Her big mistake? She married the wrong man. She is now 27 years old and feels as though life has already been lived.

Ammu is riding next to Chacko, who is her older brother.

Once upon a time, Chacko was a Rhodes Scholar and studied at Oxford University.

We learn that Chacko is a learned guy with a lot of books.

Rahel also wears a toy wristwatch with the time painted on it – it's always ten to two (see 'Symbols, Imagery, Allegory' for more on this). Rahel is wearing her hair on the top of her head like a fountain in a Love-in-Tokyo, which is 'two beads on a rubber band, nothing to do with Love or Tokyo' (2.11). He is wearing his 'beige and pointy shoes and his Elvis puff.

The narrator paints a picture of the twins.

We learn that Estha and Rahel don't have a last name because Ammu can't decide whether or not to revert to her maiden name.

Baby Kochamma starts giving the twins real grief, making them write a hundred lines of ' I will always speak in English' every time she catches them speaking Malayalam. The entire week before her arrival becomes the ' What Will Sophie Mol Think?' week (2.6).

None of them have ever met Sophie Mol.

Mammachi doesn't like this idea she would prefer to imagine that Chacko never loved her at all.

Ammu thinks that Chacko never stopped loving Margaret Kochamma.

Sophie Mol and Margaret are coming to Ayemenem for the holidays because Chacko says he couldn't bear to think of them being alone with their sad memories during the holidays. We learn that Joe, Margaret Kochamma's second husband, was killed in a car accident several months before.They're going to stay in a hotel, and the next morning they will go to the Cochin Airport to pick up Sophie Mol and Margaret Kochamma. The twins love the movie and know all of the songs. Estha and Rahel are in the car with Ammu, Chacko, and Baby Kochamma on their way to see The Sound of Music for the third time.The war is happening in Vietnam in India it's peacetime. The narrator notes that the landscape is similar to that of a small country further east where 'enough bombs were being dropped to cover all of it in six inches of steel' (2.2). A skyblue Plymouth car is speeding on its way to Cochin. When the chapter begins, we're back in the past – it's a 'skyblue day in December sixty-nine (the nineteen silent)' (2.1).

The god of small things audiobook