Course:The god of Small Things

I actually remember the day I bought the novel, I must have been back from London for the summer. Which meant I was 18, at the Diwan Bookstore branch in Zamalek. I was not that aware what a Man Booker was, only that is was a best selling book with an award. I used to still buy novels often on the grounds they were in the New York Times best seller list then. Later I would chose a quote from this novel to honour the death of the first person I ever love, perhaps I could not think of a better writer to appropriate their words at the point when mine seem to have failed. I was aware however shortly after finishing this novel how much it was lingering with me in many other ways.

There are novels you start reading and are unable to stop for their gripping story telling or thrilling events, with Roy I would linger at pages, the vividness of her metaphors and refuse to leave, if for a while.

There is something about the way Arundhati twists syntax and rearranges vocabulary to reach the meaning she desires that remains to this day for me as a true guide on to how to dismantle and decolonize language. It was also the first time I ever read this type of poetry in fiction. She is not afraid to sound absurd while clarifying that she is serious. For the 10 years thereafter I followed Roy’s writing through a random path of digital devotion of a sort, her non-fiction writing, the political, the criticisms of power (“and the paranoia of power”).

When her second novel ‘The Ministry of Utmost Happiness’ was published, I bought on kindle since I could not wait for the book to reach the shelves. Then gifted a copy to an intimate friend when the copies finally reached the same bookstore I bought the first novel from. And when they were done reading it I stole it and eventually brought it with me here to Vancouver.

“But what was there to say?

Only that there were tears. Only that Quietness and Emptiness fitted together like stacked spoons. Only that there was a snuffling in the hollows at the base of a lovely throat. Only that a hard honey-colored shoulder had a semicircle of teethmarks on it. Only that they held each other close, long after it was over. Only that what they shared that night was not happiness, but hideous grief.

Only that once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much.”

― Arundhati Roy, The God of Small Things

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