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LOVE, FEAR, GUILT/BLAME & INNOCENCE in God Of Small Things By :Marisa…
LOVE, FEAR, GUILT/BLAME & INNOCENCE in God Of Small Things By :Marisa Schenkel
LOVE
Given to him in love. Something still and small. Unbearably precious. But when they made love he was offended by her eyes.
When she was eighteen, Baby Kochamma fell in love with a
handsome young Irish monk, Father Mulligan, who was in Kerala for a year on deputation from his seminary in Madras.
Just to be near him. Close enough to smell
his beard. To see the coarse weave of his cassock. To love him just by looking at him.
Velutha watched his lover dress. When she was ready she squatted facing him. She touched him lightly with her fingers and left a trail of goosebumps on his skin.
The fees were low and it wasn't hard to scratch out a living, staying in the hostel, eating in the subsidized student mess, rarely going to class, working instead as a draftsman in gloomy architectural firms that exploited cheap student labor to render their presentation drawings and to blame when things went wrong.
But worst of all, Estha 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 bulb reflected in it.
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Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.
Baby Kochamma loved the Ayemenern house and cherished the furniture that she had inherited by outliving everybody else.
Most of Rahel's hair sat on top of her head like a fountain. It was held together by a Love-in-Tokyo—two beads on a rubber band, nothing to do with Love or Tokyo. In Kerala, Love-in-Tokyos have
withstood the test of time, and even today if you were to ask for one at any respectable A-1 Ladies. Store, that's what you'd get.
She lay in it in her yellow Crimplene bell-bottom
with her hair in a ribbon and her Made-in-England go-go bag that she loved
Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.
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Baby Kochamma returned from Rochester with
a diploma in Ornamental Gardening, but more in love with FatherMulligan than ever. There was no trace of the slim, attractive girl that she had been.
Despite not knowing any of this, why did Margaret Kochamma blame Estha for what had happened to Sophie? Perhaps she had a mother's instinct
that Rahel brought
her in the cheese and butter compartment. She suspected that these days, even the innocent and the round-eyed could be crockery crooks, or cream-bun cravers, or thieving diabetics cruising Ayemenern for imported insulin.
True, he was a Paravan. True, he had misbehaved. But these were troubled times and technically, as per the law, he was an innocent man.
Their boat had capsized and the English child
had drowned by accident. Which left the police saddled with the Death in Custody of a technically innocent man.
That Rahel brought her in the cheese and butter compartment. She suspected that these days, even the innocent and the round-eyed could be crock-ery crooks, or cream-bun cravers, or thieving diabetics cruising Ayemenern for imported insulin.
By then Esthappen and Rahel had learned that the world had other ways of breaking men. They were already familiar with the smell. Sicksweet. Like old roses on a breeze
Baby Kochamma's fear lay rolled up on the car floor like a damp, clammy cheroot. This was just the beginning of it.
Her old fears of Revolution and the Marxist-Leninist menace had been rekindled by new television worries about the growing numbers of desperate and dispossessed people.
The fear that over the years would grow to consume her. That would make her lock her doors and windows. That would give her two hairlines and both her mouths. Hers too, was an ancient, age-old fear. The fear of being dispossessed.
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 e said, but the way he said it. Not wbathe did, but the way he did it.
Frightened eyes and a fountain looked back at Ammu."D'you know what happens when you hurt people?" Ammu said. "When you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That's what careless words do. They make people love you a little less."
Ammu said a grown-up's Hello to Margaret Kochamma and a children's Hell-oh to Sophie Mol. Rahel watched hawk-eyed to try and gauge how much Ammu loved Sophie Mol, but couldn't.
When they left the police station Ammu was crying, so Estha and Rahel didn't ask her what veshya meant. Or, for that matter, illegitimate. It was the first time they'd seen their mother cry
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