Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

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Title Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Author	Kiran Desai
Country	United Kingdom
Language	English
Genre(s)	Novel
Publisher	Penguin Books
Released
Media type	Print (hardback & paperback)
ISBN	0-571-19336-6

Hullabaloo in Guava Orchard Hullabaloo in Guava Orchard is a Novel by Kiran Desai. It is a comic story belonging to Indian fiction. This article describes the narrative style the author had followed in the book, and why it has such a mesmerizing effect on the readers.

Contents 1 About the author 2 Outline 3 Why is it Indian? 4 Narrative Style 5 References

[edit] About the author

Kiran Desai is a citizen of India and a permanent resident of United States. Her mother is the noted author, Anita Desai. She attended her primary education in India, and she higher education in US. She attended the Columbia University during which she wrote the first book. She has written two books, one being the Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard and the other being the The Inheritance of Loss. The first book, the topic of our essay received notable accolades and it won the Betty Trask Award. Her second book, The Inheritance of Loss was more famous and won the 2006 Man Booker Prize as well as the 2006 National Book Critics Fiction Award.

[edit] Outline

It is the story of a person named Sampath.He was raised in a middle class family, and his birth was considered auspicious that it rained which recovered his town from a famine. But he went through years of failure both as a student and at work. Confronted with the wordly problems and desolation led him to leave the town. One his way he stops at a guava orchard and climbs up a guava tree. He stayed there a few days unnoticed just eating guava fruits. Eventually he was located by his family and asked him to return. He declined and continued to stay there. Earlier during his work in a post office he had one peculiar past time --- he used to read the letters of other people. Thereby he came to know the secrets of many people in his town. When a crowd assembled near the tree, he stunned them by speaking out some of those. He soon started telling wonderful epitomes or stories for every problem a person came with. Every sentence he told became adages. He became the hermit of Shahkot. His father immediately found ways to make money out of this.

The monkeys of the guava orchard started causing mild nuisance to people including his sister Pinky, which later had an impact on her love life. One day monkeys got to drink alcohol, they got addicted and wanted more of those. This started causing more troubles to the people and also to our \emph{Baba}, as he is popularly called the \emph{Monkey Baba} as he once tamed them in front of all. A trap was deviced to handle them all, but the story is open ended. We can probably assume Baba was safe and monkeys were eventually transported to a forest. Sampath had already lost a good amount of support when he once declared that they should get get rid of the monkeys. But still he had many followers till the very end.

[edit] Why is it Indian?

Set in a town background, Kiran Desai gives us the flavour of Indian culture and values. The names of people and places are unarguably Indian, Sampath, Gupta, Banarjee and Chawla to name a few. The monsoon climate and its occasional delay due to desert low pressures in Iraq are typical features of Indian climate.

The dresses, mainly of ladies, sarees and dupattas are clear indications.

Apart from these, the behaviour of people bargaining at the ``bazaar and at the cinema strikes an Indianness. The idea of dowry even though not specifically Indian, asking such high ones and the custom of visiting the girl's house are really specific. And many tiny incidents such as the secret oil from the doctor in Side Gully for hair, add up to give a strikingly Indian outlook.

The presence of human gods prevails in India more than elsewhere in the world. Troubles of intercaste(status) marriages in the family are possibly unique to India. Pinky, the sister of the protagonist suffers from such problems when she was in love with an icecream seller.

Grandmother of our protagonist, is called Ammaji. Ammaji has beliefs in planetary configurations. Both the name and the belief in astrology are evidences for Indian context.

[edit] Narrative Style

Kiran Desai uses third person narrative in this story. It enables her to describe auxiliary stories, like the romantic story of Pinky or the monkey trap planning. The narrator is unprejudiced and gives faithful descriptions only. There is no explanation as to whether it was right or wrong, sane or insane. The book is very comical in its style of narrative.

Kiran Desai is a master of detail. She also uses a special device of her own which I refer to as the flow of ideas. Her language is very lucid with equally easy vocabulary. She uses short sentences. About her flow of ideas, she uses quick spontaneous sentences to describe an event or opinions of people. I shall give some sample instances later in the text.

The story contains many minor events that occur early in the story. One may assume that they have no importance to the central story, but it will suddenly change the track in a seemingly easy fashion. We can see careful planning of the story to make the major instances look even more scintillating.

Her first use of detail is when Mr Chawla (father of Sampath) reads out pieces of news, explaining the causes of delay in monsoon, and probable solutions. It talks about problems in cumulus, and volcanic ashes, West African coastline currents, Iraqi low desert pressures, polar icecaps and even Hungarian musicians. We shall see an example of graphic detail later.

