I know that it’s been a while since this book came into the stands. I also understand that it’s been more than a decade that it won a booker prize. What I can’t understand is why it took me so long to decide to read this. Now that I have, I can’t wait to share my thoughts here at MS.
As you turn pages, chapter by chapter this book takes you to a place deep inside the back waters of Kerala. To keep you involved and relate to the characters the writer Arundhati Roy, at the beginning of every chapter, makes a sustained effort to paint a detailed picture of, well. everything! Here is an extract from the book:
"The green-for-the-day had seeped from the trees. Dark palm leaves were splayed like drooping combs against the monsoon sky. The orange sun slid through their bent grasping teeth. A squadron of fruit bats sped across the gloom. In the abandoned ornamental garden, Rahel, watched by lolling dwarves and a forsaken cherub, squatted by the stagnant pond and watched toads hop from stone to scummy stone. Beautiful ugly toads. Slimy. Warty. Croaking. Yearning unkissed princes trapped inside them. Food for snakes that lurked in the long June grass. Rustle, Lunge. No more toad to ho from stone to scummy stone. No more prince to kiss"
Well passages like this greet you almost every time you start a new chapter and really, you can’t help but see what the author wants you to see and more crucially HOW she wants you to see things. Whether it is the torrential never ending rains which bring out the awesome beauty of lush green Kerala backwaters or the magnificently described kathakali dance by the locals who given their poverty are forced to perform their act in front of foreign tourists. Pure Rich Art degraded to being simply a “Regional Flavour”. How their frustration and guilt boils down to their act of mad dancing while narrating the Mahabharata. And how even the epic has so many double standards. we are mere mortals. And not to forget perhaps one of the most sensual love making sequence I have read. something you will find yourself waiting for. as the story unfolds.
The story is based in a small town in Kerala named Ayemenem and around several ordinary(but extraordinary)characters at the time of turbulent Socialist uprising.
It covers in detail the various pretentions and hypocrisies that almost define the Indian society even now. However what is great about Roy’s writing is that she never reveals this as the main intention of the book. It the reader who gets drawn into the story and only senses marginally the strong undercurrent of the social issues at hand.
It is very very difficult to summarise the story, and to be honest I don’t think I can do justice to the book if I try.
Its amazing how there are no lead characters in this huge story. Every character is so well described and explained that you are at a loss as to who do you empathasise with more. When they are sad you cant help but feel sad for them. When they are happy, you cant avoid a smile.So read this book for the sheer class of the writing. The amazing narrative throughout and a story that will seem so far away from your life yet so real. It is a fictional novel all right but you won’t discount the chance that such characters did exist and such things did happen. God of small things. A must read.