized members, namely a confined and constricted woman possessed by her

own private aches and pains, her unprotected children, and a low-class carpenter, against

institutional domination and power under various guises. A sense of self emerges from

the experiences of exploitation, marginalization and denial. Analogously, Roy’s

narrative, confronting a facelessness the dominant culture in Ayemenem threatens to

impose on the subaltern groups, forges out of stultifying social strictures a voice and

identity, counteracting the disempowerment of the ages, as it were. Throughout, Roy’s

novel demonstrates its concern with linguistic expression which shapes the telling of the

story. Along with a pattern of sophisticated linguistic play that is not simply play, there is

a generic blurring (history and fiction), stylistic crossing and narrative variation. The

aesthetic play of the novel counterbalances the hegemonic constraints and filters the

marginalized discourse, making it significantly subversive. The novel retraces the distinct

threads of the historically marginal that weave Kerala’s multicultural society. The story

of Ammu’s marginalization and Velutha’s silence is premised on the absence of power,

the absence of self-determination. The action of the novel incorporates these socio-

historical realities. Ammu walks out on the incapacitating practices that Mammachi and

Baby Kochamma have had to learn to survive in the Ayemenem household. The tyranny

of history has choked the channels of charitable exchange. The language play constructs

and dissolves the ossified, rigid ideological structures that have historically hemmed in

the “Small” victims, and sustained marginalization.

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May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month… But by early June the

south-west monsoon breaks… It was raining when Rahel came back to

Ayemenem… The old house on the hill wore its steep, gabled roof pulled

over its ears like a low hat. The walls, streaked with moss, had grown soft,

and bulged a little with dampness that seeped up from the ground. The

wild, overgrown garden was full of the whisper and scurry of small lives.

In the undergrowth a rat snake rubbed itself against a glistening

stone…The house itself looked empty. The doors and windows were

locked. The front verandah bare. Unfurnished. But the sky blue Plymouth

with chrome tailfins was still parked outside, and inside, Baby Kochamma

was still alive (1-2).

This is how Arundhati Roy begins to unfold the narrative of The God of Small

Things. Typical though the description of the weather is of Kerala, in the novel, it serves

the function of a metaphor of overgrowth, of over-ripeness which leads to decay and

degeneration. Moreover, the description also serves as a reflection of the degeneration

that has seeped into the Ayemenem House both with regard to its physical structure as

well as the norms and values by which its members have lived. Rahel has come back to

Ayemenem to see her brother Estha. She is thirty now-as old as her mother Ammu was

when she died. With economy of words and concentration of meaning so characteristic of

her narrative style, Roy evokes a picture of tragic loss at the heart of the House.

The narrative focuses mainly on the happenings in Ayemenem House which,

when the novel begins, is in a state of desolation and emptiness. The symbolic

significance of the degeneration that has crept into the House can hardly be missed. The

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world of Nature reflects the decay that has overtaken the House. The humid days of the

month of May, the shrinking over-ripe fruit, the dissolute blue-bottles humming

vacuously in the fruity air are all part of that over-ripeness and rot which descends on the

old empty house on the hill with its moss and dampness and its wild overgrown garden,

(emphasis added) Significantly, the eighty-three years old Baby Kochamma whose

viciousness has been the cause of a great deal of the torment and oppression of Ammu-

Estha-Rahel and Velutha is still alive.

Another dominant theme that gets focus in the novel is environmental problems.

E.M. Forster who is often referred to as a reluctant traditionalist has admitted “oh dear,

yes – the novel tells a story”. But felt that its most fundamental aspect “could be

something different – melody, or perception of the truth…” (Forster 45). What is

attempted in the present novel is a truthful account of the ills of the society.

The first reference to environmental problems we get in the very first chapter of

the novel. Estha used to walk “along the river that smelled of shit, and pesticides bought

with World Bank loans. Most of the fish had died. The ones that survived suffered from

fin-rot and had broken out in boils” (13). The novelist is here critical of the hands behind

polluting the river and the policy of the government buying pesticides with World Bank,

both of which will ultimately contribute in making the life of the people miserable.

As is well known, the patriarchal structure with its resulting class and gender

hierarchy is a more or less universal phenomenon, which cuts across all nations, religions

and races. However, in India, a further dimension was added to it with the origination of

the caste system about 2,500 years ago. This system which is an integral part of

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Hinduism, divides the population into four major groups. The Brahmins, (Priestly caste)

at the top, followed by the Kshatriya (warrior caste), then the Vaishya (commoners,

usually known as trading and artisan castes), and at the bottom the Sudra (agricultural

labourers). Some of whom are beyond the pale of caste and are known as untouchables.

The caste system is not only structural, but has a cultural dimension as well. At the

structural level it consists of a hierarchy of in-marrying groups, organized into hereditary

occupations. As a cultural system it comprises belief in karma (that the circumstances of

birth depend on action in one’s previous life), “commitment to caste occupation and

lifestyle, belief in the hereditary transmission of psychological traits associated with

occupation, tolerance of distinct lifestyles for other castes, and a belief in a hierarchy of

value along a scale of purity and pollution. In the scale of purity and pollutions, Brahmins

are generally, but not always, the purest and Sudras the most polluted”. Thus, as against a

“class” society which is characterized by personal and familial mobility, in a social

structure based on the caste system, birth has a lethal effect on the life chances of an

individual as it determines everything. Jason Cowley has pointed out: In his write up why

we chose Arundhati, Jason Cowley has pointed out:

a basic difference between Arundhati Roy and Salman Rushdie. While

Salman Rushdie regards India as an exotic and fabulous land, Arundhati

Roy lays stress on the fact that the life that is recreated so vividly and

perhaps flamboyantly in The God of Small Things is, at bottom, the

ordinary life of men, women and children living in a village where

everyone seems to know everyone and consequently no one can be

ignored. What Arundhati Roy has created in The God of Small Things is

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the flux of life in a small community in Kerala where personal relations

are intense and the anonymity and facelessness of a megapolis is just not

possible. Her mode of writing is closer to Joyce Carol Oates’s neo-

realism rather than Salman Rushdie’s magic realism (Singh 68-69).

It is a geographical fact that Ayemenem, Kottayam and its surrounding regions

are inhabited by Syrian Christians in large numbers. The community adapts to English

Language in a natural manner even while taking pride in its moral standards. The

Ayemenem family of the novel too testifies to this fact. Having been a part and parcel of

the milieu, culture and ethos of this area, Arundhati Roy is the most qualified person to

probe into the human predicament of this region.

The narrative unravels through the eyes of the seven-years-old Rahel, one of the

twins of Ammu, the central character. Obviously, this particular technique has been

employed for two reasons. Firstly, it adds credibility to the details as Rahel, along with

her twin brother, Estha, has been an active participant in the fictional drama. Secondly,

since most of the story relates to her childhood, she presents an honest and uncorrupt

view of the events.

The primary concern of the book is human relationship, particularly man-woman

relationship. Arundhati Roy presents a tragic vision of life. A close study of the love life

of the characters belonging to the three generations of the Ayemenem House shows that

love which is the founding stone of all other relationships, remains only an unfulfilled

dream or just a fleeting experience for most of them. Familial ethic remains in conflict

with the emotional urges of the individual. Marriage which seals the bond of love turns

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out to be a social obligation which has to be lived through for the generation which vows

by the family code. However, the succeeding generation is governed by no such rigid

ethical code and finds a loveless marriage a burden fit to be shrugged off. The trend

continues in the third generation when marriage breaks off even before it develops into a

family.

The novelist draws special attention to the fact that family which swears by male

supremacy and which entrenches its familial code in the past in bound to come to woe

sooner or later. The sacred façade of marriage either lacks harmony or comes crumbling

down in such an imbalanced familial set-up. The inhuman treatment meted out to Ammu

testified to the truth that inflexible ethical values which deprive the self of its autonomy,

it’s longing for happiness result in tragedy. The Ayemenem House is a unique house. It

has “Love Laws [that] lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much” (177).

It’s unique character reflects in the very structure:

It was a grand old house, the Ayemenem House, but aloof- looking .As

though it had little to do with the people that lived in it. Like an old man

with rheumy eyes watching children play, seeing only transience in their

shrill elation and their whole- hearted commit- of life (165).

We are given only a brief glimpse into the marital life of John Ipe. The focus

shifts to Baby Kochamma and Pappachi, the two out of the seven children of John Ipe.

These two comprise the first generation which finds elaborate reference in the novel. The

book can be a fertile ground for feminist critics as it amply demonstrates that women did

not merit much freedom in the family code of the Ayemenem House. Male dominance in

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family matters stifled their voice even in personal matters like marriage. This is the

reason why Baby Kochamma had to live the life of a spinster even though she secretly

doted on Father Mulligan. Her clandestine love for the priest continues even after she

achieves the status of a grandmother. Perhaps it is her spinsterhood or unfulfilled

yearning for love that accounts for her treacherous nature.

However, marriages too do not ensure happiness in Ayemenem household.

Respectable family history coupled with high social position remains comfortably

divorced from male chauvinism. The book recounts in detail the relationship of Pappachi

with Mammachi, his wife. Although it is a marriage between homogeneous groups, the

relationship is devoid of love, and harmony remains but an illusion for the family. Lack

of love between married partners cuts deep down into the psyche of the children. Ammu,

Pappachi’s daughter recollects with dread her childhood days in Delhi, where her

entomologist father used to act like a bully:

In her growing years, Ammu had watched her father weave his hideous

web. He was charming and urbane with visitors, and stopped just short of

fawning on them if they happened to be white. He donated money to

orphanages and leprosy clinics. He worked hard on his public profile as a

sophisticated, generous, moral man. But alone with his wife and children

he turned into a monstrous, suspicious bully, with a streak of vicious

cunning. They were beaten, humiliated and then made to suffer the envy

of friends and relations (180).

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One obviously notices a streak of schizophrenia in Pappachi. He puts up the show

of decency and sophistication to demonstrate his male ego but his bourgeois mentality

shows up when he tyrannizes his wife and child: “not content with having beaten his wife

and daughter, he tore down curtains, kicked furniture and smashed a table lamp” (181).

If man- woman relationship exhibits its worst form in the first generation,

happiness eludes the characters in the succeeding generations too. Even though male

chauvinism gives way to Marxism, love fails to bloom delineates slight change in the

outlook when the inmates do not abide by the family code of marrying in the same

community. By depicting the shocking relationship between Pappachi and Mammachi

Arundhati Roy drives home the point that children brought up in such a vicious

environment crave for escape, an escape which might eventually lead them to happiness.

Arundhati Roy clearly points out in her only novel the fatal effects of massive

industrialization. The novel is a quest for truth in a corrupted, degenerated world where

capitalism has taken shape in the form of globalization. The author overtly criticizes how

hypocrisy and longing for power destroy the people who do not submit to the established

and dominant norms and, instead, live in accordance with nature. Roy, by telling personal

stories, questions the power structures and attempts to charge them through the power

embodied in literature.

Patriarchy is the way that, power best functions and works on women children

and the powerless. To begin with the family tree Rev. Fr. John Ipe had two children,

Baby Kochamma and Pappachi, a “jealous Man” (47). Baby Kochamma decides to

remain unmarried; remaining faithful to her love for father Mulligan and Pappachi

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marries Mammachi. Pappachi was an extremely jealous husband and couldn't tolerate the

success of his wife, be it with the violin or the pickle factory. When Mammachi's violin

teacher Launsky Tieffenthal, made the mistake of telling him that his wife was

exceptionally talented and had great potential for a concert, her lessons were abruptly

discontinued. He used to beat his wife regularly and when Ammu grew up she became a

witness and also a target of such beatings. She even started disregarding the father bear

mother bear stories, she was given to read for, in her version, father Bear beat mother

Bear with brass vases. Mother Bear suffered those beatings with mute resignation (180).

