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- Human Nature
- Classissm
- Failure of Justice
- Tragedy/ Moral settings
- Timelines

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Red: sensuality/purity. Red is often utilized in marriages, the birth of children, festivals, etc. Red is usually thrown on statues of deities and phallic symbols. Thought to have capacity to destroy evil.
Saffron: The most sacred color for the Hindu. Represents fire and impurities that are burnt by fire. Overall symbolizes purity and religious abstinence. Symbolizes quest for light and also the color of the battle caste, the Rajputs.
Green: Festive color. Represents life and happiness (widows do not wear green). Color is also cool to the eyes and represents nature.
Yellow: Color of knowledge and learning. Symbolizes happiness, peace, meditation, competence, and mental development. Single girls wear yellow to attract a mate and keep evil spirits away.
White: Mixture of seven colors and therefore symbolizes a quality of each. Represents purity, cleanliness, peace and knowledge. The highest social caste, the Brahmin, is associated with white. Religious leaders often cover themselves with white ashes. White is also the color of mourning.
Blue: symbolic of the Creator and qualities of bravery, manliness, determination, and the ability to deal with difficult situations.

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Upper Class:
- BRAHMAN: Included Priests and Scholars
- KSHATRIYAS: Included both rulers and warriors

Middle Class:
- VAISYAS: Included merchants, traders and farmers

Lower Class:
- SUDRAS: Consisted of peasants bound to the land
- OUTCASTES: Untouchables

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This chapter starts off at the train station the day Estha has returned. The beginning of the chapter revolves around Ammu and Estha. Ammu tells Estha that she will come back to him after she gets the job. Estha is frightened that it will never happen. Ammu sets a goal of opening  a school, where Ammu says that they will be able to attend one day. The train starts to leave and Estha panics. During this panic, the narration breaks and the time goes back to 1993. The scene now pictures Estha and Rahel  together with their arms around each other. What happens next is not clarified, however this quote suggests the action, "once again they broke the Love Laws. That lay down who should be loved. And how. And how much." After this, the scene changes again to 1969. The day is when Sophie Mol arrives. Everyone is at the dinner table. Ammu sends Sophie to bed. Ammu does not want to return to dinner. Ammu aches for Velutha.

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Opens with Estha and Rahel sitting in front of the investigator as they drink coke, he remarks: "He had seen it all before... the human mind's escape valve. Its way of managing trauma."(297-298). Inspector calls Baby Kochamma and tells her that they have found out the death of Velutha was under a lie, his description is telling of their classist society, he says:"Which left the police saddled with the death in custody of a technically innocent man. True, he was a paravan. True, he had misbehaved. But these were troubled times and technically, as per the law, he was an innocent man."(298). Includes very ironic use of religion right before Baby Kochamma attempts to get the kids to lie. After the children lie lots of injustice language is used and Baby Kochamma turns on the twins and Ammu, turning Chackos anger against them, making them leave town.
This chapter is good for:
- Failure of justice,
- characterization of Baby Kochamma, Estha, and Rahel.

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Chapter 18 - "The History House" (Janice) 

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Chapter 18 - "The History House" (Janice) 

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Summary: The chapter begins with introducing six policemen that are walking up to the History House. It is described as a very beautiful and surrounded by blossoming foliage. The policeman later see Velutha and the twins asleep on opposite sides of the Veranda and wake him up. All six begin beating him up, smashing his face in so it is almost unrecognizable and fracturing his skull in multiple places. It is clear that he will not make it. The twins describe the smell of blood as "sicksweet" and do not realize why the policemen are beating up Velutha. Later they take all of the childrens toys and cuff Velutha and drag him away. The only thing that is left is a toy watch of Rahel's with a fake time painted on it.

