Grief is a powerful emotion that can enkindle relationships built upon loss. The novel The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy explores the ceaseless cycle of grief in a repressive caste system and demeaning society, and portrays the characters’ love and sorrow through evocative water imagery. The family saga delves into the lives of Ammu, her lover, Velutha, and Ammu’s twin children, Rahel and Estha. The climax centers around Sophie Mol’s death when she falls prey to the predatory Meenachal River, and Velutha’s brutal death arising from forbidden love affairs with Ammu by the same river. Stemming from this untamed river, the rich water imagery present throughout the novel effectively conveys the grief still ripe in Ammu and her children’s hearts as they cope with losses and struggles in their lives, revealing how pain is the foundation for their relationships. The eloquent water illustrations relating to the river signify the characters’ agony and their subsequent pursuit for love to heal their deep wounds.

Sophie Mol dies by drowning and Velutha is brutally killed. The roots of both tragic deaths and hence the source of sorrow in the novel can be traced back to the vicious Meenachal River. When Sophie Mol joins the twins on the boat, she is “carried away on the muffled highway” (Roy 277). Velutha does not die due to drowning, but rather because he “broke the love laws. That lay down who should be loved” on the boat by the river for he is an untouchable — the lowest caste in society (Roy 328). Consequently, Velutha is wrongly accused of assault and brutally beaten to death. This betrayal “sent Velutha across the river, swimming against the current” but after all, “No one knows the Meenachal. No one knows what it may snatch or suddenly yield...That is what makes fishermen pray” (Roy 245, 267). Indeed, the Meenachal river is turbulent, wild, and unforgiving, snatching not only young Sophie Mol in its rapid current but also Ammu and Velutha’s love, leaving behind the bitter aftertaste of grief in a merciless society. The novel, though asynchronous, unravels the story based on the apex of this plot through water imagery pertaining to the Meenachal river.

Estha and Rahel’s eyes metaphorically reflect the pain from the devastating events that happened by the Meenachal river. As a young man, “flat muscled and honey colored” Estha walks “in the wind and rain, on the banks of the river, in the sudden thunderdarkness of the day...” (Roy 11-12). He is as silent as a “quiet bubble floating on a sea of noise” with “sea-secrets in his eyes” and “a silver raindrop on his ear” (Roy 13, 216). This description, abundant with water imagery, renders Estha to have a wary disposition and to “look wiser than he really was. Like a fisherman in a city” (Roy 14). However, on that tragic night with Rahel and Sophie Mol, he was not wise for “how wrong it is for a fisherman to believe that he knows his river well” (Roy 216). Now, Estha silently continues to carry the burden of loss locked away as sea secrets in his eyes. While Estha’s eyes carry sea-secrets, Rahel’s husband Larry was “offended by her eyes. They behaved as though they belonged to...Someone watching. Looking out of the window at the sea. At a boat in the river” (Roy 20). Rahel’s eyes specifically resemble her mother’s when she would “stay sitting on the steps, watching” Velutha, waiting for him by the boat (Roy 316). Larry’s offense toward Rahel’s eyes is a reminder of the broken love laws and the taboo that Ammu and Velutha had committed in an unforgiving society.

The twins’ eyes are described using water imagery or places by the sea, alluding to the tragedy in the novel and the special connection they share with their losses. Even Estha’s walk in the pouring rain parallels that of Velutha’s when he strides forth in the “darkness and the driving rain” knowing his fate (Roy 269-270). The analogy of a fisherman furthers this parallelism as both attempted to daringly be fishermen of the unassailable Meenachal. Even the river seemed to mock this naivety when it seized Sophie Mol for the “deep-swimming fish covered their mouths with their fins and laughed sideways at the spectacle” (Roy 195). The watery traces of this tragedy present within Estha convey his overwhelming regret. His silence and “sea secrets” along with the “silver raindrop on his ear” amplify his strong connection with Velutha where the affection Velutha displayed in his childhood still thrives within him; the water illustrations demonstrate the pain from that loss of love (Roy 13, 216). Rahel’s eyes shed light on Ammu and Velutha’s powerful love at the cost of breaking societal convention. Since Rahel’s eyes are the basis for Rahel and Larry’s later divorce, it accentuates the graveness behind Ammu and Velutha’s relationship. Larry could not endure the mysterious yearning behind Rahel’s eyes, referring to the intensity of the desperate love that Ammu sought out for in Velutha. Such a treacherous desire is forbidden by society and Rahel's divorce symbolizes Velutha’s death and the broken love law.

