Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan relationship serves as a sub-plot in the novel. Kochamma’s bitterness against love and lovers is a result of this love affair. In this article we are to see in detail about Baby Kochamma’s love for Father Mulligan and how this impacts family relations.
Baby Kochamma, also known as Navomi Ipe is an important character in Arundhati Roy’s ‘The God of Small Things‘. She is the great-aunt of the fraternal twins Rahel and Estha (Esthappan), aunt of Chacko and Ammu, and Pappachi’s younger sister. She is a staunch Syrian Christian who later grows into a bitter woman. She is a woman antagonist in the novel who grows to dislike Ammu and her children.
Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan
Kochamma’s this trait of dislike towards others, especially Ammu, is primarily as a result of her failure to impress Father Mulligan when she was young. She falls in love with him as a young woman and tries all possible ways to impress him. She even converts to Roman Catholicism and determines to become a nun in order to impress him. Yet, all her attempts go in vain.
Father Mulligan is a young Irish priest who used to visit Kochamma’s father on Thursdays. After she falls in love with him, she at first tries to impress him by by force-bathing a little child whenever he is about to come. All these attempts prove to be futile. When she is about to become a nun, her father rescues her from the convent and sends her to America to study gardening. She remains unmarried for the rest of her life and frequently is seen tending to her garden.
Love Laws
Baby Kochamma’s failure in love makes her to develop a dislike against love. She torments and betrays Ammu primarily because of this aversion to love. Ammu’s marriage life fails after she gives birth to the twins. She returns to Ayemenem after her divorce. She longs for true love and affection which she finds nowhere but in Velutha, an untouchable who is employed in the Ipe house.
The existing “Love Laws” is against their love. Love affair of a widow is not allowed. On the other hand, Velutha is an untouchable. Love between a touchable and untouchable is against social norms. Kochamma grows angry when she discovers this love. This leads to deterioration of the family and betrayal of Ammu and her children.
The unrequited love of Baby Kochamma for Father Mulligan stands out as an interesting sub-plot. From this sub-plot the readers can understand the character of Baby Kochamma and the transformation in her character after love failure.
Kochamma’s deep-seated bitterness and hate against the love of Ammu is partly because of this love failure. She grows to hate Velutha a lot more because of his involvement in Communism. Baby Kochamma’s love is basically infatuation because Father Mulligan is a charismatic young man. She converts to Roman Catholicism and joins a convent so that she can be closer to him.
Character Transformation
Father Mulligan is a committed religious who does not return her love and never talks anything beyond Bible. His style of talking and loving approach makes her to develop love towards him. The rejection Kochamma faces deeply affects her character and personality. She undergoes a transformation of character that ultimately leads to her present bitterness, infact, a lifetime of bitterness and manipulative disposition.
Baby Kochamma’s dominant demeanor in her later part of life and her jealousy with Ammu and her children are a result of this unfulfilled desire. She is unable to achieve personal happiness through her own romantic aspirations and it results in resentment against the lovers.
The sub-plot of Baby Kochamma and Father Mulligan’s love serves as a sample of the novel’s broader themes. Kochamma’s love for a priest is considered a taboo. Similarly the relationship between Ammu and Velutha is also suppressed by the rigid caste system. In this sub-plot, Roy’s criticises the societal and cultural barriers that prevent the people from pursuing their true desires.