Set in Kerala, India, in 1969, it is the story of Rahel and her twin brother
Estha, who learn that their whole world can change in a single day, that love
and life can be lost in a moment.
Armed only with the invincible innocence of children, they seek to craft a childhood for themselves amid the wreckage that constitutes their family.
God of small things - An Excerpt:
Big Man The Laltain, Small Man the Mombati
Filth had laid seige to the Ayemenem House like a medieval army advancing on an enemy castle. It clotted every crevice and cling to the windowpanes.
Midges whizzed in teapots. Dead insects lay in empty vases
The floor was sticky. White walls had turned an uneven gray. Brass hinges and door handles were dull and greasy to the touch. Infrequently used plug points were clogged with grime. Lightbulbs had a film of oil on them. The only things that shone were the giant cockroaches that scurried around like varnished gofers on a film set.
Baby Kochamma had stopped noticing these things long ago, Kochu Maria, who noticed everything, had stopped caring.
The chaise lounge on which Baby Kochamma reclined had crushed peanut shells stuffed into the crevices of its rotting upholstery.
In an unonscious gesture of television-enforced democracy, mistress and servant both scrabbled unseeingly in the same bowl of nuts. Kochu Maria tossed nuts into her mouth. Baby Kochamma placed them decorously in hers
On The Best of Donahue the studio audience watched a clip from a film in which a black busker was singing "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" in a subway station. He sang sincerely, as though he really believed the words of the song. Baby Kochamma sang with him, her thin, quavering voice thickened with peanut paste. She smiled as the lyrics came back to her. Kochu Maria looked at her as though she had gone mad, and grabbed more than her fair share of nuts. The busker threw his head back when he hit the high notes (the where of "somewhere"), and the ridged, pink roof of his mouth filled the television screen. He was as ragged as a rock star, but his missing teeth and the unhealthy pallor of his skin spoke eloquently of a life of privation and despair. He had to stop singing each time a train arrived or left, which was often.
The studio audience clapped and looked compassionate.
There are big dreams and little ones.
Big Man the Laltain sahib, Small Man the Mombati
Big Man the Lantern. Small man the Tallow-stick.
Huge Man the Strobe Lights, he omitted to say. And Small Man the Subway Station.
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Last Updated: December 11, 1998