Customer Reviews

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

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Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is the old sixties message of "do your own thing" brought to bear in rural India. That nation is still bound by caste and class consciousness that places strong limits on what each person may and may not do. Naturally, the truly talented may transcend those limits, but what about the rest of us?

To explore that point, Kiran Desai provides us with the least likely hero you've ever met, Sampath Chawla, who combines the simpleness of Don Quixote with the desire for ease of Tom Sawyer. He and a number of the other characters are especially interesting for being originally drawn, rather than representing traditional archetypes. In doing this, Ms. Desai is helped by her references to the lack of mental balance in Sampath's mother and her children.

Some may incorrectly describe this as a humor book, but rather it's a biting satire of the nuttiness of the way things usually work. For example, in a job we are supposed to please the boss and rely on the boss's good will to provide for us. But if pleasing the boss means that we make ourselves miserable, what use is this? As another example, spew out a nonsensical aphorism and most people will find a connection to their own life . . . even if none is intended. We defer to those who seem to have superior power or knowledge . . . even when it's only a reputation for such rather than the reality.

Ms. Desai's point is that the good life is the rational life of meaningful self-interest, unrestrained by tradition, convention, and habit. She makes the exposition of that point more fun than any other writer I can remember.

This book is pure magic from start to finish. It is one of those rare books that you can keep reading again and again and again!

India has often been depicted as a mystic land of Sadhus, strange magic charms, spicy exotic cuisine and intricate religious rituals by the West. Kiran Desai's book is a brilliant satire that makes light of these theories in a comical manner. A satire that has social, political, economical, filial and even spiritual dimensions wrapped in layers of absurd humour with a dash of fantasy, the book raises some significant questions on the world and it's mad ways that applies not only to the fictitious town of Shahkot, but equally to any other part of India.

Sampath, the main protagonist is a dull young man whose absolute lack of common sense and ambition is made up for by his fertile imagination and deliriously free spirit that lead him to seek asylum in a guava tree in an abandoned orchard when he feels that life is going out of control. But madness is a hereditary trait of Sampath's family - his mother Kulfi is obsessed with food in it's various forms, his ambitious father is obsessed with money and his sister Pinky is a droll and foolish girl infatuated with the Hungry Hop Kwality ice cream boy.

Having spent his days as a post office clerk reading the town's incoming mail, Sampath finds it easy to pose as a clairvoyant holy man, a situation of which his family promptly takes advantage. He is joined by a group of monkeys on the treetop and earns the title of 'Monkey Baba' - Devotees start flocking to Shahkot to see the 'Baba' and Sampath's father seizes the opportunity to make some fast money out of the situation. But things take a crazy turn as the monkeys turn alcoholic, and pose a threat to the devotees' conglomeration as well as Sampath's family camping at the foot of the tree. Different people offer a variety of solutions for eliminating the monkey menace and Sampath finds himself in an obscure predicament.

Things take an even more bizarre turn as Pinky plans to elope with the ice cream boy, and Kulfi gets determined to catch and cook a monkey before they are chased away. All these events and more culminate in an extremely amusing medley of a climax, and an abrupt ending that has shades of fantasy.

Amidst such fun-filled incidents and livid descriptions of sporadic monsoons arriving late on summer-exhausted Shahkot, idyllic orchards bordering the hills outside the town and fantastic cooking with never-heard-of recipes, Ms.Desai brings out the various hues and flavours of human character. Several thought-provoking messages are dispersed throughout the book in a subtle manner making it much more than a simple light-hearted comedy.

Ms.Desai has a remarkable gift for humour - The sections highlighting the desirable qualities of an Indian bride, Pinky's and Ammaji's adventure with the cinema monkey that takes them a merry chase holding ice creams and Ammaji's dentures in tow and Pinky's ludicrous affair with Hungry Hop among others are sure to have the reader in splits of laughter.

A protagonist with a difference who seeks nothing except solitude in a shady spot, his eccentric family members, hypochondriac officials, prosaic civil servants, lackadaisical postmasters, a bunch of gullible 'devotees' and a group of alcoholic monkeys together create an extremely delightful tale that transports the reader to a world where life is slow, time moves at its own pace and yet reflects the varied dimensions of existence in the present day with all of it's plastic nuances.

This is a delightfully amusing first novel by a young author. The novel begins with a small village experiencing a drought, and an offbeat, dysfunctional family awaiting the birth of their child. The boy, Sampath, grows into a disaffected youth, living at home, in a dead-end job at the post office where he delights in reading the townspeople's mail.

When, at last, he gets tired of complaints from his boss, his family, and others trying to tell him how to manage his life, he runs away and climbs a tree on a deserted farm. There, spouting trite sayings and vague advice such as "Once you have broken the bottle you can no longer distinguish the air inside from the air outside," Sampath becomes famous as a holy man.

Throw in a sister who bites off a man's ear to show her affection and some monkeys with a taste for alcohol, and you've got a great beach read. This novel is well-written, fast moving, and thoroughly enjoyable. The only complaint I would have about it is that it leaves you wanting more of a "finished" ending. Perhaps Sampath will return.

