The Earth Woman
Imagine that the earth - four thousand six hundred million years old - was a forty-six-year-old woman. It had taken the whole of the Earth Woman’s life for the earth to become what it was. For the oceans to part. For the mountains to rise. The Earth Woman was eleven years old, Chacko said, when the first single-celled organisms appeared. The first animals, creatures like worms and jellyfish, appeared only wen she was forty. She was forty-five just eight months ago - when dinosaurs roamed the earth.
“The whole of human civilization as we know it,” Chacko told the twins, “began only two hours ago in the Earth Woman’s life.”
“And we, my dears, everything we are and ever will be - are just a twinkle in her eye”
Taken From The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