Both the mother and child had spent several nights out of the house enduring the

cold winter of Delhi. Not content with this entire he even destroyed the furniture, the

pinking shears of Mammachi, shredded Ammu’s new gumboots too. But as Ammu grew

older she learnt to live with this “cold calculating cruelty” (181). Ammu was not even

sent to school for further studies as she was a girl child and Chacko was sent to Oxford

for his studies.

After Pappachi’s retirement, Mammachi had started making pickles commercially

when they came to live in Ayemenem. Pappachi resented even this for the attention his

wife had suddenly started getting. He realized with a shock that he was an old man when

his wife was still in her prime. “Every night he beat her with a brass flower vase. The

beatings weren’t new. What was new was only the frequency with which they took place.

One night Pappachi broke the bow of Mammachi’s violin and threw it in the river” (47-

48).

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Gender, in our patriarchal society, plays a very important role in discriminating

between the powerful and the powerless. According to the ideology of male superiority

and female inferiority, all men are empowered to exercise “right” over all women.

Though Mammachi belongs to the upper class she has no right whatsoever in her

husband’s family. She is beaten and ill-treated.

Pappachi does everything to assert his manliness. His violence, creating fear in his

subjects, serves as a manifestation of his frustration. When Mammachi starts pickle

making, he does not help her though she is turning blind and he himself has retired:

He had always been a jealous man, so he greatly resented the attention his

wife was suddenly getting… In the evenings, when the new visitors were

expected, he would sit on the verandah and sew buttons that weren’t

missing onto his shirts, to create the impression that Mammachi neglected

him. To some small degree he did succeed in further corroding

Ayemenem’s view of working wives (47-48).

But after Chacko’s arrival, Chacko “caught Pappachi’s vase hand and twisted it

around his back” (48). And then Pappachi never touched and talked to Mammachi again.

He never spoke to her. And if he needed something, he used either Kochu Maria or Baby

Kochamma as intermediaries. He had other ways of insulting his wife also. He never

allowed Mammachi or anybody of the family for that matter, to sit in his car. But now

Pappachi was replaced by Chacko in Mammachi’s life for, the day that Chacko prevented

Pappachi from beating her.., “Mammachi packed her wifely luggage and committed it to

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Chacko’s care. From then onwards he became the repository of all her womanly feelings.

Her man, her only Love” (168).

Mammachi, a woman after remaining subjugated to her husband for years would

now remain subjugated to her son. Henceforth Chacko would be the head of the family in

this powerful patriarchal structure. Now, Mammachi, Ammu and Chacko, all three

worked hard in the factory but Ammu never had claim on the property as she was the

daughter and Chacko too always referred to it as “My factory, My pineapples, My

pickles” (57). Ammu says:

... he can’t help having a Man’s needs she said primly.... Neither

Mammachi nor Baby Kochamma saw any contradiction between

Chacko’s Marxist mind and feudal libido Mammachi had a separate

entrance built for Chacko’s room..., so that the objects of his ‘Needs’

wouldn’t have to go traipsing through the house (168-69).

All this was allowed because Chacko had a Man’s power and none could oppose

it. The women too were victims of his “feudal libido” because he exercised the

employer’s power and a man’s power. They suffered silently because he was a man of

upper caste and they needed money for their young children and old parents. Though

Mammachi and Baby Kochamma approved of this arrangement, on learning of Ammu’s

love for Velutha, Mammachi’s rage developed into cold contempt for her daughter:

Her tolerance of “Men’s Needs’ as far as her son was concerned, became

the fuel for her unmanageable fury at her daughter. She had defiled

generations of breeding, (The Little Blessed one, blessed personally by the

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Patriarch of Antioch, an imperial entomologist, a Rhodes scholar for

Oxford) and brought the family to its knees (258).

These women (Mammachi and Baby Kochamma) are powerless in the patriarchal

set up but are powerful when it comes to oppressing a woman, even their daughter. This

is the paradox of the power struggle within Patriarchy. The forces of power vie for

control over the powerless. These same women become powerful even when they decide

that they have to get Velutha to leave Ayemenem before Chacko returns. Baby

Kochamma becomes all powerful when she speaks lies before the Inspector, not for

Ammu’s sake but to contain the scandal and salvage the family reputation in Inspector

Mathew’s eyes. She makes up a story and accuses Velutha of rape. And on being

threatened by Inspector Mathew she emerges as a great manipulator even with the twins

to save herself. She tricks the twins into telling a lie by convincing the latter that would

save them and their Ammu. The twins had to make a choice.

Mammachi ran her business successfully, as if it were a big kitchen, until her son

displaced her from the management of the factory and “had it registered as a partnership

and informed Mammachi that she was the sleeping partner” (57). He proceeds to

‘modernize’ – that is, make it into a capitalist enterprise -, and finally he gives it a name.

Roy emphasizes the fact that when Chacko invested in equipment and expanded the

labour force there was a financial slide thanks to extravagant bank loans, which Chacko

raised by mortgaging the family’s rice fields around the Ayemenem house.

Modernization led the business to bankruptcy, and with this instance, the author

emphasizes how the power of money operates in the factory and how far it was

responsible for the family’s degeneration.

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Patriarchy legitimizes culturally-backed bio-physiological differences between

men and women as the basis of unequal access to resources, opportunities and rewards

and to rights. Mann defines a patriarchal society as follows:

A patriarchal society is one in which power is held by male heads of

households. There is also clear separation between the “public” and the

“private” spheres of life. In the “private” sphere of the household, the

patriarch enjoys arbitrary power over all junior males, all females and all

children. In the “public” sphere, power is shared between male patriarchy

according to whatever other principles of stratification operate. No female

holds any formal public position of economic, ideological, military or

political poser. Indeed, females are not allowed into this “public” realm of

power. Whereas many, perhaps most, men expect to be patriarchs at some

point in their life cycles, no women hold formal power. Within the

household they may influence their male patriarch informally, but this is

their only access to power. Contained within patriarchy are two

fundamental nuclei of stratification: the household/family/linage and the

dominance of the male gender. These coexist in any real society with

social classes and other stratification groups (Mann 137).

Yet another native feature that Roy views with her characteristic irony is male

domination. One aspect of the domination is seen in wife beating, no matter how

educated or uneducated a man is. Pappachi, the imperial entomologist who takes a

diploma course in Vienna and owns a Plymouth caris a regular wife-beater. His wife

Mammachi, suffers his sadistic bent in silence and even cries at his funeral. As Ammu

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her daughter puts it, Mammachi cried not because she loved him, but because she had got

used to him! Ammu suffers likewise at her husband’s hands. He pesters her to humour his

lecherous English boss Hollick for the family’s survival. Ammu tolerates his drunken

violence and post drunken badgering for a while and finally leaves him when the violence

gets directed against the children. The male domination is evident even in the relationship

between Mr. Pillai and his wife kalyana. He calls her ‘edi kalyana,’ which means

approximately “Hey, you!” but she refers to her husband as ‘addeham’ which is a

respectful form of he.

The male domination is prevalent not just in the husband wife relationship but in

the family hierarchy as well Chacko claims ownership of all the property left by Pappachi

while Ammu, Chacko’s sister can make no claims. There is again, a world of difference

in the treatment given to a son and daughter. Both Chacko and Ammu have chosen their

spouses and both have been estranged. Both return to their ancestral home, but Ammu is

considered a liability but Chacko is welcomed and doted upon. He has as many affairs as

he pleases with the girls working in his factory. His mother understands his ‘man’s

needs’ and makes things convenient for him by arranging a special entrance for the girls

and even paying them off. But when Ammu’s affair with Velutha comes to light there is

no question of ‘woman’s needs’.

Though the world has known both patriarchal and matriarchal societies but it is

common knowledge that now matriarchal societies have become almost extinct.

Centuries of experience have made it obvious that patriarchal societies promote the male

at the expense of the female. Consequently, by and large, women have been denied

economic, social and cultural equality the world over.

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Mammachi has been ill-treated by her husband in the past. She has experienced

helplessness as a woman. In spite of this she does not hesitate to punish Ammu and

Velutha. Her attitude towards Velutha is such as one would have towards an animal. She

is surprised at Ammu’s being able to love him. “How could she stand the smell? Haven’t

you notice? They have a particular smell, these Paravans” (257).

Chacko – unlike his sister Ammu – is sent to Oxford to complete his studies.

There he falls in love with Margaret Kochamma, who marries him and soon bears him a

daughter, later to divorce him for an Englishman. Consequently, Chacko returns to India

and gets a job at the Madras Christian College – the reader, then, can immediately notice

a certain contradiction between his communist ideals and his working for an institute

allied to a religious entity. When his father dies, Chacko resigns his job as a lecturer and

leaves for Ayemenem to take over his mother’s business “with his Balliol Oar and his

Pickle Baron dreams” (57). This implies that when a woman becomes a widow, and

consequently loses her husband’s ‘protection’, another male figure – in this case the son –

needs to take over, as if a widowed woman could not run a business by herself. The irony

lies in the fact that she had been doing it on her own very successfully even when her

husband was alive – for which he became violently jealous. It is only when she is

displaced from the business by her son that the factory slides and slumps.

The very word ‘Paradise’ in the name of the factory is quite ironic, as it denotes

an idyllic place. Actually it was Chacko and Pillai who gave a name to the factory, as

originally Mammachi’s factory had a name: “Everybody just referred to her pickles and

jams as Sosha’s Tender Mango or Sosha’s Banana Jam” (57-8). Not only is Mammachi

displaced from the business of the name. Chacko instead discusses it with Comrade

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K.N.M. Pillai going from the foreignness of ‘Zeus Pickles & Preserves’ to the localism

‘Parashuram Pickles’. Both names were vetoed for its lack of relevance to the town. So,

ultimately, ‘Paradise Pickles & Preserves’ was the final choice. ‘Paradise’ implies that

industrialization and modernization are supposed to transform the state into a paradise.

However, the factory is not such a paradise for the powerless; in fact, it is the setting of

oppression and exploitation as much for women as for Dalits. The irony lies in the fact

that the feudal self-proclaimed owner – Chacko-- is also a self-proclaimed communist.

And with the excuse of his ideology, he alienates his workers, especially those who are in

a powerless position.

Roy denounces in her novel women’s deprivation either inside or outside the

household, as even when a woman steps from the domestic to the public sphere, she is

equally exploited. An example of this is Ammu – Chacko’s sister – and the women

workers. Then, though Ammu did as much work as Chacko in the factory, she had no

claim to the property. Chacko refers to anything related to the factory as ‘his,’ and clearly

confesses to his sister that “what is yours is mine and what’s mine is also mine” (57).

She, as a daughter, has no claim to any property, no Locusts Stand I and she is aware of

the reason why: “thanks to our wonderful male chauvinist society” (57).

Actually, when Chacko’s communist activism is needed, “our Man of the

Masses” (137) – as Ammu calls him – escapes his responsibilities. For instance, when the

family approaches a communist march in demonstration while driving to Cochin, he

immediately commands all passengers to roll up the windows in fear of them – those who

supposedly belong to his same party: “stay calm. They’re not going to hurt us” (64), to

which Ammu responds with cutting sarcasm: “how could he possibly know that is this

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old car there beats a truly Marxist heart?” (70). Again the irony lies in the fact that their

demands were “that women’s wages be increased from one rupee twenty-five paisa a day,

to three rupees, and men’s from two rupees fifty paisa to four rupees fifty paisa a day.

They were also demanding that Untouchables no longer be addressed by their caste

names” (69), when actually Chacko, with all his Marxist ideals, is also perpetuating the

established unfair system either by gender difference in wages or by discriminating

against Dalits.

There is a major concern in the factory to keep every individual in their

communal position, that is, women workers are paid less for their work and offered the

possibility to get extra money through ‘forced’ sexual relations. By payment, they are

kept in the position that society considers appropriate for them. Another case is the

position of Dalits in the factory. Ironically, Velutha is the only the card holding member

of the party, a skilful carpenter, and indispensable at the factory by virtue of his way with

machines. Chacko and Pillai are apprehensive of Velutha’s association with the party.

