If you ever have a feeling of having fallen off a cliff and being hurt check, 1) Have really fallen off a cliff or are you dreaming about it? 2) Are you reading Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things. That is the feeling. But it is a good feeling somehow like the melancholy of getting your heart broken.
The first chapter of The God Of Small Things is sheer poetry. And throughout the novel she manages to reinvent English language, bending its basic, grammatical and synctactical rules, and that is actually talking about the least magical aspect of the book. It makes you become a part of Ayemenem. And for reader it is a very demanding novel, emotionally, intellectually. Actually there's a scene in the novel where Estha wriggles Rahel's hands into opposite directions, by the end of the novel the writer manages to do that to your heart.
What the writer chooses to remains true to is "the small things" instead of the "god". Because once you invent a God, more than spiritual or divine it is human nature to seek moral justice but Roy chooses to remain true to the Love laws. And through Baby Kochamma and Pillai, she brings to us the worldly-wise who prefer to crush such love laws, irrespective of their current station use a circumstance as a springboard (upper caste status and the rising communist fever respectively,) to get to their desired ends.
The history of Kerala has forever fascinated Indians because it is so different from the rest of the India. And destiny (story of Tatri for instance) has always had some plans for this land. Perhaps testing its limit.
The history house, it is converted into a "period" hotel. It is used as a symbol of capitalism (succeeding,) against the rising tide of communism in Kerala. People have questioned that the character of Velutha has no voice in the book but i am presuming that it has been purposely used as a symbol of the actual position of the character in the society where he has no voice. However his father who has assumed and submitted to his position in the society at least has a chance to show his outrage which is in a very gory way appreciated by the upper crust.
The last chapter is an obituary of sorts to the relation of Ammu & Vel. The book is emotionally demanding throughout and gets only intense at the second last chapter. Instead of ending it at a doomsday stop, the writer chooses to put the affair in the end as a sign that it was beautiful while it lasted.
