The God of Small Things

It was a sky-blue day in December 69, the 19th Island. It was the kind of time in the life of a family when something happens to nudge its hidden morality from its resting place and make it bubble to the surface and float for a while, in clear view for everyone to see. A sky-blue Plymouth, with the sun in its tail fins, sped past young rice fields and old rubber trees on its way to Cochin. Further east, in a small country with similar landscape, jungles, rivers, rice fields, communists, enough bombs were being dropped to cover all of it in six inches of steel. Here, however, it was peacetime, and the family in the Plymouth traveled without fear or foreboding. The Plymouth used to belong to Papachi, Rahel and Esther's grandfather. Now that he was dead, it belonged to Mamachi, their grandmother, and Rahel and Esther were on their way to Cochin to see the Sound of Music for the third time. They knew all the songs. After that, they were all going to stay at Hotel Sea Queen, with the old food smell. Bookings had been made. Early next morning, they would go to Cochin Airport to pick up Charco's ex-wife, their English aunt, Margaret Kojima, and their cousin, Sophie Moore, who were coming from London to spend Christmas at Imonum. Earlier that year, Margaret Kojima's second husband, Joe, had been killed in a car accident. When Charco heard about the accident, he invited them to Imonum. He said that he couldn't bear to think of them spending a lonely, desolate Christmas in England, in a house full of memories. Amu said that Charco had never stopped loving Margaret Kojima. Mamachi disagreed. She liked to believe that he had never loved her in the first place. Rahel and Esther had never met Sophie Moore. They'd heard a lot about her, though, that last week. From baby Kojima, from Kojimaria, and even Mamachi. None of them had met her, either. But they all behaved as though they already knew her. It had been the, what will Sophie Moore think, week. That whole week, baby Kojima eavesdropped relentlessly on the twins' private conversations. And whenever she caught them speaking in Malayalam, she levied a small fine, which was deducted at source, from their pocket money. She made them write lines, impositions, she called them. I will always speak in English, I will always speak in English, a hundred times each. When they were done, she scored them out with her red pen to make sure that all lines were not recycled for new punishments. She had made them practice an English car song for the way back. They had to form the words properly and be particularly careful about their pronunciation. Pro-nun-ci-ation. Rejoice in the Lord always. And again I say rejoice, rejoice, rejoice. And again I say rejoice. Esther's full name was Esther Penarco. Rahel's was Rahel. For the time being, they had no surname because Amu was considering reverting to her maiden name, though she said that choosing between her husband's name and her father's name didn't give a woman much of a choice. Esther was wearing his beige and pointy shoes and his Elvis puff, his special outing puff. His favorite Elvis song was Party. Some people like to rock, some people like to roll, he would croon, when nobody was watching, strumming a badminton racket, curling his lip like Elvis, but moon and an agroon and gonna satisfy my soul, let's have a party. Esther had slanting, sleepy eyes, and his new front teeth were still uneven on the ends. Rahel's new teeth were waiting inside her gums like words in a pen. It puzzled everybody that an 18 minute age difference could cause such a discrepancy in front tooth timing. 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 A1 lady's store, that's what you'd get, two beads on a rubber band. Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it, ten to two. One of her.