Quotes:
"The twins were too young to know that these were only hisotry's henchmen"(pg 292)

" Lesson Number One: Blood barely shows on a Black Man. And Lesson Number Two: It smells though, sickly sweet. Like old roses on a breeze." (pg 293)

"A pair of two twin eggs. And the God of Loss. He couldn't walk. So they dragged him. Nobody saw them. Bats, of course, are blind." (pg 296)

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Cochin Harbor Terminus: This chapter is also set in 1993. It starts out with Estha sitting in his dark room as it rains outside, Kochu Maria is asleeping with a cop show playing on the TV, and Baby Kochamma fills out a listerine customer survey in her room. Baby Kochamma writes in her diary "I love you, I love you", but later is seen she had a ton of diaries with pages that also include the same statement. Rahel lays on Estha's bed with nothing to say, Estha looks at her and thinks she looks lovely. Then there is some flashback of when Estha returned and Chacko tells Ammu to pack up and leave and Chacko leaves, and a monster takes his place. Then Kurien Maathen is introduced, Baba's friend, who comes and takes Estha away. Then is finishes with notice that Sophie Mol's death has been in the newspapers.
Quotes:
1. "She possessed him in death in a way that she had never had while she was alive . At least her memory of him was hers. Wholly hers. Savagely, fiercely, hers. Not to be shared with Faith... His rejection of her was neutralized by death. In her memory of him, he embraced her. Just her. In a way that a man embraces a women. " (282)
2. "The one in which a posse of Touchable Policemen crossed the Meenachal River, sluggish and swollen with recent rain, and picked their way through the wet undergrowth, clumping into the Heart of Darkness." (287)

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Estha and Rahel are dragging the boat onto the water. Estha has already equipped their Home away from Home with food and other things. Ammu's anger is what prompted them to leave. Estha says they'll only go home if Ammu begs them. Sophie Mol convinces them to allow her to go with them, as she says the adults will only truly be sorry if all three kids go. So they go onto the boat and it's very dark. After they get past the Really Deep, a floating log collides with their boat and causes it to capsize. Estha and Rahel swim to shore, but Sophie Mol doesn't respond to their calls. Rahel feels Pappachi's moth on her heart. Sophie Mol was carried away by the current. Rahel asks Estha if she's dead, but he doesn't answer. He does say that they will go to jail. They didn't notice Velutha asleep in the History House.

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Summary: In the initial setting, it is midnight and raining - a young man is sitting at the top of a staircase that leads to the river. He later strips and swims across the river despite the strong current in the middle. He believes that things will get worse and then better as he walks towards the "Heart of Darkness". The narrator describes him as the "God of Small Things" and "The God of Loss". The reader later finds that this man is Velutha.

Quotes:
1. "Naked now, he walked down the thirteen stone steps into the water and further, until the river was chest high. Then he began to swim with easy, powerful strokes, striking out towards where the current was swift and certain, where the Really Deep Began." (pg. 273) - thirteen = unlucky, character is unnamed but it is Velutha.

2. "He left no ripples in the water. No footprints on the shore." (pg 274) - emphasis on Velutha's position as an untouchable. He's later mentioned as the God of Loss and God of Small Things, therefore alluding to the idea that life is about living in the present and enjoying the smaller details of life.

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Chacko is going  to visit Comrade K. N. M. Pillai's house. This is happening within the same afternoon that Sophie Mol and Margaret arrive. When Chacko gets there Pillai is not there, so Chacko sits and waits. While waiting, Chacko makes some observations about Pillai's house. Pillai's house has a lot of communist propaganda. One of these pieces of propaganda says, ""Work is Struggle. Struggle is work". Also while waiting, Lenin walks in and is asked to recite a poem. During this recital, Comrade Pillai walks in and begins to talk about Sophie Mol. After this, Comrade Pillai tries to get Lenin to recite a part of Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, to try to impress Chacko. Chacko feels a little out of place because he feels that Comrade Pillai is closer to the working class. While Chacko's visit confirms that Comrade Pillai is a supporter of the Communist party. Comrade Pillai then tells Chacko that it is in his best interest to get rid of Velutha. Chacko is confused as to why.

