The God of Small Things (Retroactive Post)

The God of Small Things. The God of Loss. The ones who make and break the Love Laws. The things I think about after reading this book.

How the rules of society determine who is able and allowed to love whom. How the desire to fix these ideas in stone creates pain for all transgressors who are not truly transgressors, who are simply the forerunners of those things that are still taboo but which will someday (inshallah soon) be accepted. Caste and Race and Family Ties. The established network of each.

In some ways I too transgress these laws. I love a woman, and an androgynous one at that. It’s not so bad these days as it was in the past. I’m quite happy that I didn’t live in the 1950s, when I would probably have been forced or felt pressured by society to marry some nice decent chap and had 2.5 kids and would have probably never even acknowledged to myself that women are more beautiful to my eyes than men.
On the other hand, my current life presents its own set of problems. I’m a lesbian living in Morocco. My girlfriend is afraid to come visit because she thinks that we’ll get lynched. I think we’d be alright, but nothing is certain, no matter what country we’re in. And given that she comes from an activist background and has seen all the bad things that can potentially happen, I have to respect her fears.

One thing that struck me in the book is how characters who seem on the surface to be very minor actually wield great power. Baby Kochamma seems like just a petty old biddy, and indeed that’s exactly what she is. But she manipulates the stories that people hear and that they believe to dramatically alter the outcome of events. But for her manipulations, Velutha might have lived longer and died differently. Ammu would have survived longer as well. The twins would have grown up together and not gone mostly mad. All these lives that could have gone on happily and indefinitely were ended or altered irreparably. By someone who appeared only to play a peripheral part.

I wonder, in my life, if there are people in the background that I’m not aware of, people who pull strings to manipulate thoughts as she did. I shudder to think of it. I wonder, if I continue to live in countries that are more traditional, what will happen if I flout custom to too great a degree. I want to tear down all the walls and barriers that exist, but doing so would probably bring all of them down onto my own head. So I’ll tread cautiously. And I’ll pray to the Gods of Things Small and Large to keep me safe as I walk the tightrope of customs, cultures, and beliefs.

2 July 2008