Pillai, who is ironically described as the ‘crusader for justice’ and ‘spokesman of the

oppressed,’ sees the danger posed by Velutha. He fears this situation might antagonize

the other labourers due to his untouchable condition. He therefore asks Chacko to send

Velutha away. As he is the key person in the factory, the problem is solved by

Mammachi, who suggests paying Velutha less than a “Touchable carpenter”, even when

he is indispensable and skilled. Moreover, Chacko wants Velutha to remain only as an

excellent carpenter with an engineer’s mind, so that he could be used at his convenience.

On the other hand, from her point of view, Mammachi considers that Velutha “ought to

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be grateful that he was allowed in the factory premises at all, and allowed to touch things

that Touchables touched” (77).

Roy examines how the power of money operates in the House and in the factory

and how far it was responsible for the family’s degeneration. She builds up a chain of

cause and effect skillfully from the point when she traces Chacko’s conversion to the

communist movement during his undergraduate days when Comrade E.M.S.

Namboodiripad, ‘the flamboyant Brahmin high priest of Marxism’ became Chacko’s

hero. Though not a card-holding member of the party, Chacko had remained a committed

supporter of its ideology. During the days when he was running the factory this self-

proclaimed Marxist would first with the pretty women who worked in the factory and on

the pretext of lecturing them on labour rights and trade union law, flirt with them

shamelessly thus showing what Ammu rightly called “an Oxford avatar of the old

zamindar mentality─a landlord forcing his attentions on women who depended on him

for their livelihood” (65). Both Mammachi and the self-righteous Baby Kochamma did

not see any contradiction between ‘Chacko’s Marxist mind and feudal libido.’

Mammachi went to the extent of building a separate entrance for objects of Chacko’s

‘Needs’ so that the factory women workers could enter Chacko’s room easily. The irony

is that high caste people don’t have any untouchability in having sex with low caste

women. She secretly gave them money which they accepted because they had young

children and old parents to feed. The arrangement suited Mammachi because “a fee

clarified things. Disjuncted sex from love. Needs from Feelings (169).

The feminist in Arundhati Roy takes stock of the situation by partially dwelling

upon the theme of gender bias by referring to Mammachi’s discriminatory attitude

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towards Ammu. A daughter estranged from her husband is made to feel unwanted in her

parent’s home whereas an estranged son not only receives warm welcome, he remains the

rightful inheritor of the family fortune. Profligacy in him is encouraged in the name of

“Man’s Needs” (268), whereas identical behaviour in a girl decrees torture of being

locked up in a room. What is desired and facilitated in case of a man is branded

blasphemous and sinful in case of a girl as evident from Ammu – Velutha relationship. In

fact, this is the only relationship which germinates from the innermost core of two human

hearts.

The self proclaimed Marxist Chacko, the present patriarch, enjoys the rights of the

pickle factory which his mother has established and built up. Though Rahel and Estha,

the twins, belongs to the Ayemenem house they have no say whatsoever in any matter

regarding themselves or others. They are only ‘provided for’ like the barn animals. Their

mother Ammu is a divorcee. So her children are punished for their mother’s “fault”- the

divorce as well as the inter-caste “love” marriage.

Roy depicts that even some highly educated parents do not encourage women’s

education. Pappachi, Ammu’s father considered the “college education was an

unnecessary expense for a girl” (38) and so Ammu’s education had suddenly come to a

stop and she had no other alternative than to come with her father to Ayemenem and wait

for marriage and meanwhile help her mother with housework. When no suitable marriage

proposal came in a reasonable time Ammu began to grow desperate. At Ayemenem she

felt like a captive lady, fettered to household chores and dull, mechanical routine. Her

frustration for sudden disruption of education, uncongenial atmosphere at home and lack

of a viable alternative through marriage made her desperate:

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All day she dreamed of escaping from Ayemenem and the clutches of her

ill-tempered father and bitter, long-suffering mother. She hatched several

wretched little plans. Eventually, one worked. Pappachi agreed to her

spend the summer with a distant aunt who lived in Calcutta (38-39).

It is there that she met a young man who proposed to her five days after they had

met. Ammu accepted the proposal of a man whom she had known so little and for such a

short time, not because she had really fallen in love with him but simply because, in a fit

of desperation, “she thought that anything, anyone at all, would be better than returning

to Ayemenem” (39). But it soon transpired that she had actually fallen from the frying

pan to fire. Disappointment became unbearable when her husband, suspended from job

for alcoholism, sought to bargain by procuring his beautiful wife for his boss, Mr.

Hollick, the English manager of the tea estate. Mr. Hollick suggested that he go on leave

and “Ammu be sent to his bungalow to be ‘looked after’” (42), Ammu’s refusal only

aggravated her physical and mental torture. Her husband “grew uncomfortable and then

infuriated by her silence. Suddenly he lunged at her, grabbed her hair, punched her and

then passed out from that effort” (42). Ammu also hit back as hard as she could. But

when “his bouts of violence began to include the children” (42). Ammu had no

alternative but to break off and come back with her twins (two-egg twins, born from

separate but simultaneously fertilized eggs)- Estha and Rahel to the very same place from

where she tried to run away. “Ammu left her husband and returned, unwelcomed, to her

parents in Ayemenem. To everything that she had fled from only a few years ago. Except

that she had two young children. And no more dreams” (42). At the personal level she

was now burdened with the liability of two children who were not really loved by

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anybody, and all her dreams had shattered. Although she loved them, and it was as much

for them as for her sense of self-respect that she deserted her husband, they were,

nevertheless, like millstones round her neck.

Marginalization of women is a global feature. The degree of marginalization

differs from place to place. In the portrayal of Ammu’s life, Arundhati Roy has

represented an exactly Indian attitude. Ammu’s childhood memories are far from

pleasant. Furthermore, at the familial level she did not receive any sympathy at all. Her

father would not believe that “an Englishman, any Englishman, would covet another

man’s wife” (42), and to her mother her children were a nuisance. Mammachi, Ammu’s

mother thought that “what her grandchildren suffered from was far worse than

Inbreeding. She meant having parents who were divorced” (61). And so far as the society

in concerned her situation was a juicy topic. The relatives – near and distant— came to

see her and, actually chuckled at her discomfiture while they religiously expressed their

lip sympathy, so that “Ammu quickly learned to recognize and despise the ugly face of

sympathy” (43). In brief at the age of twenty- four her life came to a standstill, nothing to

hope for, nothing to happen, only to spend the long uneventful days languidly one after

another, and her rebellious spirit only made her more and more miserable as the days

went by. At this stage when she knew that she was “already damned” she became an

“unmixable mix” combining the “infinite tenderness of motherhood and the reckless rage

of a suicide bomber” (44). She realized that though she lived in her parental house with

mother and brother

Thus at twenty-four, Ammu had the painful realization that “Life had been lived”

since she had spoilt her “only one change” by making the irrevocable mistake of

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choosing the wrong man. At her home and in her family and the society, she became

virtually “untouchable”. The mood of the patriarchal society is reflected in the views of

Baby Kochamma who “subscribed wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that

married daughter had no position in her parents’ home. As for divorced daughter –

according to Baby Kochamma she had no position anywhere at all. And for a divorced

daughter for a love marriage, well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage.

As for a divorced daughter from an inter-community love marriage Baby Kochamma

chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject” (45- 46). It should be noted at this

point that Baby Kochamma resented Ammu, because “She saw her quarrelling with a fate

that she, Baby Kochamma herself, felt she had graciously accepted. The fate of the

wretched Man-less woman” (45). What is interesting from the feminist point of view is

that although Baby Kochamma is a woman, she is not in sympathy with another woman-

her own kin- when she is in real distress. And Ammu’s own mother, her “bitter long-

suffering mother’ refused to have any sympathy for her miserable daughter. As Sinox de

Beauvoir put it:

Women lack concrete means for organizing themselves into a unit which

can stand face to face with the correlative unit. They have no past, no

history, no religion of their own, and they have no such solidarity of work

and interest as that of the proletariat….. They live dispersed among the

males, attached through residence, house work, economic condition, and

social standing to certain men – fathers of husbands – more firmly than

they are to other women (Beauvoir 19).

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This situation is reflected in the novel at least in the treatment of some of the

women characters. It was at this time Velutha, son of Vellya Pappen returned to

Ayemenem after his years away from home. Ammu knew him since her childhood when

Velutha used to come with his father to the back entrance of their house to deliver the

coconuts that they had plucked from the trees in the compound. Roy depicts the

miserable conditions of untouchables and how they were treated as second rate citizens.

There was a time when:

Paravans where expected to crawl backwards with a broom, sweeping

away their footprints so that Brahmins or Syrian Christians would not

defile themselves buy accidentally stepping into a Paravan’s footprint…

They had to put their hands over their mouths when they spoke, to divert

their polluted breath away from those whom they addressed” (73- 74).

Arundhati Roy powerfully portrays the miserable condition of the Paravans

(Untouchables) in The God of Small Things. Velutha and Vellya Paapen, his father,

underwent the most inhuman treatment; one can imagine a human being receiving at the

hands of another human being. Though untouchables are more talented than others. They

are being ill-treated because of their social background. For Velutha however, things

were a little better. Unlike his elders, Velutha went to a school, albeit to a school for

‘Untouchables’ which Mammachi’s father-in-law had founded. Every afternoon after

School Velutha worked with Johann Klein, a carpenter from a Carpenter’s Guild in

Bavaria and learnt carpentry at which he became adept. Apart from carpentry skills,

Velutha had a way with machines. He is also a good mechanic who mends radios, and

water pumps and has a natural skill in handicraft. With all his talents and skills, Velutha

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is sneered upon by the touchables—both poor and rich—and kept at arm's length by his

Christian employers. If only he had not been a Paravan, he would have become an

engineer. He was indispensable both in the House and in the “Paradise Pickles &

Preserves” factory. All this gave Velutha, so his father felt, an ‘unwarranted assurance’.

Velutha was hired as the factory carpenter and allowed to enter the factory premises and

touch things that Touchables touched - a big step for a Paravan.

Untouchability is certainly a major theme in the novel. Velutha who can be

considered the central figure is made to suffer for the only reason that he is an

untouchable. There is a reference in the novel to a village school that Estha’s great-

grandfather built for untouchable children. Being a Paravan he and his father never got an

entry to the Ayemenem house. Velutha’s uprightness and high self-esteem which is

feared by his father, is resented by his employers. He dares to love Ammu, a woman

belonging to an uppercaste, upperclass family. For this he is made to pay with his life.

His father Vellya Paapen, who has seen the days of ‘walking Backwards’ to remove

pollution of touch, goes to Mammachi to complain about his son being torn between

Loyalty and Love… As a paravan and a man with mortgaged body parts he considered it

his duty (225). This shows how the low caste people have gratitude for their benefactors.

Hinduism in India developed the Varna system based on the nature of work

people did. But in due course of time it was overtaken by the caste system based on birth

and this resulted in several kinds of disparities. The Bhakti cult of the sixteenth century,

the Indian Renaissance of the nineteenth and the Freedom Movement of the country in

our times did much to eliminate this evil from the society, but it has not been completely

eradicated. Indian English novelists took pains to have paid their attention to this theme.

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Thus, Mulk Raj Anand selected his heroes from among the downtrodden people in novels

like Untouchable (1935) and Coolie (1936). S. Menon Marath’s The Wound of Spring

(1961) depicts the affairs of an upper caste Hindu boy Unni and an untouchable girl

Cheethu resulting in the tragic retribution inflicted on them. In Roy’s novel the

untouchable lover is killed by touchable police and the beloved dies of the shock.

