Seperation

Separation

Ira shot up from his lying position in bed, sweating a river. He had woken up from another one of his frequent nightmares, which seemed to be from his life Before. Before he moved in with his father, Vernon. Before he had seen his birth mother break down in tears, and he had felt sick with a dangerous amount of fear, about double the normal, safe amount. Double because he had felt his sister’s sickness too. Before he left his sister. His sister, Ria, whom he could hardly remember most times. But he remembered her now, having just been inside her dream, his nightmare.
Ria shifted, and smiled in her sleep. But this pleasure didn’t last for long. Her connection was broken, and she jerked awake. She frowned, thinking hard as she bit her lip. She was happy just to think of her brother because she hadn’t seen him since their separation, but knew his reaction wasn’t the same as hers. For some strange reason, he always greeted her almost nightly visits in his dreams as a bad thing. As soon as she made the brief connection with him, he panicked and woke up. He needed sleep, so she had started to lay off a bit, but needed to figure out why he was rejecting her. She personally suspected that it was the circumstances of their separation that had created this reaction, but hadn’t yet been able to discern if her suspicions were true.
Ira and Ria were twins. If you looked at them, it wasn’t obvious. People always thought that Ira was Ria’s cousin, or perhaps a close family friend. But not a brother, and never a twin. But if you looked inside their minds, or noticed how one was seldom more than ten feet away from the other, you knew there was something more. Something Different. And there was. The two became so infused that they could only tell who was who when someone spoke to them. The first person singular confused them, and they were often reprimanded in school for the misuse of it.
Unfortunately, their parents hadn’t looked. They hadn’t really studied their seven year old, human children before Rachel decided she couldn’t handle Vernon, and his positive outlook on everything, finally breaking down into tears of rage. So, when Vernon excitedly appeared at Rachel’s bedside one morning, bearing a letter from Ask Alice that said that the twins were normal, that a separation wouldn’t be harmful, at least not exceedingly so, Rachel thought about it. She thought very hard, very long (and under much pressure from Vernon) before forcing Ira upon Vernon, upon a country house, upon a place Very Far Away.
It appeared to Vernon that Ira was missing Rachel horribly. He had started cleaning, and doing laundry. There was something wrong with this, something strangely familiar, but Vernon couldn’t exactly put his finger on what. Vernon was busying himself in order to put his separation from Ria and Rachel out of his mind. His main hobbies were writing letters and gardening. He had started a vast garden surrounding their small home, filled with daises, tulips, and, oddly enough, bonsai plants. “Well,” Vernon reasoned, “If there’s anything really wrong, he’ll come to me. He knows that he can always talk to me.” And he put it out of his mind. But he didn’t come to him, and he didn’t worry. He didn’t worry while Ira tossed and turned every night, dreaming of Ria. He didn’t worry while Ira adopted activities that his sister loved so much, or at least seemed to. He didn’t worry while Ira slowly became silent. While Ira was being eaten away from the inside, he didn’t worry. That wasn’t the point.
Every night, Ria and Ira met. Met in the universe that was their mind, perhaps in the world of the dead, perhaps in the world of the living, depending on Ria’s state of mind. Ria was the stronger twin, the dominating personality. Ira, who was obedient and coasted through life upon the whims of others in daylight, was the same in the brief periods of Darkness he experienced. And every night, Ira felt extreme pain at having to relive the separation from his heart’s companion. For this reason, and for this reason alone, he stopped sleeping. He no longer wanted to only see Ria in his nightmare dreams; he wanted to see her in real life too. So he became skilled at blocking her from his mind, but only just long enough to get the necessary amount of sleep he needed to operate each day.
And so, Ira and Ria continued to struggle through their separate lives, lacking happiness because of their lack of function, their function to be there for each other. Until the day came, fifteen years later, when Vernon died happy, not knowing of Ira’s endless distress. Until Ria, hearing of it, insisted that she and Rachel come to the funeral. And thus, Ira and Ria were reunited, and, yes, it felt so good. Suddenly, Ira became more expressive of his feelings, and Ria was easier to control. And Rachel was sad for Vernon’s death, even though she was told not to be.






Question: How much of an effect did the twins’ relationship with each other have after they were separated?

