The children of "Midnight's Children": Arundhati Roy

So far this summer has not been the most exciting one, therefore I've been able to dedicate most of my time to reading. After a year of studying dense, specialised academic articles, I had been longing for some fiction, so immediately after finishing my studies in July, I grabbed the most fictitious of fictions in my collection: Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, which won the Booker Prize in 1981, and then was also awarded the title of the "best novel out of all the winners" in 1993 and 2008. Since 1981, three other Indian writers have won the prize: Arundhati Roy in 1997 for The God of Small Things, Kiran Desai in 2006 for The Inheritance of Loss, and Aravind Adiga two years later for The White Tiger. Although I've almost forgotten the plot of The White Tiger (I remember having enjoyed it), I was absolutely captivated by the first two novels, both of them with an important postcolonial perspective.

The fact that Rushdie paved the way for other Indian authors writing in English doesn't take away any merit from Roy's and Desai's fully deserved success. However, reading their novels, I perceived numerous parallels between the three novels. While Arundhati Roy would probably deny drawing any inspiration from Rushdie, in the case of Kiran Desai it seemed more evident to me. I will dedicate this first comparative review to The God of Small Things, as I have just finished reading it for the third time.

First let me tackle some of the similarities I have noticed between Midnight's Children and The God of Small Things. The most obvious parallel is the postcolonial perspective, which manifests itself in the concern with colonial heritage and the problematic (re)construction of a national identity after the colonial period. Both authors notice the Western influence in Indian culture, such as Shakespeare taught in school and read at home, or The Sound of Music enjoying wide popularity in the cinemas. As Roy hints at, the cultural model promoted in the latter is not necessarily extendible to Indian society. Moreover, in both novels the white, occidental characters such as Evie Burns, William Methwold (Midnight's Children) or Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma (The God of Small Things) are clearly portrayed as more self-confident and privileged in comparison to the Indian protagonists of the novels. Another white, "Western" character, Miss Mitten, tries to teach Estha and Rahel elements of European culture, while ignoring basic facts about India, such as the name of the native language of the region that she is visiting, Kerala. In Midnight's Children, Ahmed Sinai tries to impress the Englishman William Methwold by inventing his fictitious Mughal ancestry, in order to deserve his interlocutor's respect as an Indian.

Cultural colonialism through globalisation is a recurrent theme in Roy's novel. In their old age, Baby Kochamma and Kochu Maria fall under the spell of American wrestling and The Bold and the Beautiful, but at the same time harbour very ancient and extremely harmful prejudices. The local traditions become the Small Things in the town of Ayemenem, where globalisation represents the Big Things. For instance, with the construction of the five star hotel and mass tourism, the 'kathakali dance' is reduced to a mere tourist attraction, while poverty and sanitary issues have not been resolved over the span of the story. Therefore, globalisation through Western cultural influences does not raise awareness of social issues, and "progress" does not help the underprivileged. In the author's words, colonialism and its successor - globalisation, "capture dreams and re-dream them" by disconnecting the present from the past, and wreaking havoc in a colonised nation's identity.

Another parallel is the concer with religious fanaticism, a major theme especially in Midnight's Children. After moving to Pakistan with his family, Saleem Sinai misses the more relaxed atmosphere of Mumbai. "The land of the Pure" is described in negative terms as a military-controlled and increasingly radicalised society, whose identity is shaped in opposition to the secular and multicultural state of India. Roy's Christian characters display a staggering prejudice not only against other religions, but also the lower castes such as the Paravans. Those ones who converted to Christianity "to escape the scourge of Untouchability" realise that they "jumped from the frying pan into the fire", as their marginalisation continued within the Christian community and made them invisible in the eyes of the authorities since they are no longer treated as one of the Scheduled Castes, granted special protection by law. Therefore, both novels are extremely critical with the oppressive norms of conservative communities, mostly stemming from religious beliefs.

Roy's focus on caste issues is precisely one of the differences between the two novels. Both writers and the protagonists of their novels are of non-Hindu background, however it is the Christian-born Roy who takes up the issue, still quite pervasive in the Indian subcontinent. While Rushdie describes the extreme poverty in the slums where Amina Sinai learns the future of her son, or the appalling conditions in the Magicians' Ghetto in Old Delhi, he does not mention caste. Arundhati Roy seems to understand caste, apart from gender, as the main factor triggering social injustice. Velutha, who is also represented by the symbolic characters of "The God of Small Things" and "The God of Loss", is discriminated against at different levels of social interaction, for example in the pickle factory, where he is paid less than the Touchable workers despite "practically running the factory". His caste, the Paravans, are perhaps the most vulnerable out of the three marginalised groups of characters in the novel, the other two being women and children.

As a firm defender of women's rights, Arundhati Roy is mostly centred on her female characters and the oppression they face. As in the case of the Reverend Mother in Midnight's Children, most women in Roy's novel side with the oppressor by becoming the guardians of morality and religious, patriarchal values. This is especially the case of Baby Kochamma, an extremely manipulative and shrewd person, but also Kochu Maria and Mammachi. They turn a blind eye on immoral behaviour of men, while despising other women for supposedly questionable conduct. Rushdie's Amina Sinai also pretends she doesn't notice her husband's sexual desire towards his secretaries, while Mammachi and Baby Kochamma tolerate Chacko's affairs with the women working at his factory, downplaying them as mere "Men's Needs". Ammu is the character who defies the patriarchal and religious norms of her community by marrying a Hindu, then divorcing him, and finally by loving a Paravan. For doing so, she faces the rage of her own family, who expel her from home. Ammu eventually dies sick and alone at a young age. While Rushdie typically doesn't pass any judgement on his characters, Roy is extremely critical with the hypocrisy of certain women who defend patriarchy and turn against other women who try to undermine it.

