Voices in the Backyard : A Peep into The God of Small Things

Abstract

Nobody is at home. This is the quintessential, as it casts its shadowy mould on my fribbling grey and red, theme omnilurking through the pages of contemporary Indian literature in English. I’m not comfortable, to confess, with the word ‘theme’; I would rather call it ‘something’, because ‘something’ has possibility of ‘everything’ and an aura of ‘nothing’. And, this is what lurks from the jungle of words spread over (in)different ‘pageal’ territories. From loss of inheritance in Kiran Desai to Upamanu Chatterjee’s Augusts (English, though) through difficult daughters of Manju Kapur and Anita Desai’s turmoil in custody, we can feel someone, at least, heaving one’s heart out to ingress few drops of familial elixir. But, alas!

From the general to the specific, I wish to eavedrop into the family of The God of The Small Things. Nobody seems home, here too. Though there’s this family, a big family; but, everybody’s a loner, a prisoner, a sufferer, a victim. I wouldn’t dare touch upon their soul ‘like an invidious doctor’; rather, I would sit ‘silently’ with Rahel for sometime along the river bank or would go for a very long ‘unending’ walk with her into the winding Ayemenem roads; or, would try to listen into  Amu Ipe’s whispers, the cacophony of her heart’s desire. The God of Small Things may have grand themes and schemes, but to me it presents a family in search of family… loneliness in search of comforts of a roof...a hand in the need of a hand…and, many hearts in search of their symphonic beats. This paper is an attempt to peep into Arundhati  Roy’s characters’ topsy-turvied world to seek colour for a family painting which has all, almost, colours that make a painting a painting, if not a family.