Seeing as to the lack of any actual class time including the promised timeline, I have decided to make my own and prove that there is a discrepancy in the timeline.

As we all well know by now the plot of the book centers around the death of Estha’s and Rahel’s cousin Sophie in December of 1969, and coming together 23 years later. Now, I’m going to warn you, this next part does have math. 1969+23=1992. So the year that the reunion takes place is 1992, this means that because Ammu was 27 in 1969 she was born in 1942 and died at age 31 in 1973. The fact she dies at age 31 is important, for when her children meet all those years later they were also 31. Now, 1992-31=1961. That is the time line as we first see it.

Click here for a visual representation of my timeline.

But then Roy makes an … interesting choice. On page 40 it states that Ammu was 8 months pregnant when the Sino-Indian war broke out, In October of 1962. Meaning they were not born it 1961 as was originally calculated but instead November of 1962. This, for a lack of a better term this monkey head soups this all up. If this were true, then they were 31 between November of 1993 to November of 1994. Meaning, Arundathi Roy made a mistake.