The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy – A Review

I was 12 when I first read God of Small Things (GOST). For all I espouse about how kids should have unfiltered access to books and they will pick what they want and we shouldnt censor books for kids etc etc., I have always wondered whether I picked GOST up at the absolutely wrong age.

I never wanted to re-read again, a second chance, rather choosing to hate the book for decades now, adding it to my infamous “famous books I dislike”, making my abhorrence public at every turn available.

And then I read Arundhati’s memoir (mostly about her mother but so much about her and her life actually), Mother Mary Comes to Me, a few weeks back. Something cracked open within me then, sorrow for the child she had been, admiration at her writing prowess, and a whole host of emotions in between. Perhaps GOST is worth a retry, I told myself, as I decided to keep my childhood (childish?) hatred at bay.

This time I read GOST as a grown adult, my heart breaking every time for those two kids, Estha and Rahel, bile rising up within at the adults around them who should have known better, been better, treated them better.

This time, I pause at whole paragraphs, re-reading and re-re-reading them, nodding to myself why Arundhati deserves not just the Booker but all the adulation she has received over the years. Sample this, about Kathakali.

It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you want to know again. That is their mystery and their magic.

This time, I draw parallels between this fictional work and the real one, her memoir, reconfirming that all fiction carries oodles of nonfiction within it. How Ammu calls them millstones, how Rahel talks about other people’s homes all of it strikes different.

I STILL can’t deal with the ending, but this time, I know it exists, and I step around it gingerly, looking at the rest and marvelling all along.

I STILL can’t deal with some of the ugh descriptions, of dirt and dust, the stuff Indian eyes are attuned to avoid, because who wants to absorb those sights and scenes.

But, in my revised world, GOST is a four star (a star each added for every decade that passed between my last read and this), a book I’d like to read time and again in the years to come, because I am sure to discover something I missed the previous times.