Abhilash Talkies and small things
(Chapter 5 The God of Small Things)
Session 4th November
Keywords: Loss of Innocence, trauma, manhood, rites of passage, Lemondrink Orangedrink man. “Rub-a -dub -dub three women in a tub”
“Abhilash Talkies advertised itself as the first cinema hall in Kerala with a 70mm CinemaScope screen. To drive home the point, its façade had been designed as a cement replica of a curved CinemaScope screen. On top (cement writing, neon lighting) it said Abhilash Talkies in English and Malayalam.”
After a tug-of-war in the tailfinned Plymouth, Ammu, Baby Kochama, Estha and Rahel are ready to overcome initial dissension as they cross the foyer of the Abhilash Talkies to indulge in the film “The Sound of Music.” It is ten to two, the time that freezes in the narrative in Rahel's toy wristwatch. “Big things lurk inside” (a leit motiv in the novel) and await them .
THE SMALL THINGS: the red formica door, the slippery oily floor, the dirty marble floor, “the meat smelling blood money” the butcher gave Kochu Maria and that Estha remembers, the rusty forgotten cans of possible "Pickles and Paradise" preserves in the urinary seed a landscape of sheer desolation and ominous trauma wrapped up in nursery rhymes and the sound of music.
The hall heralds division and impending tragedy. The toilets establish the divide between “HIS” and “HERS”: Ammu, Baby Kochama, Rahel on the one hand, and , Estha, on the other. Estha braves the toilets alone, his first act as a little grown man: “Estha alone in his beige and pointy shoes.”
The three women traverse the “HERS” red formica door:
“Rub-a-dub-dub (Rahel thought), Three women in a tub, Tarry awhile said Slow…”
““Rub-a-dub-dub”
is a traditional nursery rhyme that dates back to late 18th
century England , “ the word “maid” being redolent of
virginity. “Later research, according to The Oxford Dictionary of
Nursery Rhymes (1951) suggests that the lyrics are illustrating a
scene of three reputable men watching on the sly a less decent
moment” (see source for this quote below). The three maids were
later replaced by men (ibidem), and Rahel replaces them by women. The possible meanings and connections of this suggestive finding I leave to you (Keywords: gender issues, the act of peeping...)
https://allnurseryrhymes.com/rub-a-dub-dub/
Estha singing in a nun's voice, Estha alone, Estha lost in a nursery rhyme tub to be ogled and molested.
Disrespectful actions are ahead. Estha cannot hold himself from singing in the theatre. He is reprimanded and forced to go out. In the hall, fatal destiny looms over him in the shape of a sulky peeved bear-like man. The Orangedrink, Lemondrink man cajoles Estha into yielding to his dishonest petition. Brutal awakening freezes in time.
Other interesting discussions proffered in this session were: Velutha as the iridiscent beautiful God of small things, “Locusts Stand I,”pervading alarum that Ammu repeats as a mantra, miscegenation, other Fairy Tale comparisons of episode 5, “Little Red Riding Hood,” the language rift (Malayalam and English) … I beckon all participants of last session to develop and make visible through your comments these or other sharp insights you contributed with in the last session.
I fell deeply in love with Velutha❤️He's smart, crafty and so kind! He's part of Nature(when he's swimming in the river, the plants, the fish, play with him, love him dearly) However. Human love laws dont let him love Ammu (miscegenation) They break the rules though... And pay the price 💔No locusts stand I comes from Latin "locus Standi" a place to live The 4 of them won't have a place to live.Brutal death and displacements!Sheer tragedy!
ReplyDeleteEstha and Rahel talk and read English backwards, an action that is considered by Miss Mitten as an evil use of English instead of a cultural difference. The English language is used by children, and also by Roy, as a language in process of formation, contrariwise to what is inculcated by anglophilic Chacko; this building process in the language is the specular reflection of a country also in formation, a postcolonial country.
ReplyDeleteThere is an example of unorthodox spelling I would like to point at, not only because of weird English but also for further connotations. When Estha is going to be abused by the Lemondrink Orangedrink man, he says that he has no pocket money, trying to avoid going behind the counter and near the yellow teeth man; “Porketmunny?” Lemondrink Orangedrink man answers `First English songs, and now Porketmunny! The Orangedrink Lemondrink man is obviously teasing Estha and attempting to mock upper class education that may be considered also as supremacy in terms of strength and wickedness.
Well, just to clarify that the term miscegenation refers to sexual intdrcourse between 2 people of different races (in USA between blacks and whites), in the novel Ammu and Velutha belong to different castes or religions(Velutha is said yo have black skin) The author is quite concerned about this, hates divisions and boundaries....
ReplyDeleteThe novel is a story narrated in continuous flashbacks and flash forwards which are balanced in a linear time by continuous temporal references such as: “The sound of the Music, “ the premier film the family goes to watch; Elvis, the Indian Communist Party split (the communist demonstration where Velutha is identified by Rahel), Bauhauss furniture as a representation of modernity (Velutha made a Bauhauss table for Baby Kochama).
ReplyDeleteThis particular narrative structure is also provided and reinforced by the lives of all the characters: Baby Kochama lives in her eternal love to Father Mulligan, Ammu loves her childhood friend, Estha is frozen in his loss of innocence, Rahel is the one that tries the most to live in real time but, finally, she returns to Ayemenem, Chako is always evoking his scholar moments, etc.