Raghav Jolly

A very unique novel about age-old concepts of casteism, inter-caste love, patriarchy, chauvinism and social boundaries. The book is very craftly written indirectly attacking these social evils being practised yet till now in our society being unnoticed. The book represents the stories of its each character so that we are well acquainted with their personalities and can be the judge to classify each consequence as fair or unfair on our part. The three main characters of the novel **Estha, Rahel** ( single egg- unidentical twins) and **Ammu** ( mother of the twins) have a balance of an ecstatic and a traumatic life leading to a melancholic end. Rahel and Estha has the strongest relation among all as they consider themselves as one unit and knows about each others feeling without even directly confessing them, hence they know how to comfort each other. Unfortunately they two goes through many ups and downs as Estha is molested as a child and is traumatized by it since. On the other hand Rahel lives being a total fool and is tormented during high school. Their worse nightmare comes true when the fraternal twins are separated from each other and their only source of comfort is snatched away. Ammu being the lady who crosses every patriarchal boundary to outgrow from the trauma of abusive marriage and devotes her life to grow her beloved children into a more respectful, intelligent and caring beings — a complete opposite of their father. The mature Ammu too one day gets swayed away by her feelings and commits an unthinkable thing which is considered a heinous crime by our society- getting involved with a man of a lower caste. Her this steps makes her and her children’s life fall into abyss of forever despair. We can see the time switching between past and present in a very rhythmic and poetic manner that it wants to tell us how pain of past has inflicted and changed the humans of present . Some light hearted puns are used to make the story more exciting. The one thing I did not like about the book is that it has failed to explain or answer some of the questions raised by my curiosity by not giving a significant explanation upon some of the circumstances created in the story. For example, I did not understood how Sophie Mol actually died and how was Estha’s life with his father that made him as total reciprocal from his previous personality. It has left many of the questions unanswered leaving its readers in a state of total anonymity. I overall liked the book , its writing style, prose used, clever repetition of words, characters and its linkage with actual reality of our society. Finally at the end we learn about who the God of small things was and why he has been termed like that; it was **Velutha** — the man who used to love Ammu’s children during the day and admired Ammu at night. He was termed like that because both them knew that their relation can only cherish these small moments and cannot go beyond that due to the construction of these social norms and boundaries. There was no hope for a happy ending for them still their forbidden lobe sparks and breaks the love laws made by the society - ‘ who should be loved and how much'.