Hullabaloo in the guava orchard
Kiran Desai
Faber and Faber, #14.99
Indian writing has become so fashionable publishing houses vie with each other to find the next Booker winner. Into this fray has entered the much-heralded Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, the debut novel by 27-year-old Kiran Desai, daughter of the acclaimed writer Anita Desai.
An extract was published in The New Yorker magazine last year, while Salman Rushdie, in the introduction to The Vintage Book of Indian Writing 1947-1997, described Desai's prose as ''lush and intensely imagined''.
Yes, it's well written and funny in parts. The story is set in Shahkot, a town in middle India. Here reside the Chawlas, a ''model'' family. Chawla Senior works in a bank; his wife Kulfi has produced a son and can now, safely, indulge her obsession for creating weird recipes. And there is our hero, 20-year-old Sampath, a lazy daydreamer.
His sister, Pinki, is an astute modern woman who wants more out of life. Suddenly, Sampath is sacked from his job as a menial post office clerk, which his father had used his influence to obtain. Why? Because he behaves outrageously at the wedding of the daughter of the head of the post office by dressing up in women's clothes and then stripping with gay (no pun intended) abandon. Why does he do it? We never know, but no matter.
Next thing, he's up in a guava tree and refuses to come down. Much to his consternation he is proclaimed a guru. (Here are slight touches of R K Narayan's The Guide, and you feel optimistic, but this is shortlived.)
Sampath is well qualified for the job. He has spent many hours at the post office reading other people's mail and is privy to their private lives.
Also he has a penchant for spouting homilies: ''Add lemons to milk and it will grow sour, but add some sugar . . . how good will that milk taste.'' Chawla Senior spots a business opportunity and seizes it with gusto.
Pilgrims have to pay to receive a ''darshan'' (blessing).
Enter a disguised spy from the Branch to Uncover Fraudulent Holy Men (BUFHM), determined to expose the guru as a fake. So far so good. Then it appears the author does not know what to do with her creation, so a bunch of monkeys with a liking for alcohol are dispatched to wreak havoc into this idyll. The plot goes a bit haywire and the ending is unsatisfactory. In fact, the sub-plot of Pinki's dogged pursuit of the Hungry Hop boy who sells ice-cream is more interesting than the main narrative.
The characters and their idiosyncrasies are fascinating. But just when the reader wants to get into the minutiae of their lives, our author meanders off into eloquent phrases which add nothing to the story. Frustrating!
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article