The
Teeth of Perjury and Immanity
in
‘The God of Small Things’
Dr. B. Parvathi
Arundhati
Roy’s novel The God of Small Things attracted attention much before she
won the Booker Prize. Kamala Das, a renowned poet remarked on the day following
announcement of the award that Arundhati Roy, unlike many others, was lucky. R.
K. Narayan felt that certain parts of the book are nauseating. A renowned
teacher, scholar and critic Prof. C. D. Narasimhaiah found no reason to
appreciate it at all. Why should the Booker be given to a trickster? He
demanded angrily. To him the book is cheap, vulgar and a tiresome rope trick
performance. Stephen Moss, literary editor of The Guardian remarked that the Booker
is often settling for a “median” book that evokes no strong feelings either
way; The God of Small Things is an over written book according to Moss; he
feels that Quarantine, by Jim Grace short listed for Booker, is a better work.
However, Binoo John and Arthus Pais praised that “Roy sure has an eagle’s eye
for the beautiful and the tragic”. Salman Rushdie observed that the book is
“full of ambition and sparkle and is written in a highly wrought and utterly
personal style.”
What is there
in the novel that has evoked so diverse a response? The answer lies in its
focus on the excesses of life, its dark side with silver linings that surely
fade away. To a conventional and fortunate reader Arundhati Roy’s
unconventional use of English to picture the steep decline of ethical values
may have been very offending. But she has very successfully reflected in
fictional terms the alarming rise in the elements and ailments, which have been
nibbling at the very vitals of society and life. Here is the story of a lone woman
with twin children who seeks escape from faceless domestic tyranny, who seeks
love but does not even find solace, who turns to an intelligent man, able and
capable of love like her but brutally victimized for these very qualities. The
God of Small Things is a remarkable novel for its astonishingly fine weaving of
individual social, political, gender and ethical issues pictured in a
heart-rending tale of inhumanity. The Indo-China war of 1962 serves as backdrop
for the birth of the Hindu-Christian hybrid twin children Estha and Rahel to
Ammu. The dominance of communist ideology imported from Russia and China, at
grass root level, serves to oppress the lowest member in the party and promote
personal interests of its local leader. Collusion of political, police and
family forces against a lone, helpless low caste man demonstrates the
helplessness of ‘equality before law’ which remains a myth in the face of
poisonous scheming for narrow petty gains. Education is a male prerogative and
woman’s right to vote is hardly an index of her improved status in the family.
Daughters with mixed children have claims to neither property nor affection in
the parental house. Marriage as a social institution sans union of minds brings
forth-unhappy generations. Thus, in The God of Small Things, Arundhati Roy has
captured in detail delicate human emotions like love and longing and inhuman
traits like greed, jealousy, bitterness and ambition whose interplay results in
the devastation of young, small and weak. She has also framed the death of
ethical considerations, and the consequent unhappy, unproductive and atrophied
lives. Another revelatory feature of the novel lies in its capturing of
duplicity and deliberate utterance of lies, which hurtle it to its sad
conclusion and the characters to their disastrous fates. In fact, the silent
orchestration of subtle and deliberate lies and precise manipulation of events
by elders whom ‘childhood had abandoned without a trace’, are stupefying beyond
words. The rendering of all these with sadness and compassion for the victims
makes Arundhati Roy’s novel a classic.
The God of
Small Things presents the sacrifice of caste, class, morality, ideology,
revolution and love at the altar of self. A frightful adult world which has
lapped up consideration and kindness thrusts itself up for readers’ gaze. The
loveless adult world has nothing to offer to the young who break:, under
pressure, ‘love laws’ again and again on compulsion, and finally in an
incestuous union of grief. The older generation of the Ayemenam house leaves
nothing behind for the young to hold on or cling to except the terribly
infertile (emotional) terrain where only grotesque gardens of cacti grow, where
young lives are distorted hideously by pain, suffering and sin.
The God of
Small Things has been a much-discussed book. The Booker has certainly brought
it into the limelight, which it highly deserves. Today, thanks to the TV,
writers can be heard and viewed and let me confess that Arundhati Roy makes a
very positive and pleasant impression on the viewers for many reasons. She, as
a writer, has captured a contemporary reality in its complex social, political,
ideological, class, caste, family, emotional, logical and illogical conflicts
critically and with compassion. The novel traces four generations of Rev. John
Ipe’s family. It is about Mammachi, Pappachi, grand aunt Baby Kochamma, Ammu,
Chacko, Rabel and Estha, about Kochu Maria the old cook, Velutha and his
drunkard father, disabled brother, about comrade Pillai’s plastic ideological
fidelity, the police inspector’s rigid duty mindedness and about the creepy
‘orange drink lemon drink man’.
One begins to
wonder if there is more violence today which has seeped Tom the author’s
conscious mind shaping itself into fiction. Arundhati Roy’s book presents this
disturbing aspect of life in an efficiently structured manner. Cruelty and
violence run as undercurrents in the novel which erupt into pictures of disgust
and obscenity. The incidence of adultery and incest coming especially from a woman’s
pen must have upset conventionality and respectability. The instance of
pedophilia also joins the list. However, the novel is not a justification of
adultery or incest. It does not aim to address these issues directly but
provides the background to them—a case of lovelessness, injustice, inequality
and discrimination within the family. Adultery and incest here are not the of
depravity but are born of an urge and an urgent need for solace. It is in this
context that the almost mixed up presentation of events unravel a cruelty, an
insensitivity and a violence both at the physical level as well as
psychological levels.
Arundhati Roy
throws light on the basic attitudes of human behaviour and questions the very
meaning of civilization by presenting a world unredeemed by consideration and
kindness in The God of Small Things. The novel shows many indices on various
levels. The undercurrents of sadness are also a plea for better understanding
and for justice in a thoughtless and insensitive world. There is a very fine
juxtaposition of attitudes manifest within the family regarding the treatment
given to a son and daughter. The novel presents the sacrifice of caste, class,
morality, ideology, revolution and love at the altar of self. Woman’s right to
vote is hardly an index of her improved social status. Daughters with hybrid
children have no claims to property or respect in the parental house. Marriage
as a social institution sans union of minds breeds unhappy generations as
suggested by the description of Ammu’s grand mother— Rev. John Ipe’s
wife—Aleyooty Ammachi’s photo. “With her eyes she looked in the direction that
her husband looked with her heart she looked away”. Arundhati Roy has captured
in detail human and inhuman traits like love, greed, jealousy and ambition
whose interplay results in devastation and desolation. Most significantly she
has also caught the death of ethical consideration in the choice made by
children between their life and Velutha’s end. The result is an unhappy,
unproductive life; and young lives are distorted hideously by pain and
suffering; growing up in a loveless world the young lives are wasted and become
reduced to animal level. The hideous and joyless union of the twins cannot
assure a new life or love. They are doomed to live wasted and atrophied lives.
What future is there for such people? The future of love is destroyed in the
reign of selfishness.
Interracial
marriage, interstate marriages have not succeeded in sowing seeds of
harmony—marriage itself is a failure made so because of inadequacies in some
and individuality in others in the novel. Marriage as an institution “the ~’d
has served to a large extent for increasing population and to serve needs and
keep out feelings. It has separated ‘Needs and Feelings’ where especially
within marriage there are no feelings and where love is there is no marriage.
The family of Rev. John Ipe disintegrates in the fourth generation into
emptiness and quietness.