Ammu channels the trauma she experienced during her youth into the desire for love. When she was young, Ammu’s father would flog “her with his ivory handled riding crop” with “cold, flat eyes...surrounded by a sea of twisting rubber snakes” (Roy 171-172). Her father’s malevolent eyes are made bitter from jealousy and pride, and the twisted sea imagery of the snakes provides a fleeting glimpse of his own grief. However, this pain propels him to inflict wounds on others, lashing out his fury on Ammu. As a young woman, she is further hurt when “Ammu realized that the slightly feverish glitter in her bridegroom’s eyes had not been love...but approximately eight large pegs of whiskey” and thus her marriage led to spontaneous outbursts of abuse and violence (Roy 39). The shame surrounding her failed marriage as a “divorced daughter from an intercommunity love marriage” creates an indelible blemish in her family status and constantly haunts her, shames her, and casts her into a disgraceful position in society (Roy 45). Ammu’s dream exemplifies her longing for someone in whom she can unleash the burdening pains of her sorrow and hence foreshadows her connection with Velutha. In her dream, “the sea was black, the spume vomit-green. Fish fed on shattered glass...He could swim, with his one arm. She with her two” (Roy 206). After waking up, Ammu listens to the song lyrics from the film Chemmeen: “the fisherman drowns, sucked to the bottom of the sea...So everybody dies...The sea claims them all” (Roy 208-209). The lyrics foretell Ammu and Velutha’s destined calamity.

Ammu’s past trauma of her father’s and husband’s violence coupled with the ignominy she constantly faces as a divorced woman drives her to pursue the love she never found in her life. Her ache for an empathetic relationship is emanated through her sea dream and the sea song. Her dream evidently speaks of Velutha as the one-armed man who swims with her in the sea. Since he only has one arm, he “could only do one thing at a time” and could not “fight the shadows that flickered around him” (Roy 205). While he uses one arm to caress Ammu, he has no other to rid the punishment that awaits him for loving her. The sea, though calm in the dream, mirrors the Meenachal where both are swept away in their love. Its unsettling terror is manifested through the sea song’s cryptic narration where everyone dies, claimed by the sea. The profuse water imagery in the dream and the song embodies Ammu and Velutha’s suffering from societal oppression, forming the groundwork for their ephemeral relationship.

The vehement grief for the lost love of Ammu and Velutha’s relationship is depicted through Rahel and Estha. Similar to Ammu and Velutha, Rahel and Estha mourn together for all that has been lost, once again breaking the love laws. When Estha looked into Rahel’s eyes “No one stared out of a window at the sea. Or a boat in the river...Only that what they shared that night was...hideous grief” (Roy 311). The description of the sea refers once again to the Meenachal except this time there is no one waiting by the window or by the boat. The overbearing weight of this absence as well as their traumatic childhood engenders them to use love as a catharsis for healing.

The Meenachal River is the site of love, death, and broken love laws in The God of Small Things. The water imagery present throughout the novel takes the form of snippets of the wild Meenachal expressing the continuity of grief among Ammu, Velutha, Rahel, and Estha. It further reveals how the relationships in the story are driven by the characters’ suffering. By employing this technique, Roy shows how often grief is the underlying foundation of love, and how love is sought out to relieve emotional pain.

Works Cited

Roy, Arundhati. The God of Small Things. Fourth Estate, 1997.