Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

by Kiran Desai

  A hushed silence overcame the visitors. Kulfi got up soundlessly and slipped away to begin cooking Sampath’s dinner. In Shahkot she had cooked only now and then when inspiration mounted somewhere out in the sea of her unconscious and rushed up to swallow her like a tidal wave.

  But how could she possibly have reconciled her wild dreams with her tame life in Shahkot, with their tiny kitchen, their meals on the old plastic-covered table? Again and again, the dishes she produced could not match the visions inside her; she could not be satisfied with the ingredients that came bottled and packaged on store shelves or withered in bazaar baskets; the kitchen was too small for the scale of operation she desired; her cooking was constantly interrupted by neighbours investigating the smells that wafted into their houses from her stove. ‘Don’t mix fish with chicken,’ they advised her. ‘Fry the onions first and then add the garlic later. Keep the milk aside until the very end of cooking.’ The frustration inside her would grow into an enormous cloud that blocked off everything else and her eyesight and hearing would go blurry. Sampath would taste what she made, and smile and nod his admiration, but she would be inconsolable. It was all wrong, all wrong. It took her weeks to calm down, sitting with Sampath on the rooftop in complete silence. Months later, when the tidal wave of inspiration came again, the entire event would be repeated.

  Mr Chawla had learned to shrug his shoulders at her. All his early attempts to teach her to interact normally with the world had made as much impression on her as rain on waterproofing and instead, as soon as Sampath was old enough, he had turned his attention to his son, for his greatest responsibility, he felt, was to pummel him into being at least minimally functional in the world. There had been one or two occasions, of course, when he had been made very worried, like the time when Kulfi tried to steal the experimental plants from the agricultural centre’s annual display, or when she had attempted to get into the cage of rare pheasants in the tiny Shahkot zoo so she could catch and cook one. Each time she had been caught by guards, who assumed she was just a straying visitor and one only as bothersome as all the rest of the boisterous crowd. And luckily these events had not often been repeated.

  Ammaji too left Kulfi to herself, apart from a few muttered comments and laments that were her duty as a mother-in-law. She was secretly pleased by how her place in the household and in Mr Chawla’s life had not been altered at all when Kulfi had arrived. Some poor women suffered the fate of having their sons turn their backs on them and ignore them completely after marriage.

  Here, in the orchard, the hold of other people on Kulfi and her awareness of them retreated even further and, like Sampath, she discovered the relief of space. Inspired by the forest, she had embarked upon a series of experiments, a fervent crusade to bring her fantastic imaginings into being. She cooked outdoors, in the sunshine, under the gigantic sky. She felt she was on the brink of something enormous. All around her was a landscape she understood profoundly, that she could comprehend without thought or analysis. She understood it like she understood her son, without conversation or the need to construct a connection or to maintain it. Pinky was a stranger to her, made her nervous and even scared sometimes; it was lucky she was so independent. But Sampath she knew. She knew why he was sitting in a tree. It was the right place for him to be; that is where he belonged.

  Whenever she saw him upon his cot, saw his face peeking from between the leaves, she was reminded of the day when he was born, his birth mingling in her memory with the wildest storm she had ever witnessed, with the arrival of famine relief and the silver miracle of rain. There, in the midst of the chaos, her son’s face had contained an exquisite peace, an absorption in a world other than the one he had been born into.

  She cooked only for Sampath, leaving Ammaji to cater to the rest of the family, for his was the only judgement Kulfi trusted.

  Almost all day she worked, trying this and that, producing, even in these early days of apprenticeship to her imagination, meals of such flavour and rarity that others could merely guess at what they were missing by the smells that rose from her pots, so intoxicating them by evening’s end that they had barely any recollection of what had passed when they departed from their audience with Sampath. They felt filled, though, with a sense of magic and wellbeing. By the look of Sampath, he too was permeated with a similar feeling, but to a much greater degree. His cheeks grew slowly plumper day by day; his tense, worried expression melted into one of contentment; the soft movement of the days and nights rising and falling about him were gently reflected in his face, and his eyes mirrored the quiet of the distant hills.

  9

  ‘What about my typing course?’ Pinky asked her father one morning not long after The Sermon in the Guava Tree, when it had become apparent, she thought, that no one cared that the life of Pinky Chawla in Shahkot had been rudely interrupted by Sampath’s move up the hillside. A week or two was all very well, but she had come to the conclusion that it did not appeal to her as a permanent arrangement.