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Kochu Thomban: This chapter is set in 1993. Rahel is watching the Kathakali performances which are dancers that perform for tourists and then seek forgiveness from their gods for cashing in on their religion. The performances are long. Rahel knows that Estha is there because she can feel him, however cannot see them. They stay and watch the performances until the next morning.
Quotes:
1. "In Ayemenem they danced to jettison their humiliation in the Heart of Darkness. Their truncated swimming-pool performances. Their turning to tourism to stave off starvation." (218)
2. " Something altered in the air. And Rahel knew that Estha had come. She didn't turn her head, but a glow spread inside her. He's come. She thought. He's Here. With me." (222)

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The God of Small Things

Begins with a description of Ammu's dream, in which a man, a "God of small things", with a torch guides her through darkness. Alludes to that man being Velutha with the line "Ridges of muscle on his stomach rose under his skin like divisions on a slab of chocolate"(205). Goes into a description of how neither person touched eachother due to the presence of other people, illuminated by the lamplight (Represents class structure and society). After a conversation with Estha and Rahel, Ammu looks at her aging body with disgust. Has a short conversation about insanity, and how it 'ran in the family'. Thinks about death and realizes it is not death that troubles her, but dying so predictably, she knows where she will be tomorrow, in a month, and in a year.

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Chapter 10 - "The River In The Boat" (Janice) 

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Chapter 10 - "The River In The Boat" (Janice) 

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Summary: Flashback to the day that Sophie Mol arrives. Estha is thinking two primary thoughts during this time (note that within the book these are capitalized as "Thoughts".). During this time, he is copying a recipe for banana jam whilst also thinking his third thought concerning a boat. The twins later meet up beneath a mangosteen tree and find a boat. While the twins can swim across the river, the middle is certainly a place where they should not dwell too long. They later take the boat to Velutha and ask him to fix/clean it for them. River is characterized with evil/British traits.

Quotes:
1. "It was dark inside, lit only by the light that filtered through the clotted gauze doors, and a beam of dusty sunlight ( that Ousa didn't use) from the skylight." (pg 185) - imagery/diction

2. "Rahel stopped and turned around, and on her heart a drab moth with unusually dense dorsal tufts unfurled its predatory wings." (pg. 189) - SYMBOL

3. "Two happy hearts soared like colored kites in a skyblue sky. But then, in a slow green whisper, the river (with fish in it, with the sky and trees in it), bubbled in. Slowly the old boat sank, and settled on the sixth step. And a pair of two egg twin hearts sank and settled on the step above the sixth." (pg. 195) - unique description of the twins discovering the old boat and characterizing them as apart of the environment rather than individuals.

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Big man the Laltain, Small Man the Mombatti: They are back in the 1993 Ayemenem House, surrounded with filth. Baby Kochamma  and Kochu Maria are busy watching TV. Estha enters the house quietly as Baby Kochamma predicts what he will do, due to his repetitive habits. Estha enters his room, Ammu's old room, which is obscenely clean. He undresses as Rahel watches him, Rahel aproaches him but he doesn't even notice her and begins to clean his clothes.
Quotes:
1. "Outside, the rain had stopped. The gray sky curdled and clouds resolved themselves into little lumps, like substandard mattress stuffing" (86).
2. "His arms too were double-colored. Paler where his shirtsleeves ended. A dark-brown man in pale honey clothes. Chocolate with a twist of coffee. High cheek-bones and hunted eyes. A fishermen in a white-tiled bathroom, with sea-secrets in his eyes" (88).

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Small remote village area in India, which is also the main location for much of the story "The God of Small Things".

