“
One morning, without prior notice, the railway level cross-ing opened and the sky- blue Plymouth with the sun in its tail
fns sailed through. The architecture of the novel I was writing revealed itself to me. I actually drew it on the back of an enve-lope. Once I knew what I was doing, I wrote quickly. I developed the habit of taking deep, dreamy catnaps after writing a few para-graphs. After several hundred catnaps, over several hundred days, suddenly one ordinary summer morning that had nothing beyond the blazing heat to recommend itself, the story was told, the book was written. It had taken me more than four years.
With the last of my money, I bought a printer. I printed the manuscript, and without pausing to think about it for even a moment, I printed the title: The God of Small Things . Pradip and I went out for a coffee. I sat across the table from him and recited the frst few paragraphs.
‘May in Ayemenem is a hot, brooding month. The days are long and humid. The river shrinks and black crows gorge on bright mangoes in the still, dustgreen trees . . .’
I knew the whole book by heart.
‘Finished?’
‘Yes.
”
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