காஷ்மீரில் 68 ஆயிரம் மக்களை கொன்ற நாடு ஜனநாயக நாடா ? அருந்ததி ராய் ஆவேசம்…!

The God of Small Things (1997) is the debut novel of Arundhati Roy. It is a story about the childhood experiences of fraternal twins whose lives are destroyed by the “Love Laws” that lay down “who should be loved, and how. And how much.” The book is a description of how the small things in life affect people’s behaviour and their lives. The book won the Booker Prize in 1997.

The story, primarily takes place in a town named Aymanam now part of Kottayam district in Kerala, India. The temporal setting shifts back and forth from 1969, when fraternal twins Rahel and Esthappen are seven years old, to 1993, when the twins are reunited at age of 30,. Malayalam words are liberally used in conjunction with English. Some facets of Kerala life which the novel captures are communism, the caste system, and the Keralite Syrian Christian way of life.

Without sufficient dowry for a marriage proposal, Ammu Ipe becomes desperate to escape her ill-tempered father, Pappachi, and her bitter, long-suffering mother, Mammachi. She finally convinces her parents to let her spend a summer with a distant aunt in Calcutta. To avoid returning to Aymanam, she marries a man who assists managing a tea estate whom she later discovers to be a heavy alcoholic who physically abuses her and attempts to prostitute her to his boss to keep his job. She gives birth to Rahel and Estha, yet ultimately leaves her husband and returns to live with her mother and brother, Chacko, in Aymanam.

While studying at Oxford, Chacko fell in love and married an English woman named Margaret, Shortly after the birth of their daughter Sophie, Margaret reveals that she had been having an affair with another man, Joe. They divorce and Chacko, unable to find a job, returns to India. After the death of Pappachi, Chacko returns to Aymanam and takes over his mother’s business, called Paradise Pickles and Preserves.

Also living at their home in Aymanam is Pappachi’s sister, Baby Kochamma, whose actual name is Navomi Ipe, but is called Baby due to her young age at becoming a grand-aunt, and Kochamma being an honorific title for females. As a young girl, Baby Kochamma had fallen in love with Father Mulligan, a young Irish priest who had come to Aymanam to study Hindu scriptures. To get closer to him, Baby Kochamma had become a Roman Catholic and joined a convent, against her father’s wishes. After a few lonely months in the convent, Baby Kochamma had realised that her vows brought her no closer to the man she loved, with her father eventually rescuing her from the convent, sending her to America for an education, where she obtained a diploma in ornamental gardening. Due to her unrequited love with Father Mulligan, Baby Kochamma remained unmarried for the rest of her life, gradually becoming more and more bitter over the years. Throughout the book, Baby Kochamma delights in the misfortune of others and manipulates events to bring down calamity upon Ammu and the twins.
For more…
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_God_of_Small_Things#Indian_history_and_politics
(Attn: Sutharsan… Also this is from wikipedia)