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Flashback of how margaret and chacko met as margaret was working as a waitress. Chacko is charming and fit and chacko and margaret get married without consent from their parents. Chacko is lazy, and works little if it all, he gets fat and this is when margaret meets joe. Margaret leaves chacko after the birth of sophie and chacko moves back to ayemenem. After Joe's death they receive an invitation from chacko to visit ayemenem and they accept. Flash forward and "a white child's body" has been found in the river. The twins have gone missing following ammu's outburst after being locked in her bedroom. We then find out that the reason that ammu was locked up was vellya telling mammachi of ammu's relationship with velutha. Upon hearing this, mammachi throws velya out into the rain and gets hysterical. Baby kochama and mammachi lock ammu in her room and baby kochama goes to the police station. Baby kochamma proceeds to paint velutha as an angry molester who has kidnapped the twins even stating that he was at the communist march. The inspector goes to comrade pillai's house in order to make sure that velutha is not receiving their protection and while comrade pillai was the last to see velutha alive, pillai states that velutha is on his own. the chapter ends with a flashback of sophie mol  grabbing presents and searching for the twins to befriend them.

In the year she knew him, before they were married, she discovered a little magic in herself, and for a while felt like a blithe genie released from her lamp. he was perhaps too young to realize that what she assumed was her love for [him] was actually a tentative, timorous, acceptance of herself. (233)

So eventually, though she knew that her friends and colleagues at the school would think it odd–her running back to her first-husband-just-as-soon as her second-one-had-died–Margaret Kochamma broke her term deposit and bought two airline tickets. London-Bombay-Cochin. She was haunted by that decision for as long as she lived. (238)

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1. Rahel - one of the protagonists of the novel and Estha's twin. Rahel is often preoccupied with things and cannot sit still; she also has a very active imagination (childlike/wondering).
2. Estha (Esthappen) - the second protagonist of the novel, Estha is eighteen minutes senior of Rahel and is earnest and sincere. Opposite of Rahel, he tends to think more logically and sees a more sinister aspect of the world.
3. Mammachi: Old, nearly blind, grandmother of Estha and Rahel. Married to Pappachi who beats her all the time
4. Sophie Mol - She is the young, half-white, half- Indian daughter of Chacko and Margaret Kochamma. She appears that little cousin or younger sibling that always wants to hang out with the older kids, but they don't like her. We mainly learn about her through the twins eyes, who do not like her, she is a brat that is overpraised by Chacko and Baby Kochamma. They despise her because she is seen as better than them. Although she is just a lonely, young girl.
5. Velutha - Formally considered "The God of Small Things" throughout the novel. Velutha has a relationship with Ammu that is secret but would most certainly be frowned upon because he is of a lower class than she is. (considered an "untouchable")
6. Baby Kochamma - She is a childish, elderly woman. She is an anglophile, and is always bitter, searching for every way to bring the twins down. She often searches for praises, especially about her tiny feet. She is bitter over her unrequited love for Father Mulligan, and she still pictures a relationship with him even though he's dead.
7. Chacko -  Ammu's brother, dad of Sophie Mol. He has taken over the family business. He cannot be ophie Mol's dad, so he is like a father figure for Rahel and Estha. He settles for what he can get, not what he wants.
8. Ammu - The mother of Estha and Rahel; she is limited in options of education in part because of her gender (Chacko, her brother is sent off to school). She leaves and later meets/marries Baba which she finds is a bad choice. Divorces him and moves back when the twins are toddlers. Later begins an affair with Velutha and doesn't really care for social norms.

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summary: 1996, Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma are getting picked up from the airport by rahel, estha and ammu. Sophie and margaret Kochamma get off of the plane and this is the first instance we see Sophie mol. baby kochamma tries to impress sophie and margaret with her knwoledge of shakespeare and is made fun of by estha. later, when chacko introduces estha Baby Kochamma makes fun of him by calling him "Elvis Presley". Everyone laughs and Estha gets angry. Rahel, in the meantime, has gone to hide in the dirty airport curtains. Ammu chastises rahel and estha. As everyone leaves the children share who they love most in the world with sophie stating that "Joe is her father" and that chacko "is just her real dad". As they drive back to Ayemenem they pass an elephant that was electrocuted.