Arundhati Roy vividly portrays the acute suffering and deep frustration of Dalits

and Weaker sections in her novel. Kelan, Vellya Paapen, and Velutha are the

representatives of such sections, precisely of the untouchables. The paravan Velutha,

which means “White” in Malayalam. He is a carpenter who can create wonderful things

with perfect craftsmanship. He is introduced in the very first chapter when he is shown

sitting on a plank “bare-bodied and shining” whom we may call the male protagonist of

the novel, is looked down upon and maltreated herein almost at every stage in his life. As

a small boy, when he visits the Ayemenem House in the company of his father to deliver

the coconuts plucked from the trees in the compound, they come from the back entrance;

as a young man, he is suspiciously treated by Comrade K.N.M. Pillai for being a card-

holder of the Communist Party; and later as a matured man, he is falsely implicated in a

case of attempted rape of Ammukutty (who actually loves him from the core of her heart)

and is beaten badly and dragged to the police station by the Touchable Policemen where

he eventually breathes his last.

When the British arrived in Malabar, a number of Paravans, Pelayas and Pulayas

(among whom Kelan, Velutha’s grandfather, was one) converted to Christianity and

joined the Anglican Church to escape the scourge of Untouchability. They came to be

known as Rice-Christians because they were given some food and money by the British.

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But there too, they suffered humiliation and caste-distinction. They came to realise their

predicament when they “were made to have separate churches, with separate services,

and separate priests” (75). The dawn of Independence slightly improved their condition,

but the novelist sees no such improvement because they were not entitled to “any

Government benefits like job reservations or bank loans at low interest rates...” (74). As

for Velutha, Mammachi takes pity on him and asks his father to send him to the

Untouchables’ School and later employs him as a skilled carpenter in her factory called

Paradise Pickles and Preserves. By nature, he is bold, fearless and adventurous. As

contrasted to him, his father remains humble and servile, as he is “an Old World

Paravan” (76). He does not conceal the secret bonds of love between his son and Ammu,

who night after night row across the river Meenachal in a little boat and meet at the

haunted house, returning only at dawn. Bringing the matter to his benefactor

Mammachi’s notice, he tells her all what he has seen. He asks God’s forgiveness for

having spawned a monster. He offers to kill his son with his own bare hands (78).

Velutha was a skilled craftsman, It was Velutha who maintained the new canning

machine and the automatic pineapple slicer and many more things in the factory. In fact

he ran the show in the factory. Still, Mammachi paid him less than a touchable carpenter

although more than a Paravan. Baby Kochamma even despised the smell of these

Paravans “she preferred an Irish Jesuit smell to a particular paravan smell” (78). Velutha

hates the powerful upper caste. He even tries to hate Ammu for “she’s one of them, he

told himself. Just another one of them” (214). But he fails to do so. Ammu too tries to tell

her children not to visit his place as she is scared it might cause some trouble. But it

seemed all three of them cared and loved the same person, a paravan. It created a bonding

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amongst them for she loved the same person at night, whom her children loved by day.

And it is sad to know when “all three of them bonded by the certain separate knowledge

that they had loved a man to death” (324). The high caste Mammachi and Baby

Kochamma are furious at this affair between a lower caste and upper caste. Baby

Kochamma cooks up a story and narrates it to the Inspector. And the police emerges as a

powerful force to bring an end to the story. The political party too emerges as a powerful

force. They all together strike the blow at Velutha. Though he appears to be a friend of

Chacko as well as the labourers, he is a friend of no one. He had separate role to play for

each one. For “Chacko- the –client” was different from “Chacko- the- Management”

which was different from “Chacko- the- Comrade”. He was clever enough to be a good

friend of the labourers and ridiculed them for accepting the wages they did. He was also

aware that other workers resented Velutha and he, “stepped carefully around this wrinkle,

waiting for a suitable opportunity to iron it out” (129).

But it is with regard to Velutha, the Paravan that Chacko’s Marxist-Christian

leanings are tested and found hollow. Velutha’s only fault is that he has a couple of years

of schooling unlike his elders. He has also trained himself to become a skilful carpenter.

He had a way with machines which made him indispensable at the factory. He was hired

as the factory carpenter and allowed to enter the factory premises and touch things that

touchables touch ─a big step for Paravan. It is because of this that Velutha acquired an

‘unwarranted assurance’ which became a cause for resentment for the workers at the

factory. Both Chacko wants Velutha to remain only ‘an excellent carpenter with an

engineer’s mind.’ Pillai sees the danger of Velutha receiving the special treatment he

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receives in Chacko’s factory which he fears might antagonize the other labourers. He

therefore asks Chacko to send Velutha away and get him a job elsewhere.

Events after Sophie Mol’s death take such a turn that Velutha does not have to be

thrown out by Chacko and his family for the viciousness of Baby Kochamma, the

heartless disowning of Velutha by Pillai and the savage brutality of the Police together

conspire to have him butchered to death. And yet to say that Velutha becomes a victims

of a depraved power game which plays havoc with their lives. Years after these events,

the factory stands abandoned after being seized by the Communist Party. Ironically, the

siege was led by no other than comrade Pillai, Ayemenem’s own ‘crusader for Justice’

and ‘Spokesmen of the Oppressed.’ He had claimed that the ‘Management’ had

implicated the Paravan in a false police case because he was an active member of the

Communist Party and had indulged in ‘Lawful Union activities.’ The factory which was

once full of giant cement Pickle and Jam Vats now stood abandoned. “The lonely

drummer drummed. A gauze door slammed. A mouse rushed across the factory floor.

Cobwebs sealed old pickle vats. Empty, all but one-in which a small heap of congealed

white dust lay. Bone dust from a Bar Nowl. Long dead. Pickle dowl” (328). The factory

built and operated on principles of injustice and dishonesty and hypocrisy degenerated

and disintegrates.

Subsequently, as we learn from the novel, Ammu and Velutha turn deep lovers of

each other, throwing away all scruples of caste, creed and community. Ammu being a

great dreamer, even in daytime, dreams of “a cheerful man with one arm” (215) who

leaves “no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors” (216). In fact, this

is the fate of all the Untouchables in the dark alleys of History. Arundhati Roy

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successfully evokes the image of such footprint less men in her novel, and the image

grows insistent as the novel progresses. Velutha is simply a representative of such men,

but being fiery and haughty in temper he does not sweep off his footprints with a broom,

though his grandfather and father would have gladly done so. Consequently, the

circumstances around him grow hostile and he is finally eliminated and his ‘footprints’

are totally erased by the caste-conscious society. As a Comrade, he is despised by his

own party men, including Comrade K.N.M. Pillai who believes that “these caste issues

are very deep-rooted” (278), and as an untouchable he is not entitled to love someone of a

high caste and yet survive. Baby Kochamma and Mammachi get enraged at Ammu’s

unwarranted behaviour and enter into a conclave and chalk out a plan of eliminating

Velutha for good. The next day, Baby Kochamma reaches the Police Station and lodges a

complaint against Velutha for having forced himself on her niece - “A divorcee with two

children” (259). On the basis of this complaint, Inspector Thomas Mathew and his

touchable men barge into Velutha’s house, beat him cruelly with their boots and batons,

lock his arms across his back, drag him bleeding and mutilated to the police station, and

throw him into the lock-up, where he eventually dies in midnight. In this way, Arundhati

has marvelously handled the theme of ‘Untouchability’ in her novel.

In the novel however, “Ammu’s affair with Velutha takes on a disproportionate

size in the minds of a religious community which has incorporated ancient Hindu laws

and practices into an imported Christianity” (Balvannanadhan 57). The social taboos not

only ambush Velutha and Ammu but also trap the twins in the plot of hushing up the

murderous assault on Velutha. This incident leaves Estha emotionally injured and

mentally wounded, and his sister utterly insecure. Roy mines the recesses of Rahel’s

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memory as she becomes the main focalizer, and the story is filtered through her

perspective. However, there are narrative moments when the main narrator blends into

the focalizer. In the ultimate analysis of the family events it is the breach of the deeply

entrenched social propriety forbidding inter-caste sexual encounter or the violation of

ancient “Love Laws” that accounts for the tragedy of Ammu and Velutha as well as for

the psychic wounds of Rahel and Estha.

Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with

new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story. Still,

to say that it all began when Sophie Mol came to Ayemenem is only one

way of looking at it. Equally, it could be argued that it actually began

thousands of years ago. Long before the Marxists came. Before the British

took Malabar, before the Dutch ascendancy, before Vasco da Gama

arrived, before the Zamorin’s conquest of Calicut. Before three purple-

robed Syrian Bishops murdered by the Portuguese were found floating in

the sea, with coiled sea-serpents riding on their chests and oysters knotted

in their tangled beards. It could be argued that it began long before

Christianity arrived in a boat and seeped into Kerala like tea from tea bag.

That it really began in the days when the Love Laws were made. The laws

that lay down who should be loved, and how. And how much (32-33).

The transgressors of history’s laws in this novel are Ammu and Velutha belonging

to two diametrically opposite strata of the social hierarchy. Ammu represents the status

and predicament of women in the male dominated society. Daughter of a Syrian Christian

family, this sensitive, impassioned woman had an early taste of male chauvinist brutality

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and hypocrisy through her own father, a renowned entomologist. Being forced to live

with this “cold, calculating cruelty” (181), Ammu developed “a lofty sense of injustice

and the mulish, reckless streak that develops in Someone Small who has been bullied all

their lives by Someone Big” (181-82).

“The novel presents interpersonal relationships which are in process of

development more or less continuous that always revolutionary, always moving”.

“Forbidden relationships become the only way to achieve selfhood for the oppressed, the

deprived, the powerless, as in the African American women novels from Hurston’s Their

Eyes Were Watching God to Walker’s Color Purple and Morison’s Sula” (Bharat 91).

Velutha received school education, got a training in carpentry and developed “a

distinctly German design sensibility” (75). He has joined the Communist Party assuming

it to be a forum of protest and an ally of the poor and the downtrodden, without realising

that as a progressive/reformist movement, Communism in India has “never overtly

questioned the traditional values of a caste-ridden, extremely traditional community”

(66). The Marxists have always walked within the communal divides, never challenging

the deep-seated caste issues and the bigotry of the higher caste people.

Velutha is viewed with uneasiness and apprehension by all, including his father,

because he is so un-Paravan like. It is not what he says or does that frightens others but

the way he says or does it: “Perhaps it was just a lack of hesitation. An unwarranted

assurance. In the way he walked. The way he held his head. The quiet way he offered

suggestions without being asked. Or the quiet way in which he disregarded suggestions

without appearing to rebel” (76). His self-assurance is construed as insolence by a society

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that expects submissiveness and unquestioning loyalty from untouchables. The collective

hatred of this society explodes one day when Velutha transgresses its laws and crosses

into the forbidden touchable territory. The ancient, age-old fear of the touchable society

finds expression in extravagant and pre-meditated brutality that crushes any possibility of

dissent, any threat to its protected kingdom.

Velutha is loved and endeared by Ammu’s children who, neglected and relegated

to the periphery of the social play and greedy for affection, find in him a surrogate father.

They receive every indulgence from him, whether it is repairing their boat, making

fishing rods or instinctively colluding in the conspiracy of their fiction. The

psychological barrier of caste does not pollute the children who easily identify them-

selves with Velutha, a social outcaste like them. Ammu, too, discovers a kindred soul in

him. She likes the “living, breathing anger” that he houses under his cloak of

cheerfulness, against the smug, ordered world she herself rages against (176). He is ‘the

God of Small Things’ who rises from the pitch-black waves of a dark sea in her dream.

She finds herself ‘drawn towards him like a plant in a dark room towards a wedge of

light’ (248). They long and ache for each other with the whole of their biology. Their

apprehension of touchable retaliation proves fragile before the irresistible passion: ‘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 walks, like a witch, out of her dark, unsympathetic world

to his kingdom of small things.

It was Ammu who made Velutha a lover. She would watch him hidden from him.

Velutha was able to know what she expected from him. The day it all began Velutha

glanced up and caught Ammu’s gaze, holding her daughter in her arms. “Centuries

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telescoped into one evanescent moment… in that brief moment Velutha looked up and

saw things that he hadn’t seen before. Things that had been out of bounds so far…”

(176). For the first time he realized that Rahel’s mother was a mother. He also realized

that “she had deep dimples when she smiled and that they stayed on long after her smile

left her eyes. He saw that her brown arms were round and firm and perfect. He saw that

when he gave her gifts they no longer needed to be offered flat on the plans of his so that

she wouldn’t have to touch him… He saw too that he was not necessarily the only giver

of gifts. That she had gifts to give him too” (176-177). Then the curtain was raised to the

inevitable drama:

She unbuttoned her shirt. They stood there. Skin to skin. Her brownness

against his blackness. Her softness against his hardness. Her nut-brown

breasts… against his smooth ebony chest… she pulled his head down

towards her and kissed his mouth. A cloudy kiss. A kiss that demanded a

kiss-back. He kissed her back (335-336).

Velutha and Ammu continued the drama. Ammu loves by night the man whom

her children, deprived of fatherly affection, love by day. In fact, her children, “the twin

midwives of Ammu’s dream” (336), will this to happen. For thirteen nights they meet

and share their fragile, transient happiness, knowing fully well that “for each tremor of

pleasure they would pay with an equal measure of pain” (335). The “outmoded world-

view” and “antiquated philosophy” of an age-old tradition crumbles like a rejected

garbage shell as she links her fate, her love, madness and infinite joy to his. They know

that they have nowhere to go and no future in a society hostile to individuals who violate

its “Love Laws” and enter into forbidden territory. So they stick to small things, small

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but unbearably precious pleasures. Each time they part, they extract only a small promise

from each other: “Tomorrow?”

History takes its toll for the violation of its sacrosanct and unchallengeable rules.

All hell breaks loose as the nightly trysts of the lovers are disclosed by the loyal and

superstitious Vellya Paapen (Velutha’s father) in a drunken feat. The touchable

community including Ammu’s family sees it as the beginning of the end of the world

since the lovers have made the “unthinkable thinkable” (256). The wayward daughter is

“locked away like the family lunatic in a medieval household” (252), while an elaborate

conspiracy is hatched by the combine of Syrian Christians, caste Hindu Marxists and

touchable policemen to terrorize the prodigal Paravan in which the children—Rahel and

Estha—are tricked into being accomplices. Velutha—dismissed from job, insufferably

insulted by his employer and betrayed by the Party leader, Pillai, who always delivers

high-pitched speeches about the Rights of Untouchables (“Caste is class, Comrades”

[281]), takes shelter in the deserted house, known as History House, looming in the heart

of darkness on the other side of the river. The children, too, take refuge in the same house

consequent upon the accidental death of their English cousin by drowning in the river and

the unintentional avowal of their shocked, enraged mother that they are millstones around

her neck. In a passage unmatched in its brilliant descriptive feat, superb restraint of

emotion and economy of language, Roy conjures up the scene of steady, pre-meditated

brutality of a posse of touchable policemen sent to hound the transgressor, ‘-abandoned

by God and History, by Marx” (310) and crush him. The scene “The History House”

becomes all the more nauseating because it is enacted before the awe-struck, mesmerized

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eyes of the innocent children so far unacquainted with “the boundless, infinitely inventive

art of human hatred” (236).

But Ammu had loved Velutha as her childhood companion not so much for his

exceptional talents as for his fiery spirit of protest which she herself wanted to articulate

but could not. Roy remarks: “As she grew older, Ammu learned to live with this cold

calculating cruelty. She developed a lofty sense of injustice and the mulish, reckless

streak that develops in Someone Small who has been bullied all their lives by Someone

Big. She did exactly nothing to avoid quarrels and confrontations. In fact, it could be

argued that she sought them out perhaps even enjoyed them” (181 - 82). On his return to

Ayemenem, Velutha secretly joined the communist party which promised the salvation

for the underdogs and, one day, by chance she saw along with her brother and children,”

Velutha marching with a red flag. In a white shirt and mundu with angry veins in his

neck” (71). The reaction of Ammu, as Rahel remembers it, is profoundly significant:

“Rahel saw that Ammu had a film of perspiration on her forehead and upper lip, and that

her eyes had become hard, like marbles” (71-72). Years later, Rahel still remembers

Ammu’s expression. ”Like a rogue piece in a puzzle. Like a question mark that drifted

through the pages of a book and never settled at the end of sentence” (72). She wondered.

“What had it all meant? (72).

It meant that she loved Velutha – heart and soul- for his indomitable spirit of

protest which she also nursed in her heart but could not articulate: “She hoped that under

his careful cloak of cheerfulness, he housed a living, breathing anger against the smug,

Ordered world that she so raged against” (176). So, she touched the untouchable.

Velutha’s father was angry with his son and profusely apologized to his masters. But,

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secretly, love went on just for about a fortnight, and then Velutha was arrested and

tortured to death on a false charge. As soon as Ammu came to know about it, she rushed

to the police station to tell the truth, but the treatment that she received at the hands of the

Station House Officer shows how pitiable is the condition of women in the society,

particularly when a woman is a divorcee and has loved an untouchable. Roy writes:

“Inspector Thomas Mathew’s moustaches bustled like the friendly Air India Maharajah’s,

but his eyes were sly and greedy” (7). The author drops a large hint that the police officer

knows that he can freely insult this woman without any fear or compunction: he has the

sanction of the society. So, he “stared at Ammu’s breasts as he spoke. He said that… the

Kottayam Police didn’t take statements from Veshyas or their illegitimate children….

Then he tapped her breasts with his baton. Gently, Tap, tap. As though he was choosing

mangoes from a basket. Pointing out the ones that he wanted packed and delivered” (8).

The officer represents the society’s attitude to a woman who has loved outside the rules

of “Love Laws.” And, Chacko, Ammu’s brother had already threatened her with all the

authority of a patriarch in his own house: “Get out of my house before I break every bone

in your body” (255). So, having no “Locusts Stand I” anywhere, she had to leave and die

helpless, sick, alone in a hotel “in the strange bed in the strange room in the strange

town” (161) where she had gone for a job interview, her last frantic effort to make a

living in her struggle for survival mainly for the sake of her children. She died at the age

of thirty – one, “Not old, not young, but a viable, die-able age (161).

Baby Kochamma hates Ammu and her love, children, Estha and Rahel. Because

when she was a young woman, she had fallen in love with Father Mulligan, A Roman

Catholic, who used to visit her father. She chatted with him and also asked questions,

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“All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient.’ Father, how can all things

be lawful unto Him?” (23).

The writer has also described the far from Platonic relationship between Father

Mulligan and Baby Kochamma in these words, “Every Thursday, undaunted by the

merciless midday sun, they would stand there by the well. The young girl and the intrepid

Jesuit, both quaking with unchristian passion. Using the Bible as a ruse to be with each

other” (24). When Father Mulligan had to go back to Madras, Baby Kochamma showed

her “stubborn single- mindedness” in defying her father and becoming a Roman Catholic.

She went to Madras as a trainee and entered a convent. She wanted to spend as much

time with Father Mulligan as she could. She, however, found that she couldn’t do so.

There were other superior nuns and Father Mulligan was so busy that it might be years

before she got anywhere near him. Young woman that Baby Kochamma was, she became

more and more restless and love-crazed. She started writing letters to her father at

Ayemenem, “My dearest Papa. I am well and happy in the service of Our Lady. But Koh-

i-noor appears to be unhappy and homesick… My dearest Papa, Koh-i-noor is upset

because her family seems to neither understand nor care about her wellbeing ” (25).

It didn’t take long for her mother to realize that Koh-i-noor was Baby Kochamma

herself. She sent her husband to Madras to withdraw her daughter from the convent. Baby

Kochamma agreed to return home and start life afresh. She however, decided to remain a

Roman Catholic and didn’t reconvert her to old faith. The seed of rebellion in her

couldn’t be completely suppressed.

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It was at this stage that her father “realized that his daughter had by now

developed a ‘reputation’ and was unlikely to find a husband. He decided that since she

couldn’t have a husband there was no harm in her having an education. So he made

arrangements for her to attend a course of study at the University of Rochester in

America“ (26). In spite of her education abroad and exposure both to native and

American culture, Baby Kochamma continued to hate Ammu in particular. While Baby

Kochamma had failed to have the man of her choice. Arundhati Roy has portrayed the

anger and hate of Baby Kochamma in memorable words, “Baby Kochamma resented

Ammu, because she saw her quarrelling with a fate that she, Baby Kochamma herself,

felt she had graciously accepted. The fate of the wretched Man-less woman. The sad,

Father Mulligan- less Baby Kochamma” (45).

There is no wonder that Baby Kochamma became more and more angry and

resentful and peevish. It was due to her bitterness and ferocious jealousy that Velutha was

dismissed from the factory, imprisoned, and charged with the rape of Ammu. When

Ammu went to the police station along with her children, Estha and Rahel, she wanted to

meet Velutha and also to provide evidence that the charge of rape was a concocted one.

The officer at the police station was so much brainwashed by Baby Kochamma to act

against Velutha.

Comrade Pillai, an aspiring politician was more powerful than Chacko too

because of his reputation as a man of influence. When Chacko visits him at his house he

appears to be a powerful man with so many people waiting outside for him:

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With a street fighter’s unerring instincts, comrade Pillai knew that his

threatened circumstances... gave him a power over Chacko that in those

revolutionary times no amount of Oxford education could match. He held

his poverty like a gun to Chacko’s head (275).

When Chacko talks about Velutha, comrade Pillai advises him to send Velutha

away somewhere for a job, for according to him caste issues were very deep rooted. He

doesn’t want to displease the management, the poor labourers or the untouchables. And

therefore the best way to get rid of Velutha is to send him away. Comrade Pillai appears

to be powerful man even with the police. Inspector Mathew wants to know whether

Velutha belonged to the party, before he took any action against him. He doesn’t want to

get into trouble by arresting a member of the communist party. Comrade Pillai, cleverly

denies this fact and keeps the secret to himself that Velutha had met him last before

disappearing. Mr. Pillai had told Velutha, It is not in the Party’s interest to take up such a

matter. Individuals’ interest is subordinate to the organisation’s interest. Violating Party

discipline means violating Party unity (287).

And it is here that the relevance of the quote quoted in the beginning becomes

clear. For it was they (Comrade Pillai and Mathew) who ran the world. Comrade Pillai

leaves no opportunity to benefit from Velutha’s death too. It is ironical that though

Velutha had been denied any support, Pillai sees to it that he gives such a statement to the

press, which would benefit his profile of an upcoming politician.

... Comrade Pillai Claimed that the Management had implicated the

Paravan in a false case because he was an active member of the

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communist Party. That they wanted to eliminate him for indulging in

‘Lawful Union activities’. All that had been in the papers (303).

Comrade Pillai had used his power and the police would use its power. The

novelist is very critical of the functioning of some of the government departments in the

novel. The sharpest attack is on the police department. The police who generally should

be polite, obedient, loyal, intelligent, courteous and efficient are found innocent of these

qualities. Their treatment of the helpless people can simply be described as cruel and

their action may be described as heartless. The touchable policemen crossed the

Meenachal river and picked their way to the History House where the “Desperado” (308).

could be caught. They woke Velutha with their knees. And the twins were the only

witness to this brutal torture:

They heard the thud of wood on flesh. Boot on bone. On teeth. The

muffled grunt when a stomach is kicked in, the muted crunch of skull on

cement. The gurgle of blood on a man’s breath when his lung is torn by

the jagged end of a broken rib (308).

Arundhati Roy also ponders over certain political developments in India, such as

the dawn of Independence, the formation of the Congress Government at the Centre, and

the spread of Communism in Kerala and West Bengal. In her view, the Indian society

river by caste considerations and religious prejudices has not improved even after

Independence. This is certainly a dig at the Congress Government, but it is somewhat

coloured and distorted. Arundhati, however, keeps her wrath and indignation reserved for

the Communists and their Party owing their allegiance to an external power. Whether she

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has been able to evoke the Kerala locale in her novel or not, Roy has remarkably

portrayed the nature of functioning of Communism in her State through the characters of

Comrade K.N.M. Pillai and Comrade E.M.S. Namboodiripad.

