Hullabaloo in guava orchard -kiran desai

SUMMARY OF HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD:KIRAN DESAI
Dr.D.Ramakrishna

                Mr.Chawla lived in Shahkot with his family. He was a head clerk at
the Reserve Bank of Shahkot. In one year, there were no rains and heat
wrapped Shahkot and its surrounding area. It was a terrible drought to
Shahkotians. They were struggling to survive.
        In these circumstances, his wife, Kulfi, was pregnant. She was in
great hunger for food. She used to eat almost everything. She
purchased many eatables from the market.  Later, as she had no money
to purchase, she sold the valuable articles for food. Shahkotians were
amazed to see Kulfi’s fast growing stomach.
        As she was obsessed with food and she was unable to get sufficient
amount of food, she became half-insane. She drew the pictures of
fruits, vegetables and delicious non-vegetarian dishes on the walls.
It dreaded her husband, Mr. Chawla.
        One day, she gave birth to a baby boy. He was named as Sampath
Chawla. From the beginning, he was a lazy and lone boy. He spent most
of his time in dreaming. He is like his mother in these aspects. He
was unable to get a job. Most of his friends settled in jobs. His
friends who got more red F’s also got jobs. Then, his father found a
job for him. It was a postal clerk. Sampath Chawla was neither
overjoyed nor depressed for getting a job. He was as usual.
         Sampath used to go to post office by cycle. Most of the employees
there were wasting their time by speaking useless junk. He didn’t
participate in those discussions. He used to open the others’ letters
and read them. It gave a different satisfaction. He came to know the
personal of shahkotians by this habit.
        As a usual custom, he took some duties at his boss’s daughter’s
marriage function. He was insane there. He behaved foolishly and began
to disrobe himself. Amidst shrieks of the people, he lowered his
trousers and even underpants. His boss dismissed him from the
services. He was jobless now.
        He hated his miserable life. One day, he went to bazaar and caught
the first bus he saw. When it was proceeded up the hill side, he
jumped out from the window and ran into an old orchard. He climbed a
guava tree there. He reached to the top of the tree and settled there
comfortably. He felt stillness in the orchard. He liked it.
        His family searched for him and at last found him in the orchard.
They asked and begged him to come down but in vain. They thought of
his marriage which might cure his oddities. His father brought the
girl to the tree but Sampath did not want to marry and he wanted to
live alone.
        He spoke of Mr.Singh’s personal life who was in crowd which came with
Sampath’s parents. Then the people began to fee that he was a
monkey-baba. He got the information which he said to Mr.Singh from the
letters he read. Newspapers published it next day as the emergence of
monkey baba in the guava orchard. Slowly, many began to visit him. His
father thought of a plan. He established many shops around the
orchard. He thought that his son was a fortune to his family.
        As much food available in the orchard, monkeys started to come there.
They had the habit of drinking alcohol. They drank rum. They started
to disturb Sampath, the renowned monkey-baba and his devotees. They
created hullabaloo in the orchard. The officials applied all possible
plans to catch the monkeys: trained monkey hatchers and nets.
        The officials were making all arrangements to catch them. At the same
time, Sampath’s father came to the tree to bring down his son. But, he
was not there. He and his family searched for Sampath by calling his
name. One devotee  wept by crying for baba and began to faint and she
fell down in the ready arms of Sampath’s father.
        By the terrible event in the orchard, the crowd threw the police and
ran into the orchard. The alarmed monkeys of coming danger ran into
the adjacent university research forest and traveled higher and
higher. Thus, the novel ends with the monkeys’ and shahkotians’
hullabaloo in the guava orchard.

Ramakrishna .D

Asst.prof of English

ramdulam@gmail.com 


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