"The Cost of Living" is the last chapter in Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things that tells the illicit love affair of Ammu and Velutha. It emphasizes how Ammu and Velutha stuck to the small things, knowing that there was nowhere for them to go, no future, nothing, (p 320). Living for them was sticking to smallness. But "the little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstituted. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleach bones of a story (p 32)." The smallest things connect to the biggest things. .
A small thing such as Estha's going out of the cinema in Abhilash Talkies to sing along with the nuns in The Sound Of Music connect to his having been molested by the Orangedrink Lemondrink Man (pp 97-99). A small thing such as Margaret Kochamma's acceptance of Chacko's invitation to spend the holidays in Ayemenem connect to Sophie Mol's death. A small thing such as Rahel's recognition of Velutha in the Marxist March, connect to Baby Kochamma's wrath to Velutha, and thereby making him pay for the humiliation she received from some of the marchers. A small thing such as the moment when Ammu and Velutha noticed the differences between themselves back when they were little and now, Velutha realizing that "she had gifts to give him too" connected to their love affair (p 168). A small thing such as a single blink in the Earth Woman's eye can make so many big things happen. Small things that seem inconsequential can result to a tragic end. .
The small things of living cost the drowning of a little girl, Sophie Mol and the police murder of an illicit lover Velutha, both of which in turn, cost the destruction of a well-to-do Indian family, especially two children, whose lives are emotionally ruined and blighted. Two-egg twins separated at the age of 7. One to be quiet. The other, to be empty. Twenty-three years later, the quietness in one and the emptiness in another would fit together like stacked spoons to share not happiness, but hideous grief.