Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things

“Prepared from Acetic Acid?”

“Royal blue,” Chacko said. “Like the one we did for green pepper in brine.”

“Net Contents, Batch No., Mfg date, Expiry Date, Max Rd Pr. Ri… same Royal Blue color but c and Ic?”

Chacko nodded.

“We hereby certify that the vinegar in this bottle is warranted to be of the nature and quality which it purports to be. Ingredients: Water and Acetic Acid. This will be red color, I suppose.”

Comrade Pillai used “I suppose” to disguise questions as statements. He hated asking questions unless they were personal ones. Questions signified a vulgar display of ignorance.

By the time they finished discussing the label for the vinegar, Chacko and Comrade Pillai had each acquired personal mosquito funnels.

They agreed on a delivery date.

“So yesterday’s march was a success?” Chacko said, finally broaching the real reason for his visit.

“Unless and until demands are met, comrade, we cannot say if it is Success or Non-success.”

A pamphleteering inflection crept into Comrade Pillai’s voice. “Until then, struggle must continue.”

“But Response was good,” Chacko prompted, trying to speak in the same idiom.

“That is of course there,” Comrade Pillai said. “Comrades have presented Memorandum to Party High Command. Now let us see. We have only to wait and watch.”

“We passed them on the road yesterday,” Chacko said. “The procession.”

“On the way to Cochin, I suppose,” Comrade Pillai said. “But according to Party sources Trivandrum Response was much more better.” -

“There were thousands of comrades in Cochin too,” Chacko said. “In fact my niece saw our young Velutha among them.”

“Oho. I see,” Comrade Pillai was caught off guard. Velutha was a topic he had planned to broach with Chacko. Some day. Eventually. But not this straightforwardly. His mind hummed like the table fan. He wondered whether to make use of the opening that was being offered to him, or to leave it for another day. He decided to use it now.

“Yes. He is good worker,” he said thoughtfiuly. “Highly intelligent.”

“He is,” Chacko said. “An excellent carpenter with an engineer’s mind. If it wasn’t for-”

“Not that worker, comrade,” Comrade Pillai said. “Party worker.” Comrade Pillai’s mother continued to rock and grunt. There was something reassuring about the rhythm of the grunts. Like the ticking of a clock. A sound you hardly noticed, but would miss if it stopped.

“Ah, I see. So he’s a card-holder?”

“Oh yes,” Comrade Pillai said softly “Oh yes.”

Perspiration trickled through Cha‡ko’s hair. He felt as though a company of ants was touring his scalp. He scratched his head for a long time, with both his hands. Moving his whole scalp up and down.

“ Org kaaryam parayattey ?” Comrade Pillai switched to Malayalam and a confiding, conspiratorial voice. “I’m speaking as a friend, keto . Off the record.”

Before he continued, Comrade Pillai studied Chacko, trying to gauge his response. Chacko was examining the gray paste of sweat and dandruff lodged under his fingernails. I

“That Paravan is going to cause trouble for you,” he said. “Take it from me… get him a job somewhere else. Send him off.”

Chacko was puzzled at the turn the conversation had taken. He had only intended to find out what was happening, where things stood. He had expected to encounter antagonism, even confrontation, and instead was being offered s1y, misguided collusion.

“Send him away? But why?! have no objections to him being a card-holder. I was just curious, that’s all… I thought perhaps you had been speaking to him,” Chacko said. “But I’m sure he’s just experimenting, testing his wings; he’s a sensible fellow, comrade. I trust him…”

“Not like that,’ Comrade Pillai said. “He may be very well okay as a person. But other workers are not happy with him. Already they are coming to me with complaints. You see, comrade, from local standpoint, these caste issues are very deep-rooted.”

Kalyani put a steel tumbler of steaming coffee on the table for her husband.

“See her, for example. Mistress of this house. Even she will never allow Paravans and all that into her house. Never. Even I cannot persuade her. My own wife. Of course inside the house she is Boss.” He turned to her with an affectionate, naughty smile. “ Allay di , Kalyani?”

Kalyani looked down and smiled, coyly acknowledging her bigotry.

“You see?” Comrade Pillai said triumphantly. “She understands English very well. Only doesn’t speak.”

Chacko smiled halfheartedly.

“You say my workers are coming to you with complaints…”

“Oh yes, correct” Comrade Pillai said.

“Anything specific?”

“Nothing specifically as such,” Comrade K. N. M. Pillai said. “But see, comrade, any benefits that you give him, naturally others are resenting it. They see it as a partiality. After all, whatever job he does, carpenter or electrician or whateveritis, for them he is just a Paravan. It is a conditioning they have from birth. This I myself have told them is wrong. But frankly speaking, comrade, Change is one thing. Acceptance is another. You should be cautious. Better for him you send him off.”

“My dear fellow,” Chacko said, “that’s impossible. He’s invaluable. He practically runs the factory-and we can’t solve the problem by sending all the Paravans away. Surely we have to learn to deal with this nonsense.”

Comrade Pillai disliked being addressed as My Dear Fellow. It sounded to him like an insult couched in good English, which, of course, made it a double-insult-the insult itself, and the fact that Chacko thought he wouldn’t understand it. It spoiled his mood completely.

“That may be,” he said caustically. “But Rome was not built in a day. Keep it in mind, comrade, that this is not your Oxford college. For you what is a nonsense for Masses it is something different.”

Lenin, with his father’s thinness and his mother’s eyes, appeared at the door, out of breath. He had finished shouting the whole of Mark Antony’s speech and most of Lochinvar before he realized that he had lost his audience. He re-positioned himself between Comrade Pillai’s parted knees.

– – flg œ-lapped his hands over his father’s head, creating mayhem in the mosquito funnel. He counted the squashed carcasses on his palms. Some of them bloated with fresh blood. He showed them to his father, who handed him over to his mother to be cleaned up.

Once again the silence between them was appropriated by old Mrs. Pillai’s grunts. Latha arrived with Pothachen and Mathukutty

The men were made to wait outside. The door was left ajar. When Comrade PiIlai spoke next, he spoke in Malayalam and made sure it was loud enough for his audience outside.

“Of course the proper forum to air workers’ grievances is through the Union. And in this case, when Modalali himself is a comrade, it is a shameful matter for them not to be unionized and join the Party Struggle.”

“I’ve thought of that,” Chacko said. “I am going to formally organize them into a union. They will elect their own representatives.”

“But comrade, you cannot stage their revolution for them. You can only create awareness. Educate them. They must launch their own struggle. They must overcome their fears.”

“Of whom?” Chacko smiled. “Me?”

“No, not you, my dear comrade. Of centuries of oppression.”

Then Comrade Pillai, in a hecronng voice, quoted Chairman Mao. In Malayalam. His expression curiously like his niece’s.

“Revolution is not a dinner party. Revolution is an insurrection, an act of violence in which one class overthrows another.”