Another way of looking at it is also that although Velutha is a God Of Small Things he made Big Things happen. He was the god of small lives, lives of the Ipes as they were all in different ways affected by him. This also emphasizes the fact that Indian people struggle to assert their own identities after Independence. It is making Big Things out of Small Things.
God Of Small Things is also depicted as someone who can do only one thing at a time, the God Of Loss. That is how Ammu imagines Velutha in her dream (p.217). The fact that “it is a cheerful man with one arm” also links to the idea that Velutha’s abilities were limited by the fact that he is a Paravan. Instead of two things which one can do at a time with two hands, he can do only one because he is a Paravan.
The idea of Velutha being a God of Small Things is also emphasized when Roy describes Margaret Kochamma and Sophie Mol and things they take with them when going to India after Joe’s death. These things were small as they didn’t help Margaret Kochamma to save Sophie Mol from big things (her death) linked with Velutha, the God of Small Things.
God of Small Things is also depicted in a way that he leaves no traces. After the death of Sophie Mol, Margaret Kochamma splashes out her rage on Estha. He remembers all the images that linked with the death of Sophie Mol except for Velutha (p.264).
The idea of small things is summarized in the end of the novel (p.338). Neither Ammu nor Velutha have no future, they both belong to lower classes, they are not respected in the society class they live in. Velutha is a Paravan. Chacko, seeking to put Ammu down, mistakenly uses the term for a whole social class instead of for an individual by saying “spoken like a bourgeoisie. He should have called her a bourgeois (if he followed the English practice of applying the term to both men and women) or, even more correctly, a bourgeoise (middle-class woman). This emphasizes the fact that Ammu is considered of lower classes. They are both disabled of doing Big Things. That is why they stuck to Small Things.
p.1 “The wild, overgrown garden was full of whisper and scurry of small lives”
p.19 “Then Small God came away cauterized, laughing numbly at his own temerity. Inured by the confirmation of his own inconsequence, he became resilient and truly indifferent. Nothing mattered much. Nothing much mattered.”
p.74 “He was like a little magician. He could make intricate toys – tiny windmills, rattles, minute jewel boxes…Though he was younger than she was, he called her Ammukutty – Little Ammu.”
p.217 “If he touched her, he couldn’t talk to her, if he loved her he couldn’t leave, if he spoke he couldn’t listen, if he fought he couldn’t win.”
p.264 “Strangely, the person that Margaret Kochamma never thought about was Velutha...The God of Small Things…He left no footprints in sand, no ripples in water, no image in mirrors.
p.266 “She upset stacks of lingerie, ironed skirts and blouses, shampoos, creams, chocolate, Sellotape, umbrellas, soap, quinine, aspirin, broad spectrum antibiotics. Take everything…”
p.338 “The Big Things ever lurked inside. They knew that there was nowhere for them to go. They had nothing. No future. So they stuck to the small things”
