07. Hybridity
A usual consequence of migrating is the formation of hybrid identities when the migrants interact with the local population. Biologically speaking a hybrid is an offspring with parents who belong to different races. This makes Sophie Mol the only real hybrid in The God of Small Things, since her father Chacko is an Indian and her mother Margaret is an Englishwoman.
Another, extended form of hybridity is mentioned by Baby Kochamma herself. “Baby Kochamma disliked the twins, for she considered them doomed, fatherless waifs. Worse still, they were Half-Hindu Hybrids whom no self-respecting Syrian Christian would ever marry.” (Roy 1997, 45). She calls the twins hybrids in reference to their religion, because their father Baba is a Hindu and their mother Ammu is a Syrian Christian like the rest of the Ipe family, a circumstance that had already caused disapproval of the marriage itself: “She wrote to her parents informing them of her decision [to get married to a Hindu]. They didn’t reply.” (Roy 1997, 39). After Ammu’s divorce, the whole affair leaves especially Baby Kochamma completely speechless:
She subscribed wholeheartedly to the commonly held view that a married daughter had no position in her parents’ home. As for a divorced daughter – according to Baby Kochamma, she had no position anywhere at all. And as for a divorced daughter from a love marriage, well, words could not describe Baby Kochamma’s outrage. As for a divorced daughter from a intercommunity love marriage – Baby Kochamma chose to remain quiveringly silent on the subject. (Roy 1997, 45-46)
In her essay Language, Hybridity and Dialogism in The God of Small Things, Anna Clarke explains why discussing hybridity is relevant to postcolonialism in particular.
Hybridity as a critical concept has had a privileged place in postcolonial studies. This is because contact and intermixture between different cultural groups have often taken place in the historical context of colonization. Since colonial relationships were often relationships of power between what the colonizers saw as the privileged ‘enlightened’, ‘civilized’, ‘rational’ and ‘advanced’ colonizer and the subaltern ‘barbaric’, ‘superstitious’, ‘backward’ colonized, hybridity in such contexts has often taken on a politicized dimension. (2007, 138)
In his prominent work The Location of Culture, Homi Bhabha looks for the space where culture actually can be found. He speaks of
conceptualizing an international culture, based not on the exoticism of multiculturalism or the diversity of cultures, but on the inscription and articulation of culture’s hybridity. To that end we should remember that it is the ‘inter’ – the cutting edge of translation and negotiation, the in-between space – that carries the burden of meaning in culture. (1994, 38)
Anna Clarke summarizes this: “To put it simply, the location of the meaning of culture is the contact zone between cultures: the space of culture’s hybridity.” (2007, 138). Bhabha calls this space the ‘Third Space’, in addition to the first two spaces or the two separate sides.
In my opinion it depends on the hybrid himself to define exactly what this Third Space looks like or where it is located, because he is left with two alternatives: Does he feel like somebody who is a part of both sides, for example the colonizer and the colonized, or does he feel like somebody who belongs to no side at all, which corresponds to a scenario that Chacko describes: “We belong nowhere. We sail unanchored on troubled seas. We may never be allowed ashore.” (Roy 1997, 53).
Salman Rushdie had a similar idea in Imaginary Homelands: “Our identity is at once plural and partial. Sometimes we feel that we straddle two cultures; at other times, that we fall between two stools.” (1991, 15). I think of all the characters in The God of Small Things, this description applies to Chacko the most. On the one hand he is very English, because he has lived in England for a long time as a father of a family, he has become accustomed to English habits and English culture and on the basis of these values he, for example, stops his father from beating his mother. But on the other hand, he falls back into a pattern that follows the strict Indian moral concepts when he batters down Ammu’s bedroom door and expels her from the Ayenemen Hose: “‘Get out of my house before I break every bone in your body!’” (Roy 1997, 225).
I want to return once again to Sophie Mol and her hybrid identity. The thing about her hybridity is that, although being half English and half Indian, she is not at all seen as a hybrid in Ayemenem, but only as an English girl: “It was about nine in the morning when Mammachi and Baby Kochamma got news of a white child’s body found floating downriver where the Meenachal broadens as it approaches the backwaters.” (Roy 1997, 252). Sophie is always referred to as being white and being English, her Indian heritage is not mentioned. She is from the beginning preferred to the twins by her anglophile Indian relatives. Only Ammu remains reserved towards Sophie and Margaret.
As much as Sophie is not seen as a hybrid by her family, but as being different, or even better then her Indian family members, just as much does she herself try to adapt to her cousins. She wants to be with them when they escape – it never was Estha’s plan to take Sophie Mol with him – and wants to make friends with them, be it by giving them presents: “Sophie Mol put the presents into her go-go bag, and went forth into the world. To drive a hard bargain. To negotiate a friendship.” (Roy 1997, 267). I think it is justified to say that Sophie acts like a hybrid, although she is not perceived as one.
On a formal level, in terms of language, The God of Small Things is full of hybridity, too. The author Arundhati Roy is Indian, but writes her novel in English. Throughout the text, however, the reader frequently comes across Malayalam words, poems or verses of songs. Sometimes an English translation is given, but sometimes the reader is left with the Malayalam sentences only: “A song from the Onam boatrace filled the factory. ‘Thaiy thaiy thaka thaiy thaiy thome!’ Enda da korangacha, chandi ithra thenjadu? (Hey Mr Monkey man, why’s your bum so red?)” (Roy 1997, 196).
Whereas here the reader who does not know Malayalam can not understand what is said, ignorance also appears the other way round. Sometimes characters in the book do not speak English and can not understand the other characters, for example Kochu Maria:
Estha would rise from the dead, stand on his bed and say, ‘Et tu? Kochu Maria? – Then fall Estha!’ and die again. Kochu Maria was sure that Et tu was an obscenity in English and was waiting for a suitable opportunity to complain about Eshta to Mammachi. (Roy 1997, 83)
But it also happens that characters speak English, but do not know what they are saying. They have learned to pronounce a word, but it has no meaning for them. Comrade Pillai’s son Lenin is a good example for this, when he cites Shakespeare: “‘lend me yawYERS;’” (Roy 1997, 274). But the twins, too, often play with English words and when they are the focalizers of the story, sometimes words are written as they imagine them: “They had to form the words properly, and be particularly careful about their pronunciation. Prer NUN sea ayshun.” (Roy 1997, 36).