The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy Page A

maintained the new canning machine and the automatic pineapple slicer. Veluthawho oiled the water pump and the small diesel generator. Velutha who built the aluminum sheet-lined, easy-to-clean cutting surfaces, and the ground-level furnaces for boiling fruit.
    Velutha’s father, Vellya Paapen, however, was an Old-World Paravan. He had seen the Crawling Backwards Days and his gratitude to Mammachi and her family for all that they had done for him was as wide and deep as a river in spate. When he had his accident with the stone chip, Mammachi organized and paid for his glass eye. He hadn’t worked off his debt yet, and though he knew he wasn’t expected to, that he wouldn’t ever be able to, he felt that his eye was not his own. His gratitude widened his smile and bent his back.
    Vellya Paapen feared for his younger son. He couldn’t say what it was that frightened him. It was nothing that he had said. Or done. It was not
what he
said, but the
way
he said it. Not
what
he did, but the
way
he did it.
    Perhaps it was just a lack of hesitation. An unwarranted assurance. In the way he walked. The way he held his head. The quiet way he offered suggestions without being asked. Or the quiet way in which he disregarded suggestions without appearing to rebel.
    While these were qualities that were perfectly acceptable, perhaps even desirable, in Touchables, Vellya Paapen thought that in a Paravan they could (and would, and indeed,
should
) be construed as insolence.
    Vellya Paapen tried to caution Velutha. But since he couldn’t put his finger on what it was that bothered him, Velutha misunderstood his muddled concern. To him it appeared as though his father grudged him his brief training and his natural skills. Vellya Paapen’s good intentions quickly degenerated into nagging and bickering and a general air of unpleasantness between father and son. Much to his mother’s dismay, Velutha began to avoid going home. He worked late. He caught fish in the river and cooked it on an open fire. He slept outdoors, on the banks of the river.
    Then one day he disappeared. For four years nobody knew where he was. There was a rumor that he was working on a building site for the Department of Welfare and Housing in Trivandrum.And more recently, the inevitable rumor that he had become a Naxalite. That he had been to prison. Somebody said they had seen him in Quilon.
    There was no way of reaching him when his mother, Chella, died of tuberculosis. Then Kuttappen, his older brother, fell off a coconut tree and damaged his spine. He was paralyzed and unable to work. Velutha heard of the accident a whole year after it happened.
    It had been five months since he returned to Ayemenem. He never talked about where he had been, or what he had done.
    Mammachi rehired Velutha as the factory carpenter and put him in charge of general maintenance. It caused a great deal of resentment among the other Touchable factory workers because, according to them, Paravans were not
meant
to be carpenters. And certainly, prodigal Paravans were not meant to be rehired.
    To keep the others happy, and since she knew that nobody else would hire him as a carpenter, Mammachi paid Velutha less than she would a Touchable carpenter but more than she would a Paravan. Mammachi didn’t encourage him to enter the house (except when she needed something mended or installed). She thought that he ought to be grateful that he was allowed on the factory premises at all, and allowed to touch things that Touchables touched. She said that it was a big step for a Paravan.
    When he returned to Ayemenem after his years away from home, Velutha still had about him the same quickness. The sureness. And Vellya Paapen feared for him now more than ever. But this time he held his peace. He said nothing.
    At least not until the Terror took hold of him. Not until he saw, night after night, a little boat being rowed across the river. Not until he saw it return at dawn. Not until he saw what his