Her lavish flow of ideas maintains the spontaneity of her language. For example: when Kulfi (mother of Sampath) was pregnant, she receives a lot of advices from various people,

  (Father: ) `You must take care to boil your drinking water for twenty minutes'. ... 'You must sit down 
  and rest after any exercise', `You must stand up and exercise regularly and diligently' 
  `Don't eat raw fruit any more' and `Don't sing songs and tire yourselves out'. `Dont drink tea
  on an empty stomach. Keep yourself extra clean. Wash your hair, take a nap, put your legs in
  the air and do bicycling exercises. Ammaji had her own ideas, she fussed with pillows and herbs, 
  with hairbrushes and bottles of strong scented oil for massages. `Sing songs to improve the baby's
  mood', she advised.  `Go to temple. Say the right prayers. Make sure the baby is healthy. Make sure
  the planetary configurations are good. Make sure you have no lice. Make sure you smell nice, and 
  the baby will smell nice too' ... (abridged, page 6)

Such structures are seen through out the book. Near the ending there is a whole chapter like this containing various suggestions made to trap the monkeys.

The transition of Sampath from a person to a hermit was portrayed very artistically. To add some credibility to the story, he doesn't simply go and climb a guava tree. There are series of events which are progressively more insane. During the wedding of his boss's daughter he saw nothing terribly interesting until he sees a room piled with wedding finery. Kiran Desai gives a very graphic description of the room.

   He could see ruffles of peacock silk and tiny pleats of rosy satin; lengths of frabric
   and saries of every colour imaginable. Fabric run through with threads of gold, scattered with 
   sequins and bits of glass, with embroidered parrots and lotus floweres worked in silver. There were mango
   patterns in rich plum and lumninous amber shades. There were dark velvets and pale milk like pastels
   tinted with only the faintest suggestion of rose pink or pistachio. There were unbroken stretches of 
   crisp white petticoats in waves about Sampath's feet.  (page 37)

It continues to two more paragraphs. He tried a nose ring and wondered if he looked beautiful. He crossdresses in the dim light of the candle(closed room). Here is the only place Kiran Desai uses the technique of imagery. He is compared to a bee flying around bright light. From our normal experience some insects do die when approaching the fire, and it happens to him too. He comes out to do a display and on top of it he continues to dance in public and suddenly he feels it is not the right to do, and strips right there. We can see a progressive insanity developing. He eventually loses his job and leaves the town, during which he encounters the guava orchard. By now the reader shouldn't get shocked when he gets out of bus and settles himself in the top of a guava tree.

People do more talking than thinking. There are few emotional situations and for most of the time the story proceeds at a fast pace. A very nice feature of a comic story. She doesn't use many transliterations except possibly for a few words like `Ammaji' and `Arre' which is scattered all over the text. And possibly the name of dishes and dresses as there are no sensible alternates.

There is an intentional misrepresentation of facts to make us believe he was not very good at studies. He remembers having to learn the proof of the theorem which states that the exterior angles of an isosceles triangle equal the sum of interior angles. In fact there is nothing special about isosceles triangles, as it is true for all triangles and it is also not specified which interior angles. It should be clearly told they are remote interior for the statement to be true. It is also possible the author made the mistake, but having such a high education, the former is a more likely explanation.

There are many graphic details throughout the book, to list a few, that of the post office, of the scenery, of the orchard, of the bazaar, of the crowd which visits Sampath, and a lot more. There are many non graphic detail also, for example the ingredients of the food Sampath has:

   A bushekm a drachm, a pint, a peck, a coomb, a sack, a hogshead, a scruple, Sandal , maddar, cassia,
   orris root, galnut, cinnabar, mace, senna, asafoetida, quail eggs, snail eggs, liver of a wild boar,
   tail of a wild cat, Nasturtium leaves, rhododendron flowers, cicada orchids and so on. (abridged, page 200) 

The other examples include the many ways of cooking a monkey or of planning to catch a monkey, or the way Pinky took efforts to get dressed beautifully.

Possibly the protagonist is the only person who thinks in the story, occasionally Pinky thinks too. And once Pinky's boyfriend the Hungry Hop. There is a deliberate attempt to make the reader close to Sampath, as many things are explained from his point of view. There is also an attempt to make the reader think of the possibility that Sampath is really a god touched hermit. Readers know his birth was accompanied by timely rain that rescued the town. All the sentences which he says, those beautiful tiny stories which he says as solutions to peoples' problems are really brilliant. Even the spy who came to prove he was not a real saint was not able to succeed, being brainwashed by his sentences. On top of all these he really leads an ascetic life compared to all the popular human gods.

