Reading India: "The God of Small Things" in Kerala

For those of you who don't know me (those who do are probably already tiring of the barrage of excitable Facebook posts) I'm currently in Asia. And not just on a quick holiday. Two weeks ago I embarked on one of those life-changing trips I hope to be talking about for years to come, hauling myself across India, Malaysia, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam and China on one gigantic four month long adventure.

If you want to hear the ins and outs of my travels, you can check out the blog of my lovely companion Beth at http://theworldisfullofbeautifulthings.blogspot.in/?m=1

However, rather than regaling you with tales of zooming around foreign lands on mopeds, arduous train rides and beautiful beaches, I've decided to go down a slightly more sedate route.

Searching for some serenity within the wild first week of our trip, I stumbled into a quaint bookshop in the beautiful Keralan seaside town of Fort Kochin. With a fairly limited knowledge of Indian literature, I browsed the "Kerala authors" section with a casual interest in the vaguely existentialist titles, settling for "The God of Small Things" by Arundhati Roy. Beth had noted the setting the day before on a tranquil canoe cruise of Cochin's winding backwaters, and I warmed to the almost whimsical name.

Settling in a cafe with a cold drink whilst Beth blogged in an internet cafe across the road I started reading. Hearing Roy's words emerge in the powerful culture and beautiful scenery was an incredible experience. Scenes that would have seemed wildly exotic from the comfort of my own home were suddenly intensely evocative, sensuously familiar. I felt compelled to share this wonderful book with the world from its stunning setting.

Winner of the Man Booker Prize, "The God of Small Things" is not exactly short on publicity. It's an undeniably powerful read, a stirring exploration of India's rigid class system through the eyes of a well-off Christian family living Ayemenem. Both poignantly and disturbingly, Roy explores social divisions through the so called Love Laws-- where "who should be loved. And how. And how much" governs the relationships of the characters, from the strangely psychic bond between the young twins who dominate the tale's narrative attention, to the erotic love between their mother and her forbidden lover.

It's a story of love and its ever present literary counterpart of loss in the most tragic and twisted sense, each converse and counterpointed perspective of the families various generations forming a strongly woven story. This story was deepened through the stunning scenery of Kerala. The river between the family and the darkened "History House" where one of the most haunting scenes of the novel is set is easy to imagine in the winding Keralan backwaters, where isolated villages line quiet canals. The noise and frustration of the novel's central themes parallel the sheer craziness and unsettling aspects of India, yet are beautifully offset against the innocence of the unspoiled landscape, the dialogue of childhood, Kerala's ungainly serenity.

"The God of Small Things" is a novel which is as dark and disturbing as it is humorous and beautifully crafted, and I could not imagine a better setting. Kerala-- "God's own country" as it is locally known is truly one of the most beautiful places I have ever been to, yet it is marred by problems that pervade Indian culture-- sexual, economical and prejudicial. Easy as it would be to ignore these, fall easy victim to the gorgeous mountainous landscapes, seaside scenes, wandering elephants and monkeys, Roy refuses. She confronts the India she knows, that paradoxical coinciding of beauty and corruption, to create as truly valuable global work of literature.

Even if you can't read "The God of Small Things" in Kerala-- admittedly it might not be quite as simple as it was for me-- it's still a truly wonderful and worthwhile read. Sit back and indulge in Roy's rich summoning of a world tangled in past and present, nature and commercialism, valid love and forbidden love. From such a gifted writer, it's not necessary to be here to be able to imagine.

Things I Learned from being a Book Geek

Having spent countless hours engulfed in well-leafed paperbacks, from the very first garishly shaded Ladybird Classics, to the American teenage dramatics of Sweet Valley High and the more mature reads of adult life, it’s fair to say that my perception has always been somewhat skewed by the ever-climatic experiences of a book geek.

For a teenager more familiar with the man-chasing antics of Austen’s Mrs Bennett than actual boys, or a ten year old with aspirations for a jolly-hockeysticks Mallory Towers-esque education rather than the local comprehensive, life for me was always going to be one wistfully guided by the books  that surrounded it. Life lessons aplenty poured forth from the novels that navigated my growing pains, first love and transitions into adulthood. Unfortunately for me, most of them turned out to be wildly inaccurate, and even bordering on the bizarre.

