« Gentle
half-moons have gathered under their eyes and they are as old as Ammu was when
she died. Thirty-one. »
« Her
tears trickled down from behind them and trembled along her jaw like raindrops
on the edge of a roof. »
« And
once more the yellow church swelled like a throat with voices. »
« Sophie
Mol died because she couldn’t breathe. Her funeral killed her. »
« Ammu’s
tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real. »
« She
had forgotten just how damp the monsoon air in Ayemenem could be. Swollen
cupboards creaked. Locked windows burst open. Books got soft and wavy between
their covers. Strange insects appeared like ideas in the evenings and burned
themselves on Baby Kochamma’s dim 40-watt bulbs. »
« Over
time he had acquired the ability to blend into the background of wherever he
was- into bookshelves, gardens, curtains, doorways, streets – to appear
inanimate, almost invisible to the untrained eye. It usually took strangers a
while to notice him even when they were in the same room with him. It took them
even longer to notice that he never spoke. Some never noticed at all. Estha
occupied very little space in the world. »
« Rahel
drifted into marriage like a passenger drifts towards an unoccupied chair in an
airport lounge. With a Sitting Down sense. »
« She
was eighty-three. Her eyes spread like butter behind her thick glasses. »
« She
felt she spoke much better English than everybody else. This made her lonelier than
ever. »
« Rahel’s
new teeth were waiting inside her gums, like words in a pen. »
« Occasionally,
when Ammu listened to songs that she loved on the radio, something stirred
inside her. A liquid ache spread under her skin, and she walked out of the
world like a witch, to a better, happier place. On days like this, there was
something restless and untamed about her. As though she had temporarily set
aside the morality of motherhood and divorceehood. Even her walk changed from a
safe mother-walk to another wilder sort of walk. She wore flowers in her hair
and carried magic secrets in her eyes. She spoke to no one. She spent hours on
the riverbank with her little plastic transistor shaped like a tangerine. She
smoked cigarettes and had midnight swims. »
« On
that skyblue December day, her wild, curly hair had escaped in wisps in the car
wind. Her shoulders in her sleeveless sari blouse shone as though they had been
polished with a high-wax shoulder polish. »
« He
explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the
lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside. »
« History’s
smell. Like old roses on a breeze. »
« Marxism
was a simple substitute for Christianity. Replace God with Marx, Satan with the
bourgeoisie, Heaven with a classless society, the Church with the Party, and
the form and purpose of the journey remained similar. An obsacle race, with a
prize at the end. »
« He
had an air hostess’s heart trapped in a bear’s body. »
« ‘When
you hurt people, they begin to love you less. That’s what careless words do.
They make people love you a little less.’ A cold moth with unusually dense
dorsal tufts landed lightly on Rahel’s heart. Where its icy legs touched her,
she got goose bumps. Six goose bumps on her careless heart. »
« Chacko
often said that his ambition was to die of overeating. Mammachi said it was a
sure sign of suppressed unhappiness. »
« His
gums were startingly pink, the reward for a lifetime’s uncompromising
vegetarianism. »
« Cement
kisses whirred through the air like small helicopters. »
« She
said that she felt like a road sign with birds shitting on her. »
« ‘If
you’re happy in a dream, Ammu, does that count ?’ Estha asked.
‘Does
what count ?’
‘The
happiness – does it count ?’
She
knew exactly what he meant, her son with his spoiled puff.
Because
the truth is, that only what counts counts.
The
simple, unswerving wisdom of children. »
« The
Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you
can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills
and trick endings. They don’t surprise you with the unforeseen. They are as
familiar as the house you live in. Or the smell of your lover’s skin. You know
how they end, yet you listen as though you don’t. In the way that although you
know that one day you will die, you live as though you won’t. In the Great
Stories you know who lives, who dies, who finds love, who doesn’t. And yet you
want to know again. »
« He
looked cheerful, as though he was with an imaginary friend whose company he
enjoyed. »
« Ammu
longed for him. Ached for him with the whole of her biology. »
« Her
eyes that were always somewhere else. »
« She
could feel how soft she felt to him. She could feel herself through him. Her
skin. The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was
smoke. »
« Biology
designed the dance. Terror timed it. »
The God of Small Things – Arundhati Roy
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