Quotes
But she said it with her dimples, because Chacko was so bursty. So very happy. Chacko didn't slap her. So she didn't slap him back. (131)

Ambassador Estha wouldn't. Didn't want to. He watched the bumpy landing with his tap-water Eagle flask slung around him, and a bottomless-bottomful feeling: The Orangedrink Lemondrink In the factory ayemenem. On the banks of Meenacha.Ammu watched with her handbag. Chacko with his roses. Baby Kochamma with her sticking-out neckmole. (133-134)

And the air was full of Thoughts and Things to Say. But at times like these only the Small Things are ever said. The Big Things lurk unsaid inside. (136)

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- Symbolism
- Setting Descriptions
- Narrator POV
- Structure (Chronological POV of Chapters); Non-Linear/Multiple Perspectives
- Chapter Titles (<Significant!)
- Personification
- Allusions

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Punishments: references their religion, each action comes with an answer, whether it is a good or bad punishment, one may not see it at first, but there is always a punishment. This symbol is referenced in Chapter 4 and Chapter 2.

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The family arrives at the cinema hall, Abhilash Talkies, they enter the movie "The Sound of Music" which has already started, Estha can't help, but sing along, but his singing annoys the people of the theater so Ammu sends Estha to the lobby. In the lobby Estha continues to sing and awakens the man giving out lemon drinks. The man is beyond filthy and convinces Estha to accept his free drink. As he drinks his free lemon beverage, the gross man makes Estha hold his penis, Estha tries to escape the situation mentally by listing pickled dishes from Mammachi. The man ejaculates into Estha's hand and leaves. Estha is stunned and disgusted in the uncleanliness. He returns to the movie and begins to compare the clean, white children in the movie to his own uncleanliness and decides the white people deserve more love than he. Ammu takes Estha to the bathroom where Estha pukes and washes his hands and face many times. Ammu tries to get Estha a lemon drink to cheer him up. Then they go to sleep at the hotel. Baby Kochamma and Estha stay with Ammu and Rahel with Chacko.
Quotes:
1. "Some things come with their own punishments. Like bedrooms with built-in cupboards. They would all learn about their punishments soon. That they come in different sizes. That some were so big they were like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. You could spend your whole life wandering through dark shelving." (109)

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1993
That night in the lodge, Ammu sat up in the strange bed in the strange room in the strange town. She didnt know where she was, she recognized nothing around her. Only her fear was familiar. (154)

The door of the furnace clanged shut. There were no tears.
The crematorium “In-charge” had gone down the road for a cup of tea and didn’t come back for twenty minutes. That’s how long Chacko and Rahel had to wait for the pink receipt that would entitle them to collect Ammu’s remains. Her ashes. The grit from her bones. The teeth from her smile. The whole of her crammed into a little clay pot. (155)

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Chapter 5 - "God's Own Country" (Janice)

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Chapter 5 - "God's Own Country" (Janice)

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Summary: Set in 1993, a fancy hotel chain has purchased the "Heart of Darkness" and old history house. When Rahel returns, she finds that the river has shrunk considerably despite the monsoon season. There is also a stark contrast between the environment around the hotel - the owners termed their area "God's Own Country" yet outside, they are surrounded by slums and thick, toxic water. Meanwhile Rahel's old toy watch remains buried underneath the festivities of the hotel/tourists. On the way back to her house Rahel encounters Comrade Pillai. Flashback of Rahel and Pillai's son Lenin, then back to present as Pillai shows her an old black and white photograph when they were young.

Quotes:
1. "Years later, when Rahel returned to the river, it greeted her with a ghastly skull's smile, with holes where teeth had been, and a limp hand raised from a hospital bed." (pg 118) -- Personification of the river/figurative language/symbolism

2. "-that the hotel chain had bought from old families and transplanted in the Heart of Darkness...like sheaves of rice in Joseph's dream, like a press of eager natives petitioning an English magistrate.." (pg 120) -- allusion to "Heart of Darkness" by Joseph Conrad

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https://www.britannica.com/biography/Arundhati-Roy

https://www.thenation.com/article/the-air-we-breathe-a-conversation-with-arundhati-roy/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arundhati_Roy

https://www.famousauthors.org/arundhati-roy

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Summary:
Estha and Rahel are in the car with Ammu, Chacko, and Baby Kochamma on their way to see The Sound of Music for the third time. They are staying in a hotel afterwards to pick up Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol at Cochin Airport. They are coming for the holidays because Chacko is worried they'll be lonely following Joe's fatal car crash. Ammu is worried that Chacko is still in love with Margaret Kochamma. Also, none of them have ever met Sophie Mol before, so the preceding week is deemed "What Will Sophie Mol Think?" week. Baby Kochamma forces the twins to speak in English, punishing them if she hears them speaking in Malayalam. The narrator further illustrates the twins, explaining that Estha loves Elvis and how Rahel wears her hair on the top of her head like a fountain in a "Love-like-Tokyo". Rahel also wears a toy watch with a painted time of 1:50. The chapter continues with describing Chacko as a well-read man who was once a Rhodes Scholar and attended Oxford University. Ammu, Chacko's younger sister, married the wrong man. Pappachi, Ammu's father, did not want to waste money by sending a woman to college, so Ammu stayed at home and waited for a marriage proposal. During the summer, Ammu goes to Calcutta where she meets Baba at a wedding reception. He proposes 5 days later, and since she didn't see things getting any better, she accepted. However, it turns out Baba is an alcoholic and a liar. In October 1962, a war with China was started and people were being evacuated, but Ammu was too pregnant to travel. Later, when the twins were 2 years old, Baba's English boss, Mr. Hollick, warned Baba about his job but something could be worked out if Baba allowed Mr. Hollick to sleep with Ammu. Ammu didn't like the idea so Baba punched her, then when Baba passed out drunk, Ammu took a large book and smacked him. Eventually Ammu took the twins and left. Ammu takes her wedding ring to a goldsmith and has it turned into a bangle for Rahel. However, it is also revealed that Ammu leads a secret life, her "Unsafe Edge", going out by herself and foreshadowing an affair. Going back to the car on the way to picking up Sophie Mol and Margaret, Baby Kochamma is sitting between the twins, whom she dislikes. She has made it her mission to take happiness from Estha and Rahel so they know their place. The narrator also mentions how the Plymouth (car) has the Paradise Pickles and Preserves logo, which Ammu thinks is ridiculous. A flashback to Mammachi making pickles after Pappachi retires from the government service (Director of Entomology, before and after British rule) is told, and although she made them for a fair, they quickly became popular. Pappachi did not help her because he thought it was beneath him, but he grew jealous of her attention. So, he beat her every night with a vase. However, one day, Chacko returned from Oxford and discovered what was going on. Pappachi never beat her again, but he continued to go out of his way to ridicule her, but made it seem like she was ridiculing him. Another flashback follows, detailing Pappachi's greatest setback, where he discovered a new moth species, but was dismissed by others; however, 12 years later, it was declared a unique species and was named after an individual that Pappachi hates. This causes Pappachi to have a bad temper for forever. When Mammachi was told she was a great violinist, Pappachi smashed her violin. Chacko tells the twins that Pappachi is an Anglophile, then tells them that their whole family are Anglophiles.

Quotes:
1." In coat hangers. Tomatoes. In the tar on the roads. In certain colors. In the plates at a restaurant. In the absence of words. And the emptiness in eyes" (54)
2. "Baby Kochamma's fear lay rolled up on the car floor like a damp, clammy cheroot. This was just the beginning of it. The fear that over the years would consume her. That would make her lock her doors and windows. That would give her two hairlines and both her mouths. Hers too, was an ancient, age-old fear. The fear of being dispossessed." (pg 67)

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Mrs. Pillai, Mrs. Eapen, Mrs. Rajagopalan

Begins with a sweeping description of the scenery: "The green-for-the-day had seeped frmo the trees..." (178)

