The God of Small Things 913its commodification into a tourist destination for
foreigners. But the effect of such commercialism
is the intrusion of commercial language into the
language of love, an intrusion that has devastating
consequences.
Tourism is the major revenue-generating indus-
try for many postcolonial nations. Native people and
places are packaged for consumption, as is revealed
by the transformation of the Kari Saipu estate into
the Hotel Heritage complex, where “Toy Histories
[are constructed] for rich tourists to play in.” The
furniture and other knickknacks in the complex
are labeled as museum pieces for tourists to gape
and gawk at, as they alleviate any shame they may
feel for their rapacious consumption by combining
pleasure with the enlightenment of learning. Roy
calls this reconstruction “in the Heart of Dark-
ness” the enlistment of “History and Literature for
commerce.” Huge walls separate the clean, neatly
arranged hotel complex from the filthy living quar-
ters of the natives, hiding the poverty and chaos of
living from the tourists’ view. The presence of Hotel
Heritage in the onetime remote town of Ayemenem
reveals just how far into the interior commercialism
has intruded and how easily land, life, and people
can be commercialized.
Commerce further creeps into the interior space
of private homes when food preservation is trans-
formed into a revenue-generating industry. Mam-
machi makes pickles, jams, and jellies on a large
scale for profit. The success of this small cottage
industry depends on her culinary and managerial
talents. So when Chacko comes home from England
and appropriates his mother’s successful business, he
ruins it by bringing in heavy machinery, commer-
cial workers, and ridiculous advertisements. Under
Chacko’s enlightened vision of Marxist machinery
and unionized workers, the pickle business buckles,
falls into disrepair, and is abandoned.
The effect of commercialism is metaphorically
made visible through the damming of the powerful
river that runs through Ayemenem and has gained
notoriety for having taken Sophie Mol’s life. The
river is no longer the living, vital river it once was but
a sick, stagnant canal chock-full of human refuse.
The vibrant, nourishing, and cleansing river that
provided a backdrop for Velutha’s and Ammu’s love
is no longer a lover’s paradise but a stagnant cesspool
of commercial and human waste.
However, the most devastating effects of com-
mercialism are seen through the creeping of the
vocabulary of commerce into the language of love
that Roy calls the “Love Laws . . . Who should be
loved. And how. And how much.” When love laws
are laid down and love gets quantified, it enters the
economy of the marketplace and becomes a com-
modity of commerce. Furthermore, when all human
activity, especially the activity of food preparation
that sustains life and family relationships, is quan-
tified and commodified, and when commercial
tourism enters the heart of darkness, the core of a
community that anchors it to a particular place and
its people is ruined.
Sukanya B. SenapatiprIde in The God of Small Things
Pride is rightly considered the most destructive of
the seven deadly sins, for it makes people believe
they are superior to the rest of humanity and inevi-
tably brings great suffering. While people’s talents
and contributions to society deserve recognition,
this often brings a desire for its permanent and eter-
nal continuation. History and literature are replete
with proud characters and the consequences of
overweening pride, yet humans never learn, perhaps
because of the very fine line that separates necessary
self-respect from unwarranted pride.
In the Ipe family, pride rears its ugly head first
in Pappachi, whose primary source of fame comes
from his being the progeny of the “blessed one,”
the little boy who wove through the forest of adult
legs and presented himself to the visiting pope, a
result of uncontrolled childish behavior, not divine
intervention. However, while some members of the
Ipe family see this blessing as an opportunity to
do God’s work, Pappachi views it as his inherent
superiority. Pappachi’s second source of pride is that
he is a foreign-educated entomologist who almost
made a great scientific discovery in identifying a new
species of butterfly. His third source of pride is his
blue Plymouth. All these conditions inflate his ego,
perverting his perspective on what is owed to him.
When the time comes to share the limelight with
his wife’s musical and culinary talents, he cannot.