GoST Culmination Assignment Planning

cheap plastic, ten to two. under grass buried in the ground.

"The Waiting filled Rahel until she was ready to burst. She looked at her watch. It was ten to two. She thought of Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer kissing each other sideways so that their noses didn't collide. She wondered whether people always kissed each other sideways. She tried to think of whom to ask."

"Rahel's toy wristwatch had the time painted on it. Ten to two. One of her ambitions was to own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place)."

"From the way Ammu held her head, Rahel could tell that she was still angry. Rahel looked at her watch. Ten to two. Still no train. She put her chin on the window sill. She could feel the grey gristle of the felt that cushioned the window glass pressing into her chinskin. She took off her sunglasses to get a better look at the dead frog squashed on the road. It was so dead and squashed so flat that it looked more like a frog-shaped stain on the road than a frog. Rahel wondered if Miss Mitten had been squashed into a Miss Mitten-shaped stain by the milk truck that killed her."

"Rahel liked all this. Holding the handbag. Everyone pissing in front of everyone. Like friends. She knew nothing then, of how precious a feeling this was. Like Jriends. They would never be together like this again. Ammu, Baby Kochamma and she. When Baby Kochamma finished, Rahel looked at her watch. 'So long you took, Baby Kochamma,' she said. 'It's ten to two.'"

“The back verandah of the History House (where a posse of Touchable policemen converged, where an inflatable goose was burst) had been enclosed and converted into the air>^ hotel kitchen. Nothing worse than kebabs and caramel custard hap- pened there now. The Terror was past. Overcome by the smell of food. Silenced by the humming of cooks. The cheerful chop- chop-chopping of ginger and garlic. The disembowelling of lesser mammals ~ pigs, goats. The dicing of meat. The scaling of fish.

Something lay buried in the ground. Under grass. Under twenty- three years of June rain.

A small forgotten thing.

Nothing that the world would miss.

A child's plastic wristwatch with the time painted on it.

Ten to two it said.”

“The Q^ntas koala they took for their children.

And the pens and socks Police children with multi-coloured toes

They burst the goose with a cigarette Bang. And buncd the rubber scraps

Yooseless goose Too recognizable

The gasses one of them wore. The others laughed so he kept them on for a while. The watch they all forgot It stayed behind in the History House. In the back verandah A faulty record of the time. Ten to two.

They left

Six princes, their pockets stuffed with toys

A pair of two-egg twins.

And the God of Loss.

He couldn't walk. So they dragged him

Nobody saw them.

Bats, of course, are blind”

"The Past Isn't Dead. It Isn't Even Past" - william falkner

about frozen time?

twins are stuck in time?

book plays with time.

rahel talks about being able to change the time whenever she wants, roy does just that

time is representation

time, like frog, is dead? does not move, according to watch.

the book is frozen in time, in the sense that it doesnt progress centered around where the watch it left

frozen time -> oxymoron

people are frozen, stuck in the past.

passage of time means nothing?

two interpretations

time does not pass, and past stays with us.

the past vs past, time vs Time

grass has grown, time has passed.

ten too two, could be ten two two when time is frozen, it becomes meaningless.

she only mentions it in the point when she is waiting! what does that mean

waiting is the only place where we are aware of time?

second definition, aware of time, but still unable to move past.

rahels watch has drawn on hands.

time is frozen.

frozen can be two ways:

unable to be changed, and unable to escape the past.

unable to be changed. represented by the unchanging discarded watch.

caste system, not escaped even in communist ranks.

baby kochamma and her love

always leaking pickle jars

"the past insnt dead. it isnt even past." faulker

represented by the grass growing.

the past traps us. estha cannot move on. everyones lives are forever changed.

the watch is only mentioned when rahel is waiting, which is when we are aware of time. time is still passing, but the past is never gone.

it's at the history house, history all about the pasts effect on the future.

Link!

For my creative project, I chose to create a rendition of Rahel's watch. I made my model as close as possible to how Rahel's watch is described in the novel, from the toy-like shoddy manufacturing to the painted on hands. These hands are placed at ten to two, a phrased frequently repeated throughout the entire novel. Of course, a watch with painted on hands defeats the very purpose of a watch; after all, how can it tell the time if it never changes? Rahel wants to "own a watch on which she could change the time whenever she wanted to (which according to her was what Time was meant for in the first place)." (citation). Arundhati Roy, the author of the book and the constructor of its world, does just this. The story is told non-linearly; the laws of Time are changed and broken constantly, whenever Roy wants to. The passage of time becomes almost meaningless, as the story is not about chronology. The phrase repeated, "it was ten to two,"(citation) is not ten before two, ten till two, or even 1:50. Instead, it is deliberately chosen to be "ten to two," which could easily be misinterpreted as ten two two. But it doesn't matter, and that's the point. Frozen time is practically an oxymoron; time has become meaningless. Furthermore, the book reads "it was," asserting that the watch is correct about the time, which of course, it isn't. Time has become frozen, and thus, in the classical sense of the word, becomes meaningless, arbitrary, and changeable. But this begs the question, what does frozen time mean?

Frozen time can take primarily two meanings, both of which appear in the book. The first meaning is that time simply does not pass, or in practice, does not create change. I represented this with the unchanging watch in the center of the frame, where even "under twenty-three years of June rain," Rahel's "plastic wristwatch with the time painted on it […] stays buried. […] Ten to two it said." (citation). The passage of time fails to change the positions of the hands, just as it fails to change much else in the book. Immutable or unchanging things are, in a sense, frozen in time. This theme of immutability appears often throughout the book, perhaps most apparently with the caste system. Despite Velutha's infinite kindness, he is still beaten to death. Even the communist party, described as "a cocktail revolution," is prejudiced against low class members. (citation) Even when the ideology directly contradicts it, the caste system is still unchanged; it is frozen in time. This theme appears again with Baby Kochamma's love for Father Mulligan, when even "Father Mulligan's death did not alter the text of the entries in Baby Kochamma's diary," all declaring her love (citation). The theme even sneaks into smaller instances, such as Mammachi's inability to stop her pickle jars from leaking leaves her wondering "whether she would ever master the art of perfect preservation" for her entire life (citation).

The second way time can be frozen is best demonstrated by a quote from William Faulkner: "The past is never dead. It's not even past." The past stays with us in the sense that we can never escape its effects. I chose to represent this with the grass growing. The world is not frozen, time still passes, and yet, the watch remains; untouched, trapped. This sense of frozen time also appears throughout the book. The phrase "ten to two" only ever appears when Rahel is waiting. The very first use of the phrase appears while in the train station: "The Waiting filled Rahel until she was ready to burst. She looked at her watch. It was ten to two." (citation). When one is waiting, they are acutely aware of the time. Time is passing, and yet it remains ten to two. The one time the phrase appears when Rahel is not waiting is when the watch is left at the History House. History itself is about the past and its impacts, ones we can never escape. Estha becomes mute because of his trauma, unable to escape the past. Chacko cannot escape his marriage, still trapped in a unofficial one sided relationship. Margaret Kochamma cannot escape Sophie Mol's death. After all, things can change forever in a day.

Once the quietness arrived, it stayed and spread in

Estha.

Wether it's waiting for a train,