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. The plot is simple - Sampath Chawla, 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 guava orchard when he feels that life is going out of control.īut madness is almost a hereditary trait of the Chawla family – Sampath’s mother Kulfi is obsessed with food in it’s various forms, his ambitious father Mr.Chawla is obsessed with money and his sister Pinky is a droll and foolish girl infatuated with the Hungry Hop Kwality ice cream boy. A satire that has social, political, economical, filial and even spiritual dimensions wrapped in layers of absurd humor 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. Kiran Desai’s absorbing book is a brilliant satire that makes light of these theories in a comical manner. India has often been depicted as a mystic land of Sadhus, strange magic charms, spicy exotic cuisine and intricate religious rituals by the West. HULLABALOO IN THE GUAVA ORCHARD BY KIRAN DESAI – A REVIEW
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