B006NZAQXW EBOK

Praise for
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard:

A
New York Times
Editor’s Choice
A
San Francisco Chronicle
Editor’s Recommendation

“Desai is a lavish, sharp-eyed fabulist whose send-up of small-town culture cuts to the heart of human perversity.”

—
The New Yorker

“Delectable … with this sprightly first novel, Kiran Desai takes her place among the pack of gifted young Indian writers.”

—The Wall Street Journal

“Giddily irreverent … In crackling, witty, sharply visual prose, Desai mocks pious enthusiasm, official incompetence, domestic confusion, young love, marriage customs, sacred monkeys, and a few subsidiary targets. She is a delightfully funny, amiable satirist.”

—
Atlantic Monthly

“A voice and a huge imagination leap from the pages of [this] dizzying Hindi film of a novel.”

—Zia Jaffrey,
The New York Times

“Clearly envisioned and opulently told …
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard
is as memorable as its title. With it, Desai joins the ranks of Anglo-Indian writers who have energized English literature with their imaginative, complex storytelling.”

—Tammie Bob,
Chicago Tribune

“Streamlined and imaginative prose … a clever, haunting parable … remarkably complex characters, unpredictable plot twists, and vivid descriptions … a spectacularly fresh vision.”

—Reena Jana,
San Francisco Chronicle

“A charming, lyrical fable about destiny and the nature of kinship.”

—
Harper’s Bazaar

“Brilliantly funny and beautifully written … Desai neatly skewers the posturing of a caste-ridden society … but with enormous charm, even love. … a truly delightful read.”

—Meir Ronnen,
The Jerusalem Post

“Wryly hilarious—a roller-coaster ride through the nonsense of chance and human foolishness.”

—
The Oregonian

“So fresh and funny and delicious is [Desai’s] book that it defies comparison. … Wonderfully accessible to non-Indians … the writing is, throughout, almost effortless and is exquisitely observant. … A welcome, delightful must.”

—Andrew Robinson,
The Times
(London)

“A wild, sad, humorous story … Desai’s novel is full of wonderfully portrayed characters and beautifully vivid descriptions … An unqualified pleasure to read.”

—
Library Journal

“More than just a hullabaloo … What seems merely to be the lead-in to a good laugh and nothing more actually lingers, leaving questions that are, for all their familiarity, no less profound.”

—Lise Funderberg,
Newsday

“There is so much to admire in this charming book, dainty in its construction but ballasted by real emotion, that to call Desai a young writer of promise would do her a disservice. On this showing she is already a finished article.”

—The Sunday Telegraph
(UK)

“An exuberant romp full of whimsy, humor, and affectionate satire. [Desai’s] artful magic realism coupled with her lyrical prose makes for unusually bracing reading. … With her lush prose and extraordinary gift for playfulness, Desai is a refreshing voice.”

—Alicia Metcalf Miller,
The Plain Dealer

“Desai … is a dazzling literati …
[Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchara]
brings to mind the books of Gabriel García Márquez, including
Love in the Time of Cholera.”

—
The India Monitor

“This is a beguiling novel, fresh and funny and warmhearted.”

—Roxana Robinson, author of
Cost
and
Sweetwater

“A hullabaloo of a debut from a vibrant, creative imagination.”

—Gita Mehta, author of
A River Sutra

“A delicious blend of humor and magic, hilarity and wisdom—and unexpected poetry. Kiran Desai’s language will continue to delight you long after you turn the last page.”

—Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni, author of
Arranged Marriage
and
The Mistress of Spices

“Desai’s first novel is a feast for the senses. Atually, it is a buffet, an all-you-can-eat affair that bombards the reader from start to finish with a glowingly layered tapestry of noise, visual images, and tactile impressions one can feel and smell just by turning the pages of this farcical romp.”

—Danna Greenfield,
The Commercial Appeal
(Memphis)

“Kiran Desai has two remarkable gifts—comedy and fantasy. Add to this a flair for storytelling and you have the uproarious, whimsical, and occasionally stinging
Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard.”

—Bhaswati Chakravorty,
The Telegraph Calcutta

“Resonates with old-world charm and new-world noises … [Desai] spins a hilarious tale with a smattering of Rushdiesque flourish. … [A] novel throbbing with the innocence of life and the complexities of living.”

—
India Today

“Events threaten, delightfully, to spin out of control, like a Peter Sellers movie in which everyone is sedate and nicely dressed, but before you know it the baby elephant is in the swimming pool and people are cavorting in giant soapsuds. Desai’s mayhem … is detailed in delightful specificity.”

—Emily Hall,
The Seattle Weekly

“Beautifully crafted … Desai clearly has a gift for writing farce, and there is plenty to laugh at here.”

