The God of Small Things

"Enjoy the little things for one day you may look back and realise they were the big things"-Robert Brault. Do you remember the last time you laughed your heart out, or when you did the silliest thing since it was too childish for the adult world? We fail to realise how closely entwined everything around us is until we fear losing the taste of it. A contemporary writer Arundhati Roy did the same thing when she told the story of twins Rahel and Estha in her book 'The God of Small Things'.

Twins reunited but lost the track of time when they realised that small things matter; Image Source: QBN Review of Books

In Kerala, Ayemenem, the story takes place in the late 1960s, between twins Rahel and Estha who reunite in the town after 23 years of separation. After their mother Ammu escaped the chuckle of her ill-tempered father and then an unsuccessful marriage, she along with her two kids and father's sister, Baby, settled in Ayemenem. While Ammu's brother fell in love and married an English woman for a couple of years, their marriage did not work out, so he and Sophie returned to India. Velutha was a low caste worker of a pickle factory adjacent to Ammu's house, who had a friendly relationship with kids and later went on to fall in love with Ammu.

The story centers around these characters and paves a path for a few seemingly insignificant anomalies that lead to disastrous outcomes in their lives. The twins' reminiscences of those times create a perfect parallel to how even tragedy becomes a negligible subject when memories are drained by tragedy. In their trip into the past, they explore how each character coped with living in a culture where they find it hard to search for acceptance. Adding the social and political turmoil only exacerbated these emotional difficulties and enormously affected their personal lives. You know, even the smallest of things can have a huge impact.

As for those like Ammu who was a single mother and divorced struggle to keep a relationship with a low caste worker, or Velutha who experiences all manner of cruelty from those above his caste, it is the love laws that decide who you love or do not. Additionally, it shows how kids at that time experienced the Green Revolution with an intense cry for livelihood and environmental degradation and how the family tragedy of losing Sophie led to an irreparably shattered future.

Through the story, Roy uses amazing prose and symbolism, dreamlike style with breathtaking insight into human nature to portray the societal hierarchy and stereotypes that are a part of our day-to-day life. The author vividly depicts Indian societies, but in an aesthetic yet realistic sense that leaves readers intrigued even during the tragic events.

As the name suggests, the novel did begin with petty things but brings a rebuttal of patriarchy, environment, laws, caste, governments to highlight and allows some voices to rise which would otherwise have been silenced even in today's times. Thus, the dynamic nature of human relationships can be witnessed in contemporary society while discussing how each character in this story is bound by a system that held no significance to society, and Arundhati made sure to disdains it at every opportunity found. The novel even exemplified the creative possibility of slamming off the chains of history and reviving Indian literature alongside.

However, without going much into spoilers, The God of Small Things is a story about an Indian family plunged into decline by tragedy and scandal, while the narratives are mostly set in the past where twins recount their separation due to the follow up of those tragic events. A semiautobiographical tale interpreted in a very fragmented fashion, they revolve around the struggle of the Ipe family through a patch of flashbacks and a series of sidetracks, offering one of the newest literary releases from India. A phenomenal amount of publicity has surrounded this novel, which has been translated into over forty different languages and has already sold more than eight million copies. This book by Roy has received worldwide attention and was even presented with the 1997 Bookers Prize on this day.

An emphasis of this novel is on how small things in life impact people's lives and behaviour. This book itself was the debut work of an author who was formerly an aerobic instructor and a part-time screenwriter. Today, despite being a global celebrity and perhaps the most controversial person in India, Arundhati Roy indeed began with small things.

Since then, Roy has published dozens of controversial papers, essays, nonfiction books, and worked on documentaries. Furthermore, she is well-known for actively advocating against government corruption, illicit laws such as NRC/CAA, the degradation of the environment, caste-based discrimination and inequality at large, Kashmir independence, and the list goes on. Eventually, even her first fiction was all about these seemingly insignificant things which in the end, turn the life of someone upside down, which is best illustrated in her book, The God of Small Things.

The Book that took The Bookers Prize in 1997; Image Source: CBC Books