Answer 1: No effect
The relationship between the twins Rahel and Estha did not affect the difficulty of their separation at all. Their relationship wasn’t of yet too powerfully strong, because of their tender age. A greater influence on their lives was the separation from Ammu, either by death or Return. Ammu was the most important person in either of their lives. This is shown quite early on in the book, with “It was the first time they’d seen their mother cry. ... It made the twins sick with fear. Ammu’s tears made everything that had so far seemed unreal, real…Then he put his little arms around his rigid, weeping mother.” (Roy 10) For Rahel, it was Ammu’s death that caused a character transformation. “After Ammu died…Rahel drifted.” (Roy 16) For Estha, it was his being Returned that made the huge difference. “Without warning, the train began to move... Estha’s pupils dilated. His nails dug into Ammu’s hand as she walked along the platform... Godbless, my baby. My sweetheart. I’ll come for you soon! “Ammu!” Estha said as she disengaged her hand. Prising loose small finger after finger. “Ammu! “Feeling vomity!” Estha’s little voice lifted into a wail.” (Roy 309)
This vital mother/child relationship is also shown in “Happiness”, “If anything ever happens to me suddenly…I want you to promise you won’t feel bad.”(Lavin 32) Fortunately, Bea, Linda and the narrator didn’t have to take this advice, whereas Rahel and Estha didn’t have the advantage of knowing it in the first place. If they had, their lives would probably be very different.

Answer 2: Some effect
The relationship between the twins Rahel and Estha had some affect on the difficulty of their separation. Their relationship was that of which normal children have with siblings. Ammu even consulted an expert on the matter; “They consulted a Twin Expert in Hyderabad. She wrote back to say… that two-egg twins were no different from ordinary siblings and that while they would certainly suffer the natural distress that children from broken homes underwent, it would be nothing more than that. Nothing out of the ordinary.” (Roy 32) Indeed, even this expert agrees that their lives would not be greatly altered when Estha is Returned, and they should both go on leading normal lives without their twin. And even before Sophie Mol came, Ammu and Baba thought it would be fine for the twins to be separated; “They remembered being pushed around in a room once, from Ammu to Baba to Ammu to Baba like billiard balls. Ammu pushing Estha away. Here, you keep one of them. I can’t look after them both.” (Roy 80) The twins were affected by their separation at an early age, but it wasn’t horribly life changing, and, anyway, the plan had been debated before.

Answer 3: Major, life changing effect
The relationship between the twins Rahel and Estha had a major effect on the difficulty of their separation, which never should have happened in the first place. Estha and Rahel referred to themselves as one person, they shared memories, and referred to themselves as “I” instead of “we”. Even Ammu didn’t know the extremity of their relationship; “Promise me you’ll always love each other,” she’d say, as she drew the children to her. “Promise,” Estha and Rahel would say. Not finding words with which to tell her that for them there was no Each, no Other.” (Roy 215) The lyrics in Peter Tammetta’s God of Small Things probably express the twins feelings about each other perfectly “I am just like you I am just like you, just like you, just like you”(Tammetta lines 22-23), if not too separatist, too individual. Because of this connection between them, their separation was very painful. In fact, it is seen as the point where Estha stops talking, and Rahel becomes difficult; “Little Elvis-the-Pelvis with a spoiled, special-outing puff. And beige and pointy shoes. He left his voice behind. On the station platform Rahel doubled over and screamed and screamed.” (Roy 309)
This reaction to pain at separation is also seen in The Amber Spyglass when two halves of a soul are separated. “… [A]nd thought of her dear Pan waiting there alone, her heart’s companion, watching her disappear into the mist, and she fell into and storm of weeping. Her passionate sobs didn’t echo…but all along the shore…creatures that lurked there heard her full-hearted cry and drew themselves a little closer to the ground, afraid of such passion…Then Lyra gave a cry so passionate that even … it raised an echo, but of course it wasn’t an echo, it was the other part of her crying in turn from the land of the living as Lyra moved away into the land of the dead. “My heart, Will…” she groaned, and clung to him, her wet face contorted with pain.” (Pullman 251-254)
This is what I believed happened to Rahel and Estha, who both expressed the pain from their separation in different ways (Rahel was loud and disruptive (like Lyra) and Estha shut the world out (like Pan)). But when Estha became re-Returned, Rahel came to mend the divide. “It had been quiet in Estha’s head until Rahel came… The world, locked out for years, suddenly flooded in, and now Estha couldn’t hear himself for the noise.” (Roy 16) Yet Rahel coming to Estha wasn’t enough, and so they expressed themselves in order to become One again. “There is very little that anyone could say to clarify what happened next. Nothing that…would separate Sex from Love. Or Needs from Feelings.” (Roy 311) All in all, their function was to be there for each other, and the separation caused them to fail in this and become unhappy.