  But Mr Chawla had his mind on other matters. He had been given extended compassionate leave from work, and that meant he would have enough time to see if his secret plans for Sampath – and indeed, for their entire family could work. Absent-mindedly, he said to his daughter: ‘Of what use is that? Really, it is silly to take a class for a such a simple matter.’

  This was most unfair of him, for he himself had been the one to lecture her not so very long ago: ‘It is very important for young girls to know something useful, not just sit at home and get married. This is the modern India. You should take a typing course.’

  Pinky was not interested in typing, and she certainly did not wish to do anything useful in modern India, but she was well aware of the necessity of putting in an appearance in the bazaar every day. If you did not do so, your place in the hierarchy of things, indeed your very identity in the social sphere, would be totally obliterated. Now, condemned to a once-a-week trip undertaken to collect supplies, visit the bank, the post office and other such places for which it was necessary to go into town, she realized she would have to make the most of her meagre opportunities, and these trips became the high point of her existence in the orchard.

  ‘Shall I wear this?’ she would mutter to herself beforehand. ‘No, no, I’ll wear that. No, the colour is wrong. It is too dark for a young girl. Oh, the colour is wrong.’ The entire week before each day in town was spent deciding what to wear and she started on the apparel for the next trip as soon as she got home from the bus stop, fussing with needle and thread, washing soap and starch. She knew she was at a disadvantage with a mother who was incapable of going shopping for clothes, who could not discuss which ensemble should be worn to which event and what trinket matched what pair of slippers. Ammaji’s tastes were a century behind the times and her father and Sampath were of no help either. She was all alone in this attempt to maintain her position in bazaar society. The outfits of choice were washed and hung to dry over lantana bushes, then placed beneath the tin trunks overnight to smooth out as many wrinkles as possible. When she appeared in the glory of her efforts, she looked as if she were about to enter a fashion show. Her dupattas fluttered behind her in diaphanous waves against the landscape and large quantities of costume jewellery shone and glinted about her face, which was powdered pink and white. Really, it was quite inappropriate for a trip to the market. Furthermore, she had developed the peculiar habit of insisting she was being followed. Someone need only brush past her or glance at her as she walked in the street and Pinky would announce when she got back: ‘All the way home a man followed me, staring with big goggly eyes.’

  Mr Chawla worried that she was growing a bit soft in the head, living so far out of Shahkot. No doubt if someone put such an effort into matters of clothing and appearance, she would expect a dramatic response, which she might have to invent if it did not happen of its own accord. This was a very dangerous thing and should be nipped in the bud immediately, he felt. ‘First you dress up as if you are going to enter the
Miss India,’ he told her, ‘and then you complain that people are staring at you. Of course people will stare if you make such a spectacle of yourself. But as for following you, it is all in your head. Dressing up like that and feeling so self-conscious! If somebody happens to cough, you are sure he has spent all morning following you.’ He insisted Pinky make all future trips to the bazaar dressed in simple cotton devoid of gold trims and gaudy flowers, with a face as scrubbed and clean – which meant, of course, as plain and ugly – as it could be.

  ‘You are over-reacting,’ said Pinky. How on earth could she be seen in public looking so drab? How dare he curb her taste in fashion? It was enough to throw her into hysterics, but she controlled herself. ‘Maybe,’ she said, retrenching in a last effort to be allowed her dignity, ‘maybe, after all, nobody has been following me.’

  But, deciding she needed to be taught moderation and good sense, her father reiterated his insistence that she dress soberly. In initiation of this new look, she should, he pronounced, accompany her grandmother to buy a new pair of dentures in town, for recently Ammaji had decided her life was incomplete without them.

  ‘Look at that old Shantiji,’ she would say. ‘She has no difficulty eating. Her family takes good care of her. Every year they buy her a new pair of dentures. As I said, they take good care of her. Did you see the way she cracked that bone and gobbled down the marrow? Of course, I didn’t have any … Well, lucky for her that her family takes such good care of her.’

  If she hinted in this fashion, thought Ammaji, no doubt she would finally get what she wanted. A hint should be indirect, it was true, but it should also be clear or it would go unnoticed and be a useless sort of hint.