Comrade Pillai is introduced in the very first Chapter of the novel. His printing

press—Lucky Press—was once the Ayemenem office of the Communist Party, where

midnight study meetings were held and pamphlets of the party were printed and

distributed. Pillai is depicted as “essentially a political man” and as “a professional

omeletteer”. And further: “He walked through the world like a chameleon. Never

revealing himself, never appearing not to. Emerging through chaos unscathed” (14). Pillai

is not repentant, as he was not responsible, for what had happened to Velutha and Ammu,

though he vividly recalls their tragic end. To remain in the limelight, he incites the

workers of the factory (Paradise Pickles & Preserves) to demand yearly bonus, provident

fund, and accident insurance, knowing fully well that the factory is running into a heavy

debt. But he never comes out openly against Chacko, the factory-manager. Similarly, he

is jealous of Velutha for his being the only card-holder of the Communist Party, but he

does not vent his feelings in public. Pillai wants to organise the factory workers into a

labour union. In short, Pillai is portrayed as a suspicious and scheming man, who always

looks to his personal gains and advances in life.

Pillai’s attitude would remind one of a passage in Fo (1992) where Maniac says:

“Are the people calling for true justice? Instead of that we’ll give them a

justice that is just a bit less unjust. And if the workers start shouting

‘Enough of this brutual exploitation’, and start complaining that they’re

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tired of dying in the factories, then we give them a little more protection

on the job… and step up the compensation rates for their widows… They

want revolution…? We give them reforms… reforms by the bucketful…

we’ll drown them with reforms… of rather we’ll drown them with

promises of reforms, because we’re never going to give them reforms

either!” (Surendran, 195-196).

Comrade Namboodiripad is worst hit by the novelist. He is owner of the History

House—a five-star hotel chain—across the river which is spacious enough, with its air-

tight and paneled storeroom, to feed an army for a year. This is his ancestral home, and

here he is introduced to the visitors as ‘Kerala’s ‘Mao Tse Tung’. The novelist tries to

explain why Communism is so successful in Kerala, perhaps in Bengal too. The main

reasons suggested by her are: it has something to do with the large population of

Christians in Kerala, and Marxism is a simple substitute for Christianity: “Replace God

with Marx, Satan with the bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with

the Party, and the form and purpose of the journey remained similar” (66). and it has to

do something with the comparatively high level of literacy in the State. The novelist,

however, hastens to add that the second reason is not due to the Communist movement,

and that Communism crept into Kerala insidiously. As a reformist movement, it never

“overtly questioned the traditional values of a caste-ridden, extremely traditional

community.” According to the novelist, the Marxists “worked from within the communal

divides, never challenging them, never appearing not to” (67).

Then, she furnishes the details of the Communists winning the State Assembly

elections and E.M.S. Namboodiripad heading the Government as the Chief Minister.

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Suddenly, the Communists find themselves in a piquant, situations-having to govern a

people and foment revolution simultaneously. Namboodiripad evolved his own theory to

enforce land reforms, neutralising the police, subvert the judiciary, and to restrain the

Congress Government at the Centre. Ironically enough, the peaceful part of the Peaceful

Transition comes to an end even before the year is out, and the Marxists frequently resort

to riots and strikes and the incidents of police brutality shake the whole of Kerala. Within

the next two years, Kerala is on the brink of a civil war, and Nehru dismisses the

Communist Government, announcing fresh elections. The Congress Party returns to

power. But after a gap of ten years, the Communists led by E.M.S. Namboodiripad come,

to power again in Kerala. At that time, Kerala was reeling in the aftermath of famine and

hunger. Comrade Namboodiripad implemented the Peaceful Transition soberly this time,

but this also earned him “the wrath of the Chinese Communist Party” (68), which

accused him of providing relief to the people and thereby blunting the edge of intended

revolution. Now, Peking started patronising the Naxalites, the most militant faction of the

Communist Party of India (M), who had staged an armed resurrection in Naxalbari, a

village in Bengal, and who had organized peasants into fighting cadres, seized land,

expelled the owners and established the people’s court to try class enemies. In due

course, the Naxalite movement spread across the country and struck terror in every

human heart. In Kerala, a landlord in Palghat was tied to a lamp post and beheaded. All

this happened because Marxism upheld “the doctrine of class struggle and the

dependence of all forms of consciousness upon class interests”. The killing of the

landlord is what Mikhail Lifshitz calls the outcome of “the struggle between the

bourgeoisie and the nobility”. The terrorist activities of the Naxalites compelled

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Namboodiripad to expel them from his Party, while he himself continued “the business,

of harnessing anger for parliamentary purposes” (69). Thus, Arundhati treats

Namboodiripad as a double-dealer and cunning politician, having set his eyes on power.

She calls him a “Running Dog, Soviet Stooge” (69).—an outrageous statement no doubt.

All the same, her treatment of Communism and its governance in Kerala is

comprehensive enough to enable us to form an idea about it.

Comrade Pillai the self-proclaimed Marxist leader of the workers also helped

Baby Kochamma’s intent take shape in several ways. Contrary to his Maoist slogans-

“Annihilation of the Class Enemy”, “Caste is Class” (287, 81), he did not help Velutha

against their common class enemy Chacko. The reasons why Pillai did this are many and

they help the reader to understand how ideology makes room for adjustment once the

ideologues are in power. Pillai retains his interest in caste, though covertly, through the

agency of his wife (278). His class interests manage to cohabit quite peacefully with his

political proclamations. While denouncing ‘Chacko-the-Management’ to the workers, he

willingly harbours ‘Chacko-the-client’ at his printing press (121). He explains his

position vis-a-vis the new revolutionary ideas of social change thus: “Change is one

thing. Acceptance is another” (279).

Pillai is an opportunist. Perhaps the most pressing reason why he wants Velutha

out of his way is political. The touchable workers at the pickle factory are sour with the

fact that Velutha the ‘untouchable’ has been appointed the chief mechanic by Chacko. He

thereby becomes their boss. If Pillai could manage to get Velutha away then the electoral

votes of these workers would be his to obtain a seat in the Legislative Assembly. So he

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denied to the police that Velutha was a party-man. Had he done so, the police would have

left him alone. Pillai also did not state that the FIR lodged against him was false.

The fact has been evinced in the behaviours of characters too. For instance,

K.N.M. Pillai, who is a Communist press-owner has been reported to be casteist as he

does not like Velutha to be there in the Party for Velutha is an “untouchable”, a low-caste

Hindu. The narrator reports the fact in the following words:

The only snag in Comrade K.N.M. Pillai’s plans was Velutha. Of all the

workers at Paradise Pickles, he was the only card-holding member of the

Party, and that gave Comrade Pillai an ally he would rather have done

without. He knew that all the other Touchable workers in the factory

resented Velutha for ancient reasons of their own. Comrade Pillai steeped

carefully around the wrinkle, waiting for a suitable opportunity to iron it

out (121).

Since Pillai still regards a worker as an ‘untouchable’ and likes him to be eased

out of the Party only because the latter belongs to a caste believed to be low, he is not a

Communist in the real sense of the word as a Communist stands for the equality of all

and likes the State power to come into the hands of workers irrespective of their castes,

colours, and creeds, as Marx, through his Communist Manifesto, asked all the workers of

the world to unite.

Moreover, If these Communists are not bold enough to challenge communal

divides, it is impossible for them to be impartial as governors, though the first

qualification of a governor is that he is absolutely just and impartial as a ruler and, unlike

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Shakespeare’s King Lear, administers justice not on the basis of the love people bear him

but on the basis of their rights and services they render to the State. When the narrator

reports that the Communist rulers never challenge communal divides, she adds “never

appearing not to” she is also charging them with being hypocrites, who preach one thing

and practise another and are different from Chaucer’s Parson who is so good that “first he

wroghte, and afterward he taughte”.

Another weakness that the narrator finds in K.N.M. Pillai is that even though as a

Communist he wants the workers of the factory Paradise Pickles to organize themselves

into a union and “urge[s] them on to revolution” (120), he tries to protect his own

business interests with Chacko. The owner of the Paradise Pickles. The fact has been

mentioned sarcastically by the narrator in the following words:

Comrade K.N.M. Pillai never came out openly against Chacko. Whenever

he referred to him in his speeches he was careful to strip him of any

human attributes and present him as an abstract functionary in some larger

scheme. A theoretical construct. A pawn in the monstrous bourgeois plot

to subvert revolution... Apart from it being tactically the right tiling to do,

this disjunction between the man and his job helped Comrade Pillai to

keep his conscience clear about his own private business dealings with

Chacko (121).

The implication is that far from being truthful and straightforward Pillai is a

tactful and cunning man who does not forget his own economic interests and keeps them

above the cause of Communism, and, thus, he is a bourgeois at heart and pays only a lip-

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service to Communism. Being a party cardholder, Velutha goes to Comrade Pillai’s

house to explain his position and get his support, but he refuses to help him, saying: “It’s

not in the Party’s interests to take up such matters. Individual’s interest is subordinate to

the Organization’s interests. Violating Party Discipline means violating Party Unity”

(287). Pillai knows that his refusal to help Velutha would result in the latter’s death, yet

he wants this to happen because of his thinking on the caste line. When Velutha dies, he

uses this opportunity to take over the Paradise Pickles factory by insinuating the Party

workers against Baby Kochamma and Chacko. Thus, Communism which claimed to be

the substitute of religion fails in the case of Velutha. The novelist aptly makes the

following comment: “And there it was again. Another religion turned against itself.

Another edifice constructed by the human mind, decimated by human nature” (287).

The policemen are deftly used as tools of the system, a part of the coercive

machinery which keeps things in order. Although they are supposed to stand for

‘Politeness, Obedience, Loyalty, Intelligence, Courtesy, Efficiency’ (304). They perform

their duties only for those in power. Their brutality to Velutha springs from the fact that

they did not consider him a fellow human being. “They were History’s henchmen sent to

square the books and collect the dues from those who broke the laws… They were not

arresting a man…” (308) “They were merely inoculating a community against an

outbreak… They were exorcising fear” (309).

The policemen and politicians make sure that no transgressor of rules is spread. It

is in their hands to establish order and to punish those who defy orders. Velutha is the

extreme transgressor of rules. So He is “abandoned by God and History, by Marx, by

Man, by Woman and by Children” (310). Arundhati Roy not only directs her anger

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against the Communists and the rich elite of Ayemenem, but also against the police. They

search the Meenachal River “Like Film-policemen. Softly, softly through the grass.

Batons in their hands. Machine-guns in their minds. Responsibility for the Touchable

future on their thin but able shoulders” (307). The touchable police for Touchables only.

They beat Velutha for no reason and the police are polite to him! They show their

intelligence by framing him falsely! They show efficiency by not arresting, but by

exorcising fear! It is efficiency, not anarchy. “They didn’t tear out his hair or burn him

alive. They didn’t hack off his genitals and stuff them in his mouth. They didn’t rape

him” (309). Samir Roy Choudhary writes beautifully on the police atrocities in his poem

“Question”:

The twins were despised by everybody: Mammachi, Baby Kochamma, Kochu

Maria and Chacko. These people used their power on them, whenever required. Baby

Kochamma disliked the twins “for she considered them doomed, fatherless waifs... (who)

lived on sufferance in the Ayemenem House, their maternal grandmother’s house where

they really had no right to be” (45). She grudged them their moments of happiness,

grudged them the comfort they drew from each other. She never escaped the chance to

hurt them. And with Sophie Mol’s arrival they were ignored and avoided for “Nobody

said hello to Rahel” (173). The Orange drink Lemon drink man exploits Estha by forcing

him to hold his private part and shatters the innocent world of a child. He was more

powerful than the child and hence uses his power due to which the child feels sick. Rahel

is the only one who feels sad for Estha for his illness; “She had in her the sadness...

sadness of Ammu's loving her a little less. And the sadness of whatever the orange drink

lemon drink man had done to Estha in Abhilash Talkies” (115).

