Tuesday 18 June 2013

Review of " The God of Small Things", Yogesh Dubey.


“My dear Estha, how are you?  I am well. Ammu died yesterday” a letter written by a sister to inform her brother about her mother’s death. 

This disheartening line of letter is taken from the 1997 booker prize winning book “The God of Small Things”, the debut novel of Arundhati Roy. The plot of this book is woven around the childhood experiences of fraternal twins, Rahel and Estha. Their childhood lives were ruined when their divorced ammu(mother) left her husband and came back to Kottayam( Kerala) at her mother’s house.

In Kottayam also she had to face the atrocities of the cruel society due to which she  was neglected and was treated as a Vaishya (hoar), that proves more when she was not allowed to attend the funeral ceremony of her niece (her brother Chacko’s daughter) died in a road accident. Consequently, Rahel, Estha and her Ammu were not allowed to attend the death ceremony together with the family member and were standing at a distant place  like a pariah. The prime cause of discrimination was that she had an affair with an untouchable man of her village named Velutha.  

Moving further about the tragic story of the fraternal twins was beautifully described in the the seventh chapter of the book ‘Wisdom and Exercise Notebooks",  in which the twins mother died due to poor health and paucity  in a guest house. The way the heart throbbing incident is presented to the readers will surely bring tears in their eyes. It was articulately written that poor people can’t live or die peacefully.  

Her dead body was sent to electronic crematorium house as Church refused to bury in Church premises, as she was discarded from the society. She was accompanied by Chacko and Rahel in a municipality ambulance, where her dead body had to pass through several stages like a government offices a file moves. The pitiable condition of crematorium house was beautifully described in book, where it was compared with an abandoned railway station. 

Twins life became so arduous after their mother's death......Estha started working whereas Rahel focused on studies. They both had to pass several hard phases of life and because of it they met at the age of 31 after their mother's death. 

This articulately written book was praised by many News Papers, magazines world wide. Here is the review of the newspaper, The Pioneer, “A sad story, told very hilariously, very tenderly and very craftily”.



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