God of Small Things

I first read this book in 2002, five years after it won the Booker Prize. Like so many others, I only heard about God of Small Things (GST) and Arundhati Roy after all the publicity following her winning of the coveted literacy recognition. I am sceptical about books that win prizes, simply because I feel that they are written in bombastic languages, dwell into complex issues and are only read and appreciated by those in the literature circle. GST was all this but for some mysterious reason it captured me from page to page. I can't point to any one reason. Maybe because it was set in India, my origin, a place I have never visited at that time. Maybe it was because I was mesmerised by how much similarities the book's heroine, Rahel, shared with Arundhati Roy, it almost felt that Roy was narrating her own life. There were many junctures in the book that I truly belived so. Maybe it was because the spirit of the book reflected my own, rebellious, free spirited soul, fight for truth, dare to break the taboos. I finished the book and was captured in its story for a long time.

And then just recently, while moving my book collection from my aunt's place (where I was staying prior to getting married) to my own place, that I chanced upon GST. I flipped through its pages and read some of its paragraphs. It was then that it struck me that I have not seen any of Roy's work after GST. I browsed about her in the net and found out that she has not written another novel after GST. What is more amazing is that GST was her first and only novel and that she took 5 long years to write it. Amazing huh, I first read GST 5 years after it was published and it took me another 5 years to realise that it took Roy 5 years to write it. A lot of 5s there! Roy is now actively championing social causes especially the issue of displacing people due to development.