The male characters in the two novels show certain diversity. Aadam Aziz, Saleem Sinai's grandfather, is a liberal and secular doctor of Kashmiri descent, who is against the partition of India. Aadam's personality is mild and easy-going, while Rahel and Estha's grandfather Pappachi is an extremely sadistic, jealous and bitter person, whose lifetime failure affects his family's fate long after he is dead. However, there are similarities between Chacko and Ahmed Sinai, who are liberal and gentle on the surface, while they profit from the patriarchal values of their communities. Chacko's earlier mentioned Men's Needs and Ahmed's alcoholism and spending the family fortune in risky investments are all tolerated, as they run the family. Chacko takes over his mother's small pickle business and converts it into a factory, relegating his mother to the legal figure of a "sleeping partner", and denying his sister Ammu any right to ownership and profit from the new family enterprise. "My factory", "my workers", "my pineapples" is how Chacko refers to it. Both Chacko and Ahmed turn out to be egocentric and authoritarian male figures. Whereas Roy's criticism of patriarchy is evident, the highly patriarchal society in Midnight's Children is portrayed with much more detachment.

I will return to the theme of religion for a moment, since both authors, despite being of non-Hindu background, make frequent allusions to the omnipresent Hindu mythology and tradition. Rushdie names several Hindu gods and customs mainly as symbols of creation and destruction. Arundhati Roy describes the plot of the Hindu epic Mahabharata to expose its extreme cruelty and misogynistic character, as well as the absurdity of the notion of honour in the story of Draupadi's humilliation at the hands of the Kauravas, after she is lost in a game of dice by the Pandavas, as if she was an object. By doing so, Roy hints at the origin of the Love Laws: the ancient social "code of conduct" which determines what is considered moral and immoral. Apart from Hinduism, another ancient religion originating in India is mentioned in Midnight's Children as Saleem becomes "the Buddha", ironically after becoming "pure" by obtaining Pakistani citizenship and participating in the Bangladesh Independence War.

One of the major differences at the plot level is what I could call the perspective. The narrator of The God of Small Things is omniscient but the focus of the story is mainly on the micro level of details and thoughts: on the Small Things which are small, fragile and seemingly unimportant. The novel is abounds in descriptions of Rahel and Estha's childhood refletions and observations on Small Things which are typically taken for granted in adulthood but awaken curiosity in children. Another example involves Ammu and Velutha watching over the daily life of a small spider in the History House. Arundhati Roy explores how the public turmoil plays down the importance of individual despair and forces it into oblivion, which is described in the following fragment:

[I]n some places, like the country that Rahel came from, various kinds of despair competed for primacy. And that personal despair could never be desperate enough. That something happened when personal turmoil dropped by at the wayside shrine of the vast, violent, circling, driving, ridiculous, insane, unfeasible, public turmoil of a nation. That Big God howled like a hot wind, and demanded obeisance. Then Small God (cosy and contained, private and limited) came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered. And the less it mattered, the less it mattered. It was never important enough. Because Worse Things had happened. In the country that she came from, poised forever between the terror of war and the horror of peace, Worse Things kept happening.

So Small God laughed a hollow laugh, and skipped away cheerfully. Like a rich boy in shorts. He whistled, kicked stones. The source of his brittle elation was the relative smallness of his misfortune. He climbed into people's eyes and became an exasperating expression.

By contrast, Rushdie is more concerned with the same Big Things which destroy the vulnerable and marginalised characters in The God of Small Things: the modern history of India, politics, religion and the society, as opposed to the individual. However these Big Things draw another parallel as Saleem Sinai is annihilated by the same public turmoil which destroys the protagonists of Roy's novel, the ungrateful "many-headed monster" which has forgotten the dreams of the country’s infancy, represented by Saleem. In the other novel, the dreams of Estha and Rahel are shattered by History, which had established its social order thousands of years before they were born: the Love Laws that lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much...Velutha and Ammu are also devoured by the always hungry Big God, who requires human sacrifice in the form of those who have dared to challenge his hegemony.

To sum up, The God of Small Things is a tragic story of a shattered childhood innoncence, and of broken dreams of a woman and an Untouchable who defied the established order. Arundhati Roy sets out on a mission of exposing the hypocrisy and the oppressive norms existing in her native Kerala, through the Ayemenem microcosm of the wider society. Midnight's Children is a masterpiece of magical realism, in which the character's life experience stands for the modern history of India. Both novels are concerned with identity and social issues, although Roy examines how they affect the private sphere, while Rushdie's perspective encompasses the macro level of the Indian subcontinent and its recent history.

There are, of course, many other similarities and differences linking and separating the two works of fiction. I recommend that you discover them for yourself and I hope you enjoy both novels at least as much as I did!