The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy

Reading this amazing debut novel of Arundhati for the second time, I would like to start with emphasising on the beautiful language. Based in the state of Kerala in India, the book is a strong comment on the caste system and the experiences of Christian minorities in India. It is the story of the childhood experiences of two fraternal twins Rahel and Esthappen. It is set in Aymanam in Kerala and the temporal set up is 1969 to 1993. Few issues that the engrossing novel touches upon are the post colonial complex set up of the country, how a family tries to differentiate itself by emphasizing on it being an anglophile, but also pointing out how it is a limitation. As if your history is fractured. This somehow also hampers their feeling of belonging. But it also tends to maintain a social hierarchy. Coming to the Dalits of untouchables in Kerala, no matter what religion they take, the untouchables who are employed as manual scavengers cannot escape the claws of caste. And the iron clad laws of segregation tend to oversee all relationships. Social tension and class antagonism seem to determine all the relationships in the book.

A little about the storyline in the novel, Rahel and Estha have a turbulent childhood, in which the twins’ cousin Sophie drowns and Velutha whom the children adore and who is a Communist from an untouchable community is wrongly accused of the death. It is also because Velutha was involved with Ammu. He was punished for transgressing caste boundaries. In India while the Southern part claims of having social movements at the ground level, this book shows how caste discrimination continues to be rampant. His death impacts Ammu deeply. And financial reasons force her to separate the twins. When they meet after a long gap, they realize that nobody could understand them as well as they do each other. And in a strong symbolic way they sleep together to renew the intimacy of fraternal twins. A good book which through the story of a family and its struggles gives strong insights in the socio-political condition of India and a crucial issue like untouchability which continues to grip the nation and pull it backwards.