At first family and townsfolk think he's mad, but in an inspired moment of self-preservation Sampath, who had spent his time in the post office reading other people's mail, reveals some choice secrets about his persecutors and convinces them that he is, in fact, clairvoyant. Confined to the house in disgrace, Sampath runs away from home and takes refuge in the branches of a guava tree in an abandoned orchard outside of town. Chawla's frustration comes to a head when Sampath loses his menial job at the post office after performing an impromptu cross-dressing strip-tease at his boss's daughter's wedding. Chawla later in life when his son grows up to become a young man possessed of a great deal of feeling and very little common sense or ambition. Chawla is a man for whom 'oddness, like aches and pains, fits of tears and lethargy' is a source of discomfort he fears 'these uncontrollable, messy puddles of life, the sticky humanness of things.' This distaste for sticky humanness will prove problematic for Mr. As her husband and mother-in-law retreated in horror, not daring to upset her or the baby still inside her, she drew a parade of cooks beheading goats.' Sampath's father, Mr. Finally, in desperation for another landscape, she found a box of old crayons in the back of a cupboard and. All about her the summer stretched white-hot into an infinite distance. His mother, Kulfi, half-maddened by heat and hunger, can think of nothing but food: 'Her stomach grew larger. Indian writer Kiran Desai begins her first novel with Sampath's birth at the tail-end of a terrible drought.

Pity the poor Chawla family of Shahkot, India-their son, Sampath causes all kinds of trouble for his family, culminating in a Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard, but in a village like Shakhot, hullabaloo is a way of life.

Hullabaloo and the guava orchard