A woman character who matters

          A woman character who matters

(Ammu in Aiswarya's imagination)

Often on silent midnight hours as I stare out into the nocturnal stillness, the image of that frenzied woman possessed by the reckless rage of the ‘suicide bomber’, walking out frantically with floating hair and flashing eyes carrying some magic secret, smoking cigarettes and taking midnight 

swims passes vividly before my mind’s eye. Fearing that the image might escape from the chambers of my brain, I would sit there entranced, with my eyes tightly shut trying to imprison herself inside me. No wonder we say that fictional characters are not merely non-human word masses 

confined to the covers of the text but they can step out of the pages and trigger tremendous amounts 

of emotional energy in the readers such that it becomes impossible for us to exorcise their presence 

from our psyche. Such was the influence that this character had upon me. Ever since I encountered 

her for the first time some three years ago, I had become a die hard fan of this woman. All these 

years, I had kept my love for her secretly locked in my heart but now it's time to finally vent out my feelings for her.

The woman character who matters the most to me is none other than Ammu in Arundhati Roy’s Booker Prize winning novel The God of Small Things. She is the most powerful feminist I have 

ever encountered in my life. Her appearance and personality have always dazzled and captivated 

me like anything and to even think of her gives me goosebumps all over my arms. I adore Ammu with all my heart, for it requires incredible courage and strength in this world for a woman to live for herself, to shed off all the moralities of motherhood and divorcehood, to encroach upon the 

love laws, the laws that define who should be loved, how and how much and make the impossible 

really happen, thereby igniting sparks of revolution. She is a powerful female character that we 

all must look up to, especially during the current times when we have been witnessing and 

encountering heart-rending incidents of suicides related to dowry and dowry harassment.

                  (Arundhathi Roy)

Ammu was bold enough to leave the man with whom she was legally married without ever thinking 

upon the wrath she would incur upon her from the society and her family in choosing to remain a 

divorcee. Her actions literally shake the moral edifice of the patriarchal society, for she proves that 

a woman doesn't necessarily need the financial assistance of a man to live and raise her children. 

Further, she follows her instinctual desires and undertakes secret romantic rendezvous with Velutha, the God of Small Things- the man whom she loved to death, for whom her heart ached 

and in whose company she could momentarily evade the world of responsibility and soar up high 

like a free, happy soul. Such powerful women like her remind us that in sacrificing our whole life 

and happiness for the sake of others, we often forget to water our passions and nurture our dreams.

Ammu was never a victim and she fought till her last breath. But her predictions were dead right 

in that things can change in a single day- that each tremor of pleasure will be met by an equal 

measure of pain. Everytime I console her not to hold herself accountable for whatever happened 

with Velutha because at least I choose to believe that death came to him as a blessing in disguise 

so that he could escape from this hellish place on earth where Big Gods, or ‘the touchables’, 

continue to rule and walk over the Small Gods and trample them to death. And now that Ammu 

too has left the earth would mean that she can once again reunite with the man of her dreams and 

live happily. I am pretty sure that she won't let the Big Gods, especially the men in khaki uniforms 

who had beaten Velutha to a pulp and who had humiliated and ill treated her at the police station 

to live in peace. I want to hear them scream from the guilt of all things that they have put her 

through.

Aiswarya Suresh,

MA English,

Kannur University

Aishwarya Suresh won the first prize in the national level competition 'A Woman Character who Matters' organised by Women Development Cell, PSMO College, Tirurangadi.