Silence in The GoST

The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy is one book that had left me worshipping the author. Though I started reading it to improve my vocabulary skills during my preparations for GRE, I was caught, whirled and drowned in the intense current of emotions that run through the story. She tells me in punctilious language the feelings that I always had but could never give words. The intensity of emotions and the wisdom of observations are all breath taking.

To put here all the lines that knocked me off the floor would take pages. To illustrate her richness of imagery, let me collect the various pictures of silence that she paints at different locations in the story.

The silence sat between the grand-niece and baby grand aunt like a third person. A stranger. Swollen. Noxious.

Silence hung in the air like a secret loss

The silence gathered its skirts and slid, like Spiderwoman, up the slippery bathroom wall.

The silence was unsure of this compromise

And Ousa the Bar Nowl watched the pickle-smelling silence that lay between the twins like a bruise.

In the factory the silence swooped down once more and tightened around the twins. But this time it was a different kind of silence. An old river silence. The silence of Fisher People and waxy mermaids.

The silence dipped and soared and swooped and looped like a figure of eight.