Arundhati Roy - The God of Small Things lyrics

Pappachi's Moth: Chapter 2 (pg49-52) Ammu said that Pappachi was an incurable British CCP, which was short for chhi-chhi-poach and in Hindi meant sh**-wiper. Chacko said that the correct word for people like Pappachi was Anglophile. He made Rahel and Estha look up Anglophile in the Reader's Digest Great Encyclopedic Dictionary. It said: Person well disposed to the English. Then Estha and Rahel had to look up dispose. It said: (1) Place suitably in particular order. (2) Bring mind into certain state. (3) Do what one will with, get off one's hand's, stow away, demolish, finish, settle, consume (food), k**, sell. Chacko said that in Pappachi's case it meant (2) Bring mind into state. Which, Chacko said, meant that Pappachi's mind had been brought into a state which made him like the English. Chacko told the twins that, though he hated to admit it, they were all Anglophiles. They were a family of Anglophiles. Pointed in the wrong direction, trapped outside their own history and unable to retrace their steps because their footprints had been swept away. He explained to them that history was like an old house at night. With all the lamps lit. And ancestors whispering inside. "To understand history," Chacko said, "we have to go inside and listen to what they're saying. And look at the books and the pictures on the wall. And smell the smells." Estha and Rahel had no doubt that the house Chacko meant was the house on the other side of the river, in the middle of the abandoned rubber estate where they have never been. Kari Saipu's house. The Black Sahib. The Englishman who had "gone native." Who spoke Malayalam and wore mundus. Ayemenem's own Kurtz. Ayemenem his private Heart of Darkness. He had shot himself through the head ten years ago, when his young lover's parents had taken the boy away from him and sent him to school. After the suicide, the property had become the subject of extensive litigation between Kari Saipu's cook and his secretary. The house had lain empty for years. Very few people had seen it. But the twins could picture it. The History House. With cool stone floors and dim walls and billowing ship-shaped shadows. Plump, translucent lizards lived behind old pictures, and waxy, crumbling ancestors with tough toe-nails and breath that smelled of yellow maps gossiped in sibilant, papery whispers. "But we can't go in," Chacko explained, "because we've been locked out. And when we look in through the windows, all we see are shadows. And when we try and listen, all we hear is whispering. And we cannot understand the whispering, because our minds have been invaded by war. A war that we have won and lost. The very worst sort of war. A war that captures dreams and re-dreams them. A war that had made us adore our conquerors and despise ourselves." "Marry our conquerors, is more like it." Ammu said dryly, referring to Margaret Kochamma. Chacko ignored her. He made the twins look up Despise. It said: To look down upon; to view with contempt; to scorn or disdain. Chacko said that in the context of war he was talking about- the War of Dreams- Despise meant all those things. "We're Prisoners of War," Chacko said. "Our dreams have been doctored. We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore. Our sorrows will never be sad enough. Our joys never happy enough. Our dreams never big enough. Our lives never important enough. To matter..."