And so, in an elaborate attempt to procrastinate in the midst of dissertation writing, I’ve compiled a list of the things my (almost) 21 years as a self-confessed book geek have taught me. Some accurate life-lessons, some plain ridiculous twaddle, but all rewarding and entertaining in their own imperfect way.

What not to expect

The big loves are the best (but they don’t always work out)
Romeo and Juliet, Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, Cathy and Heathcliff. The very best knee-trembling, tear-jerking, hear-pounded loves in fiction come complete with passion, bodice ripping and proclamations of undying love. The great lovers of literature are destined to be together, bound by some instant and unrelenting force set to send the reader taking a sidelong glance at the less than romantic back-of-a-crowded-bar introduction with their own boyfriend with a little less gusto than before.

However, the real crux to these all-consuming roller-coaster rides of relationships is that they never really hold up. The dizzying highs are always countered by devastating lows, and the couples’ love lives are more tumultuous than Taylor Swift’s dating catalogue. With the majority of these affairs ending up in abandonment, misery, and- more often than not- death, Ben and Jerry’s and a nice rom-com with the boyfriend isn’t looking quite so staid now, is it?

It’s OK to have a few angsty teenage years...

Me, reliving my teenage Goth years...

 As any good lit geek or emo will tell you, the book business is not one for shirking around teenage angst. Giving generations of angry adolescents firing power for the hormone soaked years between 13 and 19, classic “The Catcher in the Rye” told us that it’s OK to mope around a bit in those tricky secondary school days. With “Perks of Being a Wallflower” taking a more modern slant, we all now know that finding yourself, sulking, and existential wonderings are an integral part of our teenage years, and should be treated as such.

...Or live the all-American teenage dream

...and pretending to be All-American.
Fancy-dress is a wonderful thing.

Spending my early teenage years engrossed by the go-get-‘em Babysitters Club, the summer camp adventures of Marcy Lewis, and the Princess Diaries’ dream of my Dad turning out to be the king of a small European country, the light literature of American teen fiction taught me that life was going to be a happy parade of s’mores, friendly communities, and the light tribulations of whether to let your boyfriend go to second-base (without having any idea what ‘second-base’ actually entailed.)

Although sadly inaccurate, it’s still nice to occasionally sink back into the delusional promises of the US teen scene, and pretend that my looming final hand-in is no more pressing than what I would wear if I had a Homecoming Dance.

 “Don’t have sex, because you will get pregnant and die”
Since sex sells, it’s always been a bit of a contention in literature. Whilst Chaucer indulged his bizarre tendency to turn sex into a never-ending opportunity to create apparently hilarious pranks, the Victorians warned us of the terrible consequences of enjoying a bit of rough and tumble. (Pretty much always resulting in death, if you’re interested.) And now with 50 Shades of Grey advocating a spanking paddle as the real key to all-over life fulfilment, and the ever-growing trend for giving classics saucy “mummy porn” make-overs, literature just can’t seem to make its mind up.

Something which books do never-endingly tell us, however, is that sex is a BIG DEAL, a veritable life-changer, and must be treated as such. Another valiant, and not entirely accurate, word from the world of books which has probably left many a teenager pretty terrified. Now where’s my copy of “Jane Eyre gets bare”?

Not everyone gets a happy ending
I’ll still never forget the sheer horror with which I laid down Birdsong the first time I read it aged 11. Deaths of wonderful characters, dizzying romances sunk into banality, and unexpected reconciliations, Faulk’s most famed novel is beautiful, yet uncompromising. And it certainly wasn’t the first I was to come across. The painful injustice in To Kill a Mockingbird, the bruising finality of Atonement, Dumbledore dying in Harry Potter...

Literature has an incredible power to reveal that the truth about life is that there really is no truth. It is characterised by stories without morals, questions without answers, and endings that are not happy. But it also teaches us about the beauty that lies behind it all, and that glinting possibility, that just perhaps, ours might be the happy ending that comes out of it.