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Velutha’s bonding too with the children needs a word. He lets the children be

what they are, plays with them and doesn't shatter their dreams like others. Estha and

Rahel too are outcastes in their family and hence the bonding is even stronger:

They visited him in sarees... Velutha introduced Himself. He greeted them

with the utmost courtesy. He addressed them all as Kochamma and gave

them fresh coconut water to drink. He chatted to them about the weather.

The river... It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult

hindsight, recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man

entertaining three raccoons (190).

And it is after so many years that Rahel realizes, that they were tricked into

telling something which they would never have told. They were powerless and

vulnerable at that time. It is, finally, Baby Kochamma who succeeds in putting an end to

their relationship. Throughout the novel she warns the twins who don’t care about what

she says. Once she tells them “And please stop being so over familiar with that man”

(184).

The ultimate power is used by Chacko in separating the twins from each other as

well as from their mother. As the head of the family, he decides that Ammu should leave

and so should one of the twins too. And Estha, as a boy, leaves, for together they would

have been a bother. “Pack your things and go Chacko would say stepping over the

debris... surprised at his own strength. His bigness. His bullying power. The enormity of

his own terrible grief” (226).

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Ammu leaves Rahel behind with Mammachi and Chacko. Ammu and her twins

suffer at the hand of these powerful people. Rahel was neglected by everyone. She

“drifted from one school to another school. Mammachi and Chacko just provided her

with food and shelter, but nothing beyond that She (Rahel) spent her holidays in

Ayemenem, largely ignored by Chacko and Mammachi... they provided the care (food,

cloths, fees) but withdrew the concern” (15).

This separation reflected on Estha’s behaviour too. He became very quiet, almost

dumb. He finished his school too with mediocre results and didn’t go to college. He

almost withdrew from the world. “He grew accustomed to the uneasy octopus that lived

inside him and squirted its inky tranquilizer on his past” (12).

Rahel, A child of broken home and a daughter of a divorcee-mother staying in her

ancestral house, she did not get the love and affection from her elders that a child so

badly needs. Her emotional needs remained unfulfilled. Of course her mother had all the

concern for her, but in a hostile atmosphere she was utterly helpless. When Ammu dies at

the age of thirty-one, “a viable die- able age” Rahel was nearly eleven. As a child she had

seen the sufferings of her mother, the insults and ignominies that were inflicted on her all

the year round, and the tortures she had been subjected to when her affair with Velutha

but, ironically, they were deceived into giving a false evidence when Velutha is arrested

and brutally tortured to death. Rahel after all these years, on her return to Ayemenem,

still remembers how they were made instrumental by Baby Kochamma is doing wrong to

their mother. It is a memory that Rahel could never put of her mind and in a way, it is this

memory that practically ruined her conjugal life. After the death of Ammu, Rahel was

more neglected than ever. With the death of her mother, Rahel had lost the last mornings

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that she had and she began to drift, from school to school, spent eight years in a college

without getting a degree and finally “drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards

an unoccupied chair in an airport lounge” (18).

Her husband looked upon her as something very precious. “But when they made

love he was offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to someone

else… He was exasperated because he didn’t know what that look meant. He put it

somewhere between indifference and despair” (19). It was certainly not his fault that he

did not know that “in some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds

of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate

enough” (19). Consequently, the marriage broke down and they were divorced. When

Rahel returns to Ayemenem, she is also a divorcee like her mother had been, but, luckily,

she is not encumbered with a child, with any “millstone” round her neck. We notice that

she has developed a casual attitude to life and does not suffer from the various

restrictions generally imposed by the society. Instead of feeling any kind of shame or

moral weakness for her divorce, she tries to shock Comrade Pillai by informing him

about it. “We’re divorced.” Rahel hoped to shock him into silence. “Die-vorced?” His

voice rose to such a high register that it cracked on the question mark. He even

pronounced the word as though it were a form of death” (130).

To a large extent Rahel is an emancipated woman. In terms of mother-daughter

relationship also, we notice that Rahel understands her mother much better than Ammu

ever could her mother. There is enough evidence in the novel that she shares the agony of

her mother, realizes the great injustice and cruelty done on her mother, and is filled with

profound compassion for her mother. Her mother has always remained a living presence

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in her memory. Seen from the feminist perspective, the novel records a progress, albeit

slow, in feminism, offers some rays of hope and seems to suggest a distinct possibility of

redemption.

Chacko tells the twins that they are a ‘family’ of ‘Anglophiles’. In spite of this

realization he, the Oxford scholar, quotes passages in English without any provocation.

Nevertheless, he fails to recognize the ambivalence in the combination of his family’s

Anglophilia and its strict adherence to caste hierarchy in spite of being Christian. He is a

man who talks of the identity crisis of Indians resulting from British rule and at the same

time displays his ex-wife and blonde daughter as trophies.

Rahel’s is also a loveless marriage. Like her mother and uncle before her, she

chooses a husband outside her community. However, this time her choice is socially

acceptable because it conforms to the rules of patriarchy: Larry is an American, and

Americans rule the world. Larry does not turn out to be a patriarchal monster, as her

grandfather, father and uncle were, but he does not understand her and does not arouse

any emotions or passions within her. Her inner emptiness remains, and she turns,

therefore, to a love that is older, deeper, more intense, more authentic, more self-based,

through which she recovers herself and her past. Estha, too, finds completion in Rahel;

they are twins after all, and besides, he finds his lost mother, so unknowingly betrayed by

him so long ago, in his sister now. Their union, so natural, so inevitable, is, however,

incestuous; indeed, in Estha’s case, doubly incestuous, for Rahel to him is now both

mother and sister.

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Like her mother, Rahel, marries because she has no alternative. Her marriage also

ends in divorce. In her school, she does not follow rules unquestioningly. So, she is

moved about from one school to another. Her womanhood is expected to hidden,

unexplored. The more she grows curious about her body, the more she is expected to

ignore it. Her small ways of rebelling only generate disapproval. It was, they whispered

to each other, ‘as though she didn’t know how to be a girl’ (17).

The children who are the “smallest things” in the novel are the worst affected of

all. They go against the rules and make Velutha, who is a paravan, an untouchable, their

God. They are made to pay a heavy price for their “Misconduct”. Velutha- ‘The God of

Small Things’ and also ‘The God of Loss’ is their best friend, because he lets them be,

and also participates in their world of make - believe in spite of being an adult. As Rahel

grows up, she realizes, “it is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of

thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of

porcelain. To let it be, to travel with it as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do”

(190).

The world seen and experienced through Rahel and Estha brings about a

recognition of the difference between the world of children and that of the adults. The

vulnerability and innocence of children is often exploited by adults. Baby Kochamma

treats Estha and Rahel scornfully because they are Ammu’s children. Sophie Mol on the

other hand is treated as an ornament to be locked away in a safe. She has to reject

outright the ‘advances’ of the adults, to reveal herself to be human. Ammu tends to ill-

treat and neglect her children because of her own frustration. Thus, inspite of being a

victim, she happens to victimize, though unknowingly. When Rahel disobeys Ammu, she

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is threatened with prospect of the withdrawal of love. She tries to inflict her punishment

on herself, the seriousness of which Ammu fails to recognize. When the family members

humiliate and ill-treat Ammu, she takes out her frustration on Rahel. But Rahel has no

power over anyone. So she reacts by killing red ants.

The twins witness the brutal killing of their beloved friend Velutha. Baby

Kochamma bribes Estha into giving a false word against Velutha in exchange for ‘saving

Ammu’. He lives with the guilt of this action for a lifetime. Rahel grows up without any

love or concern, shifting from school to school. Her marriage cannot fill the emptiness

within her. She ultimately divorces her husband and returns to Ayemenem for Estha.

Saving Ammu at the cost of Velutha, according to Baby Kochamma was a small

price to pay. The price is: “Two lives. Two children’s childhoods. And a history lesson

for future offenders” (336). In the years to come they would replay the scene of Velutha’s

‘arrest’ in their heads. “As children. As teenagers. As adults” (318).

Rahel grows up to be a disillusioned unhappy adult with nothing but emptiness

within her and Estha is forced to retreat into silence occupying very little space in the

world. His memories are full of Velutha’s blood:

But worst of all, he carried inside him the memory of a young man with

an old man’s mouth. The memory of a swollen face and a smashed upside

down smile. Of a spreading pool of clear liquid with a bare bulbs reflected

on it. Of a bloodshot eye that had opened, wandered and then fixed its

gaze on him. Estha, and what had Estha done? He had looked into that

beloved face and said yes: Yes, it was him. Yes. The word was lodged

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there, deep inside some fold or furrow, like a mango hair between molars

that couldn’t be worried loose (32).

When Rahel and Estha meet, he is still carrying with him the guilt of having

deserted Velutha. Rahel on the other hand is fiercely vigilant and brittle with exhaustion

from the battle against real life.

There is a reference about Kathakali men in the novel. They enact the stories from

the Mahabharat. They play their roles with warmth and zeal and more the hearts of the

audience. But when ‘the Kathakali men took off their makeup and go home, they beat

their wives, even Kunti, the soft one, with breast’ (236). That is, the man who played the

role of Kunti, also beat his wife on the other hand, there is Pappachi, an imperial

Entomologist at the Pusa Institute. Sometimes the Kathakali artist would be stoned all

because of the tattered and darned skirt, crowns with hollows and bald velvet blouse.

To all this, the problem of race is an added dimension. Fair skin, blue eyes

and red-gold hair signify perfect beauty and superiority. In The God of Small Things,

Chacko’s ex-wife Margret Kochamma and her blonde daughter Sophie Mol outshine the

members of the Ayemenem house. Ammu and her dark-skinned twins are made of feel

inferior and out of place in the ‘perfect’ family gathering. The Townspeople (in her fairy

frock) [Rahel] saw Mammachi draw Sophie Mol close to her eyes to look at her. “To read

her like a cheque. To check her like a bank note” (174).

Along with gender-oppression, Roy comments on the colonization of the mind

which many Indians suffer from. The week that Sophie Mol, the blonde daughter of

Chacko was to arrive, had been the “What will Sophie Mol think?’ week” (36). Baby

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Kochamma makes it a rule to speak in English. So whenever the twins are caught

speaking in Malayalam they are given written impositions: “I will always speak in

English. I will always speak in English. A hundred times each” (36).

Skin-colour and race are seen to create a different power structure. A white skin is

an ideal of beauty which leaves anyone with dark skin in a lower bracket. The impression

that Sophie Mol leaves of herself is: “Hatted, bell-bottomed and Loved from the

beginning” (186). This glorification of the West is seen in the whole family’s behaviour,

especially in Baby Kochamma’s. The ‘Foreign Returness’ are imagined to be looking

scornfully at the visitors at the airport. “Look at the way they dressed! Surely they had

more suitable airport wear! Why did Malayalees have such awful teeth?’… Oho! Going

to dogs India is” (140).

Apart from what we have observed above, there is yet another social evil—that of

child-abuse and child-negligence—prevalent in our country which has been highlighted

by the novelist. Anyone reading the novel is at first simply revulsed and shockingly

disturbed by the encounter of Estha with the Orange drink Lemondrink Man, but

suddenly one realises, on a second thought, that this Chapter (“Abhilash Talkies”) is

written with a different purpose in view to bring to the fore the question on child-abuse

and child-negligence in our society. In a moment of negligence by the mother, the boy

Estha saunters away to the Refreshment Counter during the film-interval where the

Orange drink Lemon drink Man physically abuses him. This is how the perverted man

behaves with the innocent boy: ‘Now if you’ll kindly hold this for me’, the Orange drink

Lemondrink Man said, handling Estha his penis through his soft white muslin dhoti, ‘I’ll

get you your drink. Orange? Lemon? (103). Consequently, the boy develops headache

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and starts vomiting. What the beastly man does is highly unethical and unnatural.