I came across this book by chance with no preconceptions or set expectations (apart from what may have existed from my prior exposure to Indian authors). I found the whole book to be a delight -- colorful, fast-paced, descriptive. It combined good humor with political consciousness and seemed like an affectionate twitting of family roles and traditions of the neighborhood, town and society as a whole. Some of the events, taken by themselves, may certainly seem over the top (like something out of an Indian "Life of Brian"! -- if you're familiar with the Monty Python film of that name), but the author skillfully layers events so that she creates an internal logic that supports and propels the action, no matter how far out she goes. (And she does go pretty far out!) All in all, a captivating, rollicking, marvelous book.

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard is a very positive reading experience; a carnival of tastes, smells, emotions and devotions. It is a smiling journey trough a India that are getting more and more interesting for each new writer and each book out of this human wise "continent" of its own. Kiran makes India more accessible for those of us who has never been there, and must be one of several writers that are responsible for more and more people wanting to see India with their own eyes. I myself reacted this way, and that must surely be one proof of the quality of the book. Kiran like other first rate writers lets us travel to new places and meet new people. I would like to thank her for that.

In the book she introduces us to several families in a small Indian town and let us experience their hopes and their longings for the future.The main character is a day dreamer that everyone once had big expectations for. Kiran portrays his suprising (also for him self) rise to fame. Reading it gave me both some of the same feelings and pleasures as reading Vikrahm Seth: A suitable young man, and A house for Mr. Biswas, by V.S. Naipaul and Arundathi Roy: A Good for small things.

I'm impressed with the humor in the book and how she achieve being funny without diminishing her characters. Some one mentioned it as an Indian Confederacy of Dunces, but it is much more than that. But I also agree that it was equally funny. I will keep a sharp look out for further books from Kiran Desai in the future.

Born auspiciously during a monsoon which ended a long and devastating drought, everyone agrees that Sampath Chawla is destined for greatness. However, twenty years later, Sampath has not fulfilled his promising destiny but instead seems destined for failure. He can't hold down a job, he's prone to flights of fancy, and, frankly, Sampath isn't all that bright! So, when he climbs a guava tree and unwittingly becomes a famous Holy Man, no one can believe it...thus begins the search for truth in miracles. "Hullabaloo In the Guava Orchard" is a balmy summer read and a surprisingly funny novel full of lush description and irreverent wit. Desai has found just the right combination of humor and truth. "Hullabaloo" is India's answer to John Kennedy Toole's "Confederacy of Dunces."

Excellent fiction. Anita Desai is a born story teller. All the minute details of ordinary life described extra-ordinarily. Presently residing in US, this book took me back to India mentally. Very easy to identify with each of the characters. You have people like Mr. Chawla, very efficient, systematic and money-minded.You also have people like Sampath, who are fed-up with the mundane,time-bound and commercial life. Though the book makes you laugh aloud in the beginning, slowly it explores the human nature. The need for space. There's a little drag towards the end. (The book could have been a long 'short story'). But again the last chapter was very good and I think that's the best way to end the book. The 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' lingers in your mind long after reading.

Excellent fiction. Anita Desai is a born story teller. All the minute details of ordinary life described extra-ordinarily. Presently residing in US, this book took me back to India mentally. Very easy to identify with each of the characters. You have people like Mr. Chawla, very efficient, systematic and money-minded.You also have people like Sampath, who are fed-up with the mundane,time-bound and commercial life. Though the book is makes you laugh aloud in the beginning, slowly it explores the human nature. The need for space.

There's a little drag towards the end. (The book could have been a long 'short story'). But again the last chapter was very good and I think that's the best way to end the book. The 'Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard' lingers in your mind long after reading.

A book with profusion of words evoking images and ideas, a book with a very refined sense of humour which will nevertheless make you laugh out loud; not merely smirk, a book with a stronger regional flavour than any other indian author i've read, a book so so simple in its construction yet so all encompassing...what more can i say! Kiran Desai though residing out of india writes with such minute detail about the commonplace in indian suburbia. She does not describe the beauty of the local mountains or rivers as some other indian authors do, or portray the traditions and customs of the region; she goes to the very daily life of the characters with which any reader can connect it with. The scene in which sampath is sleeping in a hot room full of snoring people or the scene in which his father upbraids him for his lack of enthusiasm and initiative in life are occurances the ordianry reader must have gone through and yet one cant but help but laughing at the way in which these domestic senes are described.

The characters are also very well developed and though there being nothing extraordinary about the characters(in fact u might find most of them in your home or in the neighbourhood) each of them has some idiosyncracy. For example the extremely epicurean sampath's mother, Pinky's vainglory, sampath's father being very worldly wise and seeing an opportunity of making money where others might fear a loss, and of course sampath of whom i need say nothing about.

The ending though others say is wierd or some others dont understand is i think the best way to end this type of book. One must'nt expect a logical or rational ending to a book which is one of the best works of creative writing that i have ever read. the ending is equally creative. Another critisism of this book is that it could be written better, it was very simply written. My answer to that is in the title of the review. Anyways the book is not as simple as it seems at first sight. Its a microcosm for humanity. It depicts the eternal struggle for personal space, the human tendency to make profits out of any situation, and the eternal pursuit of happiness by all in their own different ways.

Its a bit of Douglas Adams, Salman Rushdie, Joseph Heller and Tolstoy. U cant afford to miss this one