What Arundhati Roy and I have in common...

Arundhati Roy and I have a connection.

I had just finished my workout and was sitting in the lobby and was chatting with the person who owns/runs the gym.

"Why don’t you become a personal trainer at my gym?" he asked.

"Are you mad? Who would want me to train them?" I laughed it off and left.

Later that day at lunch I told some friends about it, I thought they would have a good laugh. 

"Why not?" said Renu. "I think it’s a good idea."

"Ya me too." said Chloe.

"Are you all mad? I don’t look anything like a trainer and I don’t know anything about training. Plus, I am supposed to become a writer." I said.

"So? said Chloe. "Arundhati Roy was an aerobics instructor before she wrote The God of Small Things and became famous."

Well, I thought, if Arundhati Roy did it…and I have been a trainer for almost six years now.

                                              ——————-

My first attempt at reading The God of Small Things was when I was in my 20s. It had gained a lot of attention and appreciation and I thought reading it would be good for my intellectual image. A few pages was all i could get through. Though, I did pretend to have read it through. Now, at 35, it was the right time to take another stab at it. I am a more mature reader, I told myself, and a creative writing teacher. How shameful to not have read one of the gems of Indian literature in English. And one of my huge life decisions was inspired by her, I owed it to her.  

The start was hesitant, but short-lived. Within a few pages her writing had transported me to the Kerala of the twins, Rahel and Estha. Her detailed descriptions, which had bored me a decade ago, enchanted me and depressed me at the same time. ‘I will never be able to create images like this,’ my soul wailed, as I swallowed page after page. The narrative flow must have been difficult in the writing process but its reading is effortless thanks to the author’s ability to stay true the voice whether it is the older Rahel or the younger Rahel. But, more than the plot, it is the images that Arundhati Roy sprung on me with every detailed description, they evoked the exact emotion they were designed to - amazement, disgust, misery, joy, despair collided as the pages turned. The end came too fast.

Below: A picture taken outside Arundhati Roy’s house in Akkara, Kerala. Akkara also gets mention in her novel.