The novel is well divided into chapters. Typically just before each chapter ends everything will be in a settled state, but the last two three paragraphs will change everything. It introduces a whole array of suspense that awaits us in the coming chapters. For example at the end of chapter 10, the spy doubts the presence of illegal drugs in the food pot of the hermit, or at chapter 11, when a trick of limited hours didn't work due to entrance of monkeys, or at chapter 17, the cook gets an idea of cooking the monkeys, or at the end of chapter 18, the whole town was left in a pandemonium due to the new opinion of Sampath relating the monkeys. Even at the end of the last chapter we don't know what awaits us in the cauldron, is Sampath killed by monkeys, or did Sampath himself kill a monkey and cook it in the cauldron, or is it just Sampath ran out of his normal place due to some unexplained reasons, or what happened to the Icecream boy, will he marry Pinky or return home and marry the ``Cake. We shall deal with ending in greater detail later.

I shall review the strategy of planning in the story. The monkey that causes nuisance at the Cinema, was seen as a minor event earlier. But when Pinky and Ammaji visit the Cinema, after Ammaji getting the dentures, turns out to be an important event. The monkey runs of with her dentures and icecream, which the Hungry Hop boy gets back for them. This occured immediately after Pinky was mortified as never in her life, by the monkey. Now Pinky develops some kind of allergic feeling towards Hungry Hop, and every time they met she ends up crying back at home. Following her brother's advice:

   If a firecracker has been lit' said Sampath, then it is going to explode, like it or
   not. Unless you throw it into a bucket of water. And then, what a waste of firecracker.

All the advices of Sampath are tiny stories like this, which are highly symbolic. People interpret them in the way they like. This is another major style in the book. Pinky interprets that she should not cry and finally ends up tearing the ear of Hungry Hop. She thought cracking the firecracking should bring some joy. She eventually felt sympathetic, and finally fell in love with him.

Next is one of my favourite in the story, I call this \emph{Newspaper technique}. The fact that Sampath used to read other's letters when he was working in the post office is mentioned only in two sentences. Which is contrasting to the usual style of the narration. But this is very early in the book, and hence was ignored until he became the hermit. Even when he says the various details about people, reader will be left with no answer as to how he came to know such things. Until the next day newspaper headline which read "Post office clerk climbs tree". Author intentionally wants the reader to get the idea indirectly, as she makes no comments on how he actually got those details. Reading this line immediately answers the question one had in mind about Sampath's omniscience. Newspaper plays an important role through out, initially to describe the pathetic state due to no rain, later the news of a Post office clerk on tree, and once more which popularized the Monkey Baba.

Another reason for the book's popularity is by conforming to general beliefs like police is not very good, or the poor plight of ladies in public transport, or the future of modern India depending on uplift of women etc. There is a well knit coincidence when Pinky gets arrested for attacking Hungry Hop. Now a senior officer in police who happened to be an admirer of the hermit lets her free. You can see how the event started and ended by the same guy. Police was shown to be degraded at multiple places. One was this and the second was during the plan to catch monkeys. Police was given the easy job of creating nets.

Sampath whenever confronted with a problem, he told very small examples, and the usual solutions to them. People interrupted its meanings in various ways. This collection of adages and its interpretations play an important part in the novel. Some of them are :

   Everybody can make something from nothing' `If you try hard enough 
   something will work out. You yourself know how --a potter makes a pot 
   from a lump of mud. A painter paints with camel's urine. A begger holds
   out his empty hand' `The thing is to mkae do with what you have, even if 
   it is nothing. (page 91)

Another one which the spy recollects:

   `Wrestle not the sweet vendor's daughter' and 'Spit not the doctor's son.
   Why think about futter when you have plenty of butter. Don't say you like
   watermelon when someone gives you pumpkin. Don't eat a fiffle to save a 
   piffle. Every plum has its own beginning. Every pea its own end.' (page 153)

Sometimes events converge at the same point. For example after Pinky pokes a nail to the spy for following her, and after she tears the ear of Hungry Hop, they both end up at the same doctor. Doctor wondering when did ladies start attacking gentlemen.

Novel ends in a very open ended state. Many questions are unanswered, even those fundamental ones like the survival of Sampath. Sampath was extremely reluctant to come down from the tree, for he feared he will be taken home, or locked in a stupid hermitage. In his last conversation with Pinky he says `Leave me alone, I am going to be sick, leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone... ' Sampath was not there in the tree. It is possible he fell into the couldron her mother had set for monkeys. But the most possible alternate is he ran away some where else, and the spy himself fell into the couldron. The story of Pinky and the Hungry Hop was also left incomplete. Hungry Hop wanted to marry the girl, whom his family found for him, because she looked beautiful and lots of dowry. Neither did he have the mind to cheat his girl friend Pinky, and he came that day early morning. But he gets locked up, and he keeps thinking which path to take.

A very humourous book, with a intention of exposing the madness of the world.

[edit] References

• Kiran Desai. Hullabaloo in Guava Orchard Penguin Books
• Webpage: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiran_Desai