  ‘If you want dentures, then you can have dentures,’ said Mr Chawla in order to keep his mother quiet. Would his family ever leave him alone so he might plot and plan their future in peace? If it were up to them, the new possibilities of Sampath’s fame would remain forever untapped and unexploited. However, of course it was true that he wished all improvements for his family. ‘There is no need for old people to suffer any more,’ he said grandly, as if this substitute for teeth had been his idea in the first place.

  Feeling so dowdy she could have cried, Pinky stomped after her grandmother to the bus stop. Unlike her granddaughter, Ammaji was in fine temper. The air outside the town was cool and clean, and reminded her of her childhood. Her grandson was proving to be a great success, just as she had always thought he would be. And she was going to get some dentures.

  ‘After we get the dentures,’ she said generously to Pinky, ‘we can go and see Love Story ‘85.’ Surely a good movie would improve Pinky’s spirits. It had been hard to sit in the bus with someone so sour and unwilling to talk. Really, she reflected, Pinky was too headstrong. If she did not get her own way, she sulked and tried to make everybody else feel bad as well. And the trouble with those who did this was that, in the end, unable to stand their sulking, people gave way to them and they got all sorts of presents and treats. It was the good-natured people who suffered in this world. Nobody paid any attention to them. For example, look at the way she had been ignored about the dentures. Months and months, no, indeed years, had gone by in discomfort and deprivation. However, of course, she was not one to sulk and complain.

  Praying she would not be seen by any of her acquaintances or the other girls from the polytechnic, Pinky dragged Ammaji through a dark maze of filthy side streets, insisting on taking the back road into the main bazaar area so she would be seen by as few people as possible, her nerves taut, her eyes on the look-out for potential incidents where she might be shamed before some fancy fashion plate of an acquaintance who didn’t deserve the pleasure of witnessing Pinky’s humiliation.

  The denture lady had a whole array of dentures spread out before her on a mat in the corner of the bazaar, between the fish lady and the woman with the plastic buckets. Undeterred by the smell of fish, Ammaji squatted down on the mat and tried them all on. One too big, others too small … Finally there was one that seemed somewhat to fit.

  ‘Yes, yes,’ said the denture woman, ‘it will be fine. It is better that they are a little loose than a little tight.’

  Ammaji donned the new gadget, moving and distorting her lips over the unfamiliar expanse of plastic, smacking her two new rows of teeth against each other appreciatively.

  It was only later that they ran into a bit of misfortune.

  They had emerged from the cinema with Pinky feeling somewhat mollified by the thrilling scenes she had just witnessed between hero and heroine amidst mounting obstacles of dread and terror. This Love Story was a film beyond compare! When it first came out, the line of people waiting to get in had snaked all the way from the ticket booth to the university gates, travelling around corners and, blocking traffic, stretching across streets. The crowds nicknamed the heroine Thunder Thighs and went again and again to see her cavort in the famous waterfall scene. There, in defiance of parental wishes and differences in income, religion and caste specifications, she sang in the spray with her beloved, matching him only in the supreme attributes of true love and good looks. There was nothing better than to watch a satisfying drama, one that caused your blood to run strong and red again. Ammaji and Pinky emerged strengthened into the late afternoon and stopped at the Hungry Hop Kwality Ice Cream van for ice cream.

  It was at this moment that Pinky spotted the Cinema Monkey! The Cinema Monkey who had so long been harassing the ladies of the town for peanut cones. There it was, loping its way towards them! Hai Rama, how on earth could they have possibly forgotten? Coming to the movie without strong and able chaperons! This would have to happen to them. The monkey came closer. He was so bold, he showed not the slightest trepidation. Any human thief would be feeling a little awkward, robbing like this in broad daylight. The monkey’s brown eyes were cold and cruel, red-rimmed and fixed firmly upon them. In a rush of terror, her heart falling into a black nothingness, Pinky shouted: ‘Run, run, run. Run, Ammaji. Drop the ice cream and run!’

  But Ammaji, who had just been handed a nice chocolate cone by the Hungry Hop boy, ran with the cone – not that this mattered, for the monkey ignored her and ran after Pinky instead, even though she was without any food products whatsoever. He grabbed hold of her dupatta and held tight as she screamed like a train and pounded down the bazaar street, followed by the gallant Hungry Hop boy, who had been aroused from his usual placid state by their cries of alarm. After all, it was not as if he did not know how to behave in such situations. He too was a regular at the cinema.

  Now, inexplicably, for reasