Roy God of Small Things

1. Roy God of Small Things Chapters 6-10

2. 1 Two roses red. Fatly. Fondly

3. 2 • It was the Day of the Play.

4. 3 • Two-egg Twin Ambassadors. Their Excellencies Ambassador E(lvis). Pelvis, and Ambassador S(tick). Insect.

5. 4 Thimble-drinker. Coffin-cartwheeler.

6. 5 • “Elvis Presley,” Baby Kochamma said for revenge. “I’m afraid we’re a little behind the times here.”

7. 6 • “Because you’re our Ammu and our Baba and you love us Double.”

8. 7 • Rahel’s “list” was an attempt to order chaos. She revised it constantly, torn forever between love and duty. It was by no means a true gauge of her feelings.”

9. 8 • “Safety First,” she announced.

10. 9 • As though sheer willpower was enough to suspend her children’s childhoods until she could afford to have them living with her.

11. 10 • “You must always check it,” she whispered hoarsely, as though phlegm was an Arithemtic answer sheet that had to be revised before it was handed in.

12. 11 The way she held knickers out for Rahel to climb into. Left leg, right leg. All this was fed to the beast, and it was satisfied. The door of the furnace clanged shut. There were no tears.

13. 12 • Receipt no. Q 498673.

14. 13 • Rahel never wrote to him. There are things that you can’t do—like writing letters to a part of yourself.

15. 14 • “He can’t help having a Man’s Needs,” she said primly.

16. 15 Rahel looked around her and saw that she was in a Play. But she had only a small part. She was just the landscape. A flower perhaps. Or a tree.

17. 16 • The man standing in the shade of the rubber trees with coins of sunshine dancing on his body, holding her daughter in his arms, glanced up and caught Ammu’s gaze. Centuries telescoped into one evanescent moment. History was wrong-footed, cuaght off guard.

18. 17 • “Oh, all the time!” Ammu said. “That’s how we make babies.”

19. 18 • When the last strip of rubber had rippled to the floor, her father looked at her with cold, flat eyes, and rocked and rocked and rocked. Surrounded by a sea of twisting rubber snakes.

20. 19 • “Let’s leave one alive so that it can be lonely,” Sophie Mol suggested.

21. 20 • It is after all so easy to shatter a story. To break a chain of thought. To ruin a fragment of a dream being carried around carefully like a piece of porcelain. • To let it be, to travel with it, as Velutha did, is much the harder thing to do.

22. 21 (a) Anything can happen to Anyone. And (b) It’s best to be prepared.