sgnihT llamS fo doG ehT

At first glance Arundhati Roy, author of The God of Small Things, doesn't seem to have much in common with the Mark Twain. Besides the obvious, a whole century and half a planet between 19th century American Twain and the India's Roy, she is much younger than Twain was when he whipped out his masterpiece Huckleberry Finn (and a lot better looking).

But on second look the two are similar. Twain and Roy both grew up in the stagnant backwaters of nations torn by ethnic tension and emerging from an industrial revolution, and their hometowns are the skeletons of stories that they flesh out with friends and neighbors from their childhood. Pre bellum Missouri was and post colonial India is the frontier country of the English language, and the natives aren't above innovating with language when it serves their purpose. As Twain corrupted proper spelling to revive Mississippi Basin dialects, so Roy uses capital letters and punctuation freely to lend nuance, emphasis and irony to her story.

Like Twain, Roy employs children to tell her story. Told from Estha and Rahel's point of view (but not like Huck's matter-of-fact, first person narrative), it was a little disconcerting for me until I caught on. Embellished by the imagination of Rahel, the story gains authenticity, and the terror-to-come intensity, when seen through waist high eyes. Children are unencumbered by social restraints and inhibitions, and their darts at social injustice, the targets of Huckleberry Finn and The God of Small Things, fly true and sure.

Roy's Hannibal Missouri (Twain's St. Petersburg) is Aymanam and her Mississippi is the river Meenachal, and like Twain, her river is a silent but essential player in the plot that carries her characters to their fate. Huck and Tom's Indian counterparts are Rahel (girl) and Estha (boy), fraternal twins that are no less mischievous or precocious than their American cousins, and are employed similarly to poke fun at their betters and deflate their elders puffed up egos.

"Miss Mitten complained to Baby Kochamma about Estha's rudeness, and about their

reading backwards. She told Baby Kochamma that she had seen Satan in their eyes. nataS ni rieht seye.

.

They were made to write - In future we will not read backwards. In future we will not read backwards. A hundred times. Forwards.

.

A few monthes later Miss mitten was killed by a milk van in Hobart, across the road from a cricket oval. To the twins there was hidden justice in the fact that the milk van had been reversing. "

I couldn't help wondering if the funeral scene in chapter one wasn't borrowed from Twain's Tom Sawyer, except that instead of a beetle biting a stray dog during the service, it's a baby bat flying up an old auntie's dress. Roy's twins run away from home and cross the river to set up house far from menacing grownups, like Tom and Huck's pirate hideout on a river island. In fact, Roy's story of a family destroyed when forbidden love crosses social barriers is a chapter out of Huckleberry Finn (chapters 17 and 18, the Shepherdson/Grangerford feud)

The God of Small Things isn't one story but two; the misunderstandings and hatred that spell tragedy, and the devastation of all involved in the aftermath. The stories flow concurrently on Roy's river and converge in one day.

"Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can
affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen
hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house – the charred clock, the
singed photograph, the scorched furniture – must be resurrected from the ruins
and examined. Preserved. Accounted for."

Roy is no more bound by time than she is by language. Her river doesn't flow in chronological order, but on currents of her choosing and the reader floats along with the story like her characters drifting in the stream towards tragedy. Only unlike them, you know the impending doom, for Roy spells it out in the first chapter and continues to remind you to the point of nagging throughout. This kind of foreshadowing isn't unknown, but while Shakespeare is subtle, Roy drills it in with a jack hammer. But by throwing aside time and order she hasn't diminished the tension or deflated the climax; if anything it she has tightened the noose. If you've seen the movie "21 Grams", then you get the idea of the terrifying effect that jumping between flashes past, present and future can be.

Twain and Roy share a few devices and they're exorcising the same demon, but they are sailing different rivers. Twain never once questions or criticizes slavery or racial prejudice. He pricks the absurd mentality of racism with humor and tickles the conscience. His river is flowing towards freedom and enlightenment, and he trusted the reader to come to the right conclusions and find the same landing that Huck tied up to in the end.

Roy bludgeons the reader with caste prejudice at its ugliest. Her river is polluted and poisoned by hatred and ignorance, a rancid swamp sucking humanity under like poor Sophie Mol. There's no harbor on the banks of this river, and Roy isn't navigating to the safety of fresh water. She thinks that the current is too strong and the poison is too deep. There's no hope in Roy's river.

We are being sucked under, drowning. All we can hope for is to break the surface for a fleeting moment before sinking forever.

"The Big things ever lurked inside. They knew that there is nowhere for them to
go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things."

Arundhati Roy is an excellent writer, but her river isn't flowing like the Mississippi. Her river flows in reverse. She's like Rahel and Estha; it's like she's reading Huckleberry Finn backwards.

The God of Small Things isn't very uplifting.