Speaks about the relationship between Rahel, Sophie, and Estha, as they go to see Velutha and pretend to be three upper class ladies (The title) "It is only now, these years later, that Rahel with adult hindsight recognized the sweetness of that gesture. A grown man entertaining three raccoons, treating them like real ladies"(181) Also has an element of classism, represented by the line "He addressed them all as Kochamma and gave them fresh coconut water to drink" and "Three days before the Terror, he had let them paint his nails with red Cutex that Ammu had discarded" (181)

"Only one victim. And he had blood-red nails and a brown leaf on his back that made the monsoons come on time. He left behind a Hole in the Universe through which darkness poured like liquid tar. Through which their mother followed without even turning to wave good-bye."(182)

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Chapter 1 - "Paradise, Pickles and Preserves" (Tyra)

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Chapter 1 - "Paradise, Pickles and Preserves" (Tyra)

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Rahel returns to Ayemenem to see her twin brother, Estha. As kids, they were very close and saw themselves as a single entity, sharing their identity and thoughts. Rahel has memories about what the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man did to Estha and Estha's sandwiches on the Madras Mail (foreshadowing!) It is revealed that they are now 31 years old, which happens to be how old their mother Ammu was when she died. Rahel thinks of Estha and Rahel as "them" now, rather than "we". There is a flashback to the twins birth, as Ammu nearly birthed them on a bus. It turns out their father, Baba, and Ammu got divorced afterwords, and Ammu moved to Kerala with the twins. Rahel has a memory about the funeral of the twins' cousin, Sophie Mol, who likely drowned at age 9 when the twins were 7. At Sophie's funeral, readers are introduced to the twins' family: Margaret Kochama (Sophie Mol's English mother), Chacko (twins' uncle, Sophie Mol's father), and Mammachi (twins' grandmother). Ammu and the twins are not allowed to stand with the family at the funeral and are ignored. Rahel thinks Sophie Mol is awake because she is lying in the coffin with her eyes open. She believes Sophie showed her that the dome of the church is painted sky blue and a baby bat that climbs up Baby Komchamma's sari. Rahel imagines someone like Velutha trying to paint clouds on the church's ceiling, but only falls and dies. When Sophie is buried,  Rahel feels as if she is not really dead and believes that she saw her cartwheel. Following the funeral, Ammu and the twins head to the police station, only to be told by Inspector Thomas Matthews that it is too late for Ammu to see Velutha. He then calls her a "veshya" with illegitimate children. The inspector taps her breasts with his police baton, and the twins see Ammu cry for the first time. Rahel references "the Returned", the event where Ammu sends Estha to live with his father in Calcutta. It is the last time Rahel and Estha see each other for years. The story returns to present-day in 1993, with Estha returning to Ayemenem because Baba is moving to Australia. Readers learn that Estha is a quiet individual who stopped talking at one point. He did not go to college despite having done well in school, instead doing housework in Baba's home. Estha had a dog named Khubchand, who died of old age. Following Khubchand's death, Estha begins taking extremely long walks. Comrade Pillai and Kochu Maria are introduced. Turns out, Mammachi is dead and Chacko lives in Canada in present-day. Also, after Ammu passed away, Rahel had trouble at school and was ignored by her family anytime she returned to Ayemenem. Rahel had no friends in school and went to college for 8 years to study architecture. There she meets Larry McCaslin and they get married and move to Boston. When they get divorced, Rahel moves to New York, then Washington, then back to Ayemenem when Baby Kochamma says Estha is back.

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Describes the old house from the beginning of the book again, goes into a description of Mammachi as she plays the violin. Narrator desctribes how she created a wig from her old hair so no one could see her age. Includes a flashback to her pickle company and includes a conflict involving oil leaking from the pickle bottles, representing aging.

Ammu Flashbacks to her time with Mammachi and avoiding beatings frim Pappachi, including the shreding of her beloved boots. "As she grew older, Ammu learned to live with this cold, calculating cruelty."(172)

Describes the cake cutting scene, as Mammachi must touch a sample cut to make sure it is the right size, only for Kichu Maria to cut the cake without cares afterwards.

Also sets up the forsaken relationship between Rahel and Velutha. "That man will be our nemisis" (175)