Pappachi's Moth – Class 11 English Chapter 5 Notes & NCERT PDF

About the Author

Arundhati Roy (born 1961), an architect by training, is a novelist and screenwriter. Pappachi's Moth is an extract from her first novel, *The God of Small Things, which won the Booker Prize in 1997*. She lives in New Delhi and is an activist.

Summary

Mammachi's pickles

After Pappachi retires from government service in Delhi and settles in Ayemenem (Kerala), Mammachi starts making pickles and jam commercially. It begins when the Kottayam Bible Society asks her for her famous banana jam and tender mango pickle; orders soon pour in all year round.

Pappachi's jealousy

Pappachi, seventeen years older than his wife, struggles with "the ignominy of retirement". Though Mammachi has conical corneas and is almost blind, he refuses to help, thinking pickle-making unsuitable for "a high-ranking ex-government official". Jealous of her success, he "slouched around the compound in his immaculately tailored suits, weaving sullen circles" and beats her every night with a brass flower vase. One night he breaks her violin bow and throws it into the river.

Chacko intervenes

Their son Chacko, home from Oxford (strong from rowing for Balliol), catches Pappachi beating Mammachi, twists his arm behind his back and says, "I never want this to happen again. Ever." That night Pappachi smashes his favourite mahogany rocking chair with a monkey wrench. He never beats Mammachi again — but never speaks to her again either. He sews on buttons that aren't missing to make visitors think she neglects him, and drives about in a sky-blue Plymouth that no one else may use — "the Plymouth was Pappachi's revenge".

The moth

Pappachi had been an Imperial Entomologist at the Pusa Institute (after Independence, Joint Director, Entomology). A moth with "unusually dense dorsal tufts" fell into his drink; he took it to Delhi hoping for fame. He was told it was only an unusual race of a known species of the family Lymantriidae. Twelve years later, after "a radical taxonomic reshuffle", lepidopterists declared it a new species and genus — but by then he had retired, and it was named after the Acting Director, a junior officer he disliked. "Its pernicious ghost — grey, furry and with unusually dense dorsal tufts — haunted every house he ever lived in."

Vienna and the violin

In a studio photograph from Vienna, where he did a six-month diploma, Pappachi looks young and slick. There Mammachi took violin lessons — stopped abruptly when her teacher Launsky-Tieffenthal told Pappachi she was "exceptionally talented… potentially concert class".

The obituary and the funeral

The Indian Express obituary names him Shri Benaan John Ipe. At his funeral Mammachi cries, her contact lenses sliding in her eyes. Ammu tells the twins she cried "more because she was used to him than because she loved him" — "human beings were creatures of habit".

Characters

Themes

Literary Devices & Style

Word Power

Exam Focus

Outline: jealousy of her success; nightly beatings; broken violin bow; after Chacko's intervention, total silence; she cries at his funeral out of habit, not love.

Nearly blind yet builds a thriving business; survives abuse; her talent (violin) recognised even though suppressed.

Not getting the moth named after him — it became a "pernicious ghost" of resentment — plus his humiliation at retirement.

Language work: ornithologist — study of birds; gerontologist — study of old age; ergonomist — design of equipment; dermatologist — skin; cytologist — cells. Where to find: citation (award/reference), epitaph (tombstone), abstract (start of a research paper), postscript (end of a letter), glossary (end of a book).

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