Arundhati has definitely succeeded, through this episode, in raising the issue of child-

abuse and child-negligence.

The sense of inferiority complex at being Indian makes Baby Kochamma speak

with a put on accent and ask Sophie Mol questions on Shakespeare’s Tempest. All this

was of course primarily to announce her credentials to Margret Kochamma. To set herself

apart from the Sweeper class (144). Chacko wears, in spite of discomfort, a coat and tie

to the airport instead of his usual mundu. His daughter Sophie Mol is seen as a paragon of

beauty. She is constantly compared to Rahel and Estha, leaving them broken hearted and

embittered. The death of Sophie Mol brings life at Ayemenem to an end. The two

children Rahel and Estha could have brought happiness and life to the family. But they

are Ammu’s children, and therefore go unacknowledged.

In short, urbanization is one of the major themes of the novel and most of the

characters are victims to it. It plays a major role in the social life of Ayemenem which

was only a small village earlier. That Coco-Cola had found a place even in police stations

speaks volumes about how fast urbanization is taking place. Villages become towns and

towns become metropolis in no time. Sometimes one would even find it difficult to draw

the dividing line between a village and a town, a town and a small city and a small city

and a metropolis.

The impact of the Gulf money on the people of Kerala is yet another factor which

dominates the discussion of the contemporary society in the novel. In Kerala there is a

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unique situation where in every other family there will be a person working in the Gulf

countries which naturally has a tremendous impact on the social life.

Booth sees the genre of novel as an imitation of the real world, in the rich sense in

which Aristotle uses the term ‘imitation’ (Booth 179). Roy’s novel can be easily

described as a novel which imitates the real world. The contemporary society appears in

the novel in a rather realistic way and the influence of the Gulf money on the social life

of the people of Kerala can only be described as something more that near to reality.

People have changed their life styles and they bid goodbye to conventional houses only to

enjoy a totally new life.

In the opening chapter of the novel there is reference to Baby Kochamma

abandoning her ornamental garden. The reason for the dumping was a new love. She had

installed a dish antenna on the roof of Ayemenem house. This is certainly a symbol of

urbanization. Wars, famines, massacres, Bill Clinton etc. could be summoned up like

servants. In Kerala dish antennas have become a very common sight and generally the

phenomenon is considered as a symbol of urbanization.

In the second chapter we find Chacko, Rahel and others staying at Hotel Sea

Queen on their way to the air port. That they have chosen a posh hotel for the stay is an

indication that the villagers are no more leading a rustic life. They prefer an urban life

with all its comforts and privileges. John Stevenson (1984) has discussed how the

“laboring classes” and the middle class were engaged in non-agricultural manufacturing

and production. Urbanization was a fall out to this. Major cities had expanded into

metropolises and smaller cities had grown at the expense of the countryside. In Roy’s

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novel also such a situation is very much noticeable. Ayemenem village had grown into a

town and the people migrate to Cochin, the nearby metropolis.

The craze for English can also be taken as something which is part of

urbanization. Comrade Pillai had his son Lenin repeat the lines from Shakespeare’s Julius

Ceasar which would certainly be out of place in a village context. Also his observation

that his wife would understand whatever was said in English could also be viewed as the

effect of urbanization in the Ayemenem village. The irony of it all lay in the fact that

Lenin who was only six years old shouted the lines without faltering even once without

understanding even a word of it! Craze for English medium and teaching young children

of three of four in this medium has become a routine affair.

The novel portrays the forces of power working in alliance in the novel. It shows

how the caste system and hierarchy, which is still prevalent in India, operates and is a

powerful ally of patriarchy, which is another powerful component of Indian society.

Women, children, untouchables, and poor are the oppressed lot. The structures in

alliance, which are oppressing them, are Patriarchy, upper caste and the Church, Political

Parties and the Police. Again within this structure there is the cutting across of structures,

for it is paradoxical that, Baby Kochamma is a woman and hence oppressed by patriarchy

but because she belongs to the upper caste and hence responsible for the oppression of

untouchables and Ammu and her twins. It is this power struggle that captures one’s

attention and needs to be examined. Roy’s concern richly varies over a wide range of

people and sensibilities.

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Rahel has returned to Ayemenem after a long time to meet her brother Estha. She

finds her ancestral house rather empty. She also finds that her grand aunt Baby

Kochamma is still alive. We also come to know that Rahel and Estha are twins- Estha

was older by eighteen minutes. They are also described as “a rare breed of Siamese twins,

physically separate but with joint identities.” They are thirty-one. They are neither old

nor young, but of a viable die-able age. There is also a flashback that describes Rahel and

Estha’s birth in a moving bus in Shillong. Later on, their mother Ammu is divorced and

she returns to Kerala and seek protection and care from the family. It is at this stage that

Ammu comes to know of her real status in her father’s home. “She subscribed

wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter has no position in

their parents’ home. As for a divorced daughter according to Baby Kochamma, she had

no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well,

words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage” (45).

Velutha, who is on the periphery of the caste-ridden, feudal Ayemenem society, is

given agency by the author through the meaning of his name (“white”) and his physical

beauty. The symbolic correspondence between blackness and dirt, between whiteness and

purity is reversed in his representation. Although he does not speak, he does act or, as

Tabish Khair has put it in a different context, his body “exceeds subalternity” (Khair 14),

poised in opposition to hegemonic control. Ammu's stifled longing and brooding despair

find an outlet in a tempestuous erotic encounter with Velutha. Roy’s novel only

articulates a subdued gesture of Velutha’s defiance, but a decided flicker of rebellion is

seen in Ammu's character, despite “the constant, high, whining mewl of local

disapproval” (43). Her midnight forays to seek sexual union with Velutha are a

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courageous act in a conventional, caste-dominated society. Eventually, however, she has

to pay for defying the prevailing caste restrictions.

Roy portrays Velutha’s participation in communist party’s procession. Velutha,

the communist worker, comes from the ranks as he belongs to the section of communists

who are muscle power of the party and takes part in demonstrations. “Marching with a

Red Flag… with angry veins in his neck” (71). The Second Chapter shows Velutha as an

activist of the Travancore-Cochin Marxist Labour Union, which has three demands—an

hour’s lunch-break in between a non-stop eleven and a half hours’ work, increase in the

labourers’ wages, and the removal of caste names showing the labourers’ untouchability.

It is here for the first time we have an overt reference to the untouchables who do not

want “to be addressed as Achoo Parayan, or Kelan Paravan, or Kuttan Pulayan, but just

as Achoo, or Kelan, or Kuttan” (69). The untouchables cannot enter the house of the

touchables. Living together in close proximity with each other, there is hardly any

worthwhile human interaction between them: “Vellya Paapen feared for his younger son.

He couldn’t say what it was that frightened him. It was nothing that he had said, or done.

It was not what he said but the way he said it. Not what he did, but the way he did it”

(76).

Out of his love and concern for his son, Vellya Paapen continuously cautions him

to mend his ways which results in a general air of unpleasantness between the father and

the son. And one day he disappears and does not come back for four years. The rumour

was that he was working on a building site for the Department of Welfare and Housing in

Trivandrum. Another rumour was that he had become a Naxalite.

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Velutha, the untouchable is the worst affected of all. As a person who is wholly

dependent on his landlord’s family-the Ayemenem house- for his livelihood, and as a

person belonging to the lowest caste, the untouchables, his subjugation is multiple. He is

brutally killed, leaving silence and emptiness in Estha and Rahel’s lives, and loneliness in

Ammu’s.

Van Ghent has claimed that “the subject matter of novels is human relationships

in which are shown the directions of men’s souls” (Ghent 3). Her interest in Gestalt

psychology leads to her vision of the novel as a psychologically convincing “world” : she

believes that good novels have “integral structure” and also have individual character and

each is judged by “the cogency and illuminative quality of the view of life that it affords”

(Ghent 7). Certainly Roy’s novel is a good novel in the sense in which Van Ghent uses

the term. What strikes us most here is the view of life that Roy has when she discusses

the environmental problems.

Baby Kochamma goes to great lengths to save the “honour” of their reputed

family. She takes the help of the police Inspector Matthews who is a ‘touchable’ and is

all too ready to “instil order into a world gone wrong” (260). His police constables carry

the “responsibility for the Touchable future on their thin but able shoulders” (307). They

beat up the unarmed man with “the sober, steady brutality, the economy of it all” (308).

Velutha pays the price of disobedience. He is referred to as ‘The God of Small

Things’. The Big Things and Small Things being poles apart from each other, the God of

small Things is bound to be separate from the God of Big Things. The two will not be

257

allowed to be one. Ironically the small things have no God. If they happen to have one, he

becomes the ‘god of loss’ as Velutha does.

The Big Things, inspite of their own individual difference unite whenever there is

a threat from Small Things. The ‘Small Things’ - Ammu, the twins and Velutha, who get

together for mutual warmth and genuine love, and not for any material benefits are

cruelly acted upon and destroyed. They leave behind no memory of pain or concern in the

minds of the surrivors, nothing as posterity, not even their own footprints. Their every

mark is wiped away. “Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms

with built-in-cupboards… You could spend your whole life in them wandering through

dark shelving” (115).

According to Thomas Hardy “the advantages of telling a story (passing over the

disadvantages) are that, hearing what one side has to say”, one is “led constantly to the

imagination of what the other side must be feeling, and at last are anxious to know if the

other side does really feel” what one imagines (Mirian 260). In one of the interviews on

caste-based discrimination in India, Arundhati Roy points out that: “the treatment of

Dalits in India is by no means any less grotesque than the treatment of women by the

Taliban” (Roy 181).

There are some novelists who address themselves to the contemporary social and

political issues. In The God of Small Things it can undoubtedly be said that Roy is quite

successful as a writer whose eyes and ears are fully open to see and hear what goes on

around her.

258

Works Cited Allot, Miriam. Novelists on the Novel, London: Routledge, 1957. 260.

Balvannanadhan, Aida. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things, A Study in the Multiple

Narratives, Published by Prestige Books, 2007. 57.

Bharat, Urbashi. History Community and Forbidden Relationships in The God of Small

Things, Arundhati Roy the Novelist extraordinary. Edited by R.K. Dhawan, Published

by Prestige Books 1999. 91.

Booth, Wayne. The Rhetoric of Fiction, Chicago: University of Chicago press, 1961.

Cowley, Jason. Why We Chose Arundhati. India Today Oct-27, 1997. 28.

de Beauvoir, Simonne. The Second Sex (Le deuxieme sexe) paris trans. And ed. H.M.

Parshley, London : Jonathan Cape, 1949. 19.

Forster, E.M. Aspects of The Novel, Newyork : Hercourt, 1927. 45.

Khair, Tabish. “Can the Subaltern (Shout and Smash)?” world literature written in English,

2000. 14.

Mann. Qtd. by Sharma, K.L. Dimensions of Social Stratification, perspectives on social

stratification, Rawath publications, Jaipur, 2010. 137.

Patil, Mallikarjun. Arundhati Roy’s The God of Small Things: A Study of Theme, Language

and Style, Arundhati Roy’s Fictional World, (A collection of critical essays) Edited

by A.N. Dwivedi, B.R. Publishing corporation. 57.

Rao, Ranga. “The Book(er) of the year” The Hindu, Sunday, November 16, 1997. 13.

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things, published by India Ink, 1997.

---. The Shape of the Beast conversations with Arundhati Roy, published by Penguin books

India 2009. 181.

Singh, N.P. Women in The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy the Novelist extraordinary.

Ed. R.K. Dhawan, Published by Prestige Books 1999. 68-69.

Stevenson, John. British Society, 1914-45, London : Penguin, 1984.

Surendran, K.V. The God of Small Things, A Sega of Lost Dreams Unadulterated Effluents

Published by Atlantic Publisers 2007. 179.

Van Ghent, Dorothy. The English Novel: Formand Function, Newyork: Harper, 1953. 3, 6.