—
The Daily Telegraph
(UK)

“Dazzling style … [Desai] demonstrates wonderful satirical insight into human vanities and foibles that transcend culture. And she writes a mean sentence. You don’t just read her words, you hear them.”

—Sandra Scofield,
The Oregonian

“Beautiful … a masterful blending of the unexpected … Told in gorgeous, sensual prose, steeped in humor and wisdom.”

—Didi Enslow,
Chicago Life

HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD

Also by Kiran Desai
The Inheritance of Loss

KIRAN DESAI

Copyright © 1998 by Kiran Desai

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, or the facilitation thereof, including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the publisher, except by a reviewer, who may quote brief passages in a review. Any members of educational institutions wishing to photocopy part or all of the work for classroom use, or publishers who would like to obtain permission to include the work in an anthology, should send their inquiries to Grove/Atlantic, Inc., 841 Broadway, New York, NY 10003.

The sayings on page 175 are taken from
Bhargava’s Standard Illustrated Dictionary of the Hindi Language,
compiled by R. C. Pathak, BA, LT 5
^th
ed., Bhargava Book Depot, Chowk, Varanasi, 1989

First Published in Great Britain in 1998 by Faber and Faber Ltd

Published simultaneously in Canada
Printed in the United States of America

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Desai, Kiran, 1971–
Hullabaloo in the guava orchard / Kiran Desai.
p. cm.
eBook ISBN-13: 978-0-8021-4450-8
I. Title.
PS3554.E82H85     1998
813′.54—dc211          97-51148

Grove Press
an imprint of Grove/Atlantic, Inc.
841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

Distributed by Publishers Group West

www.groveatlantic.com

For my family
with love

That summer the heat had enveloped the whole of Shahkot in a murky yellow haze. The clutter of rooftops and washing lines that usually stretched all the way to the foothills at the horizon grew blurred and merged with the dust-filled sky.

‘Problems have been located in the cumulus that have become overly heated,’
read Mr Chawla from the newspaper.
‘It is all a result of volcanic ash thrown up in the latest spurt of activity in Tierra del Fuego.’

And a little later he reported to whomever might be listening:
‘The problem lies in the currents off the West African coastline and the unexplained molecular movement observed in the polar ice-caps.’

And:
‘Iraq attempts to steal monsoon by deliberately creating low pressure over desert provinces and deflecting winds from India.’

And even:
‘Hungarian musician offers to draw rain clouds from Europe to India via the music of his flute.’

‘Why can’t they think of serious solutions?’ asked Mr Chawla. ‘It is too hot to fool about with Hungarian musicians.’

Shahkot boasted some of the highest temperatures in the country and here there were dozens of monsooninducing proposals. Mr Chawla himself submitted a proposal to the forestry department for the cutting and
growing of vegetation in elaborate patterns; the army proposed the scattering and driving of clouds by jet planes flying in a special geometric formation; the police a frog wedding to be performed by temple priests. Vermaji of the university invented a giant fan which he hoped would attract the southern monsoon clouds by creating a wind tunnel moving north towards the Himalayas, and he petitioned the Electricity Supply Board for enough power to test it. Amateur scientists from Mr Barnala of Tailor Gully to Miss Raina from the Sainik Farms area attended trade fairs where they displayed instruments that emitted magnetic rays and loud buzzing sounds. Everyone in town was worried. The mercury in the police station thermometer had exceeded the gradations Kapoor & Sons Happy Weather Company had seen fit to establish, leaping beyond memory and imagination, and outdoing the predictions of even Mr Chawla’s mother, Ammaji, who liked to think she knew exactly what the future would bring.

It was a summer that sent the dizzy pulse of fever into the sky, in which even rules and laws that usually stood straight and purposeful grew limp, like plants exposed to the afternoon sun, and weak. The heat softened and spread the roads into sticky pools of pitch and melted the grease in the Brigadier’s moustache so that it drooped and uncurled, casting shadows on his fine, crisp presence. It burned the Malhotras’ daughter far too dark for a decent marriage and caused the water, if it came at all, to spurt, scalding, from the taps. The bees flew drunk on nectar that had turned alcoholic; the policemen slept all day in the banana grove; the local judge bribed an immigration official and left to join his brother in Copenhagen. Foreigners in their tour buses turned and went home, while Shahkotians argued for spots directly below their ceiling fans, leaving only for
minutes if absolutely necessary and then hurrying back. In the marketplace, they raided the shops for palm leaf fans and bought grey blocks of ice that smoked like small fires. They rested their heads against the coolness of melons before cutting into them, held glasses against cheeks and foreheads between sips, fanned themselves at the stove with bunches of spinach before letting go reluctantly, for the sake of the evening meal.

The weeks passed, but the monsoon did not arrive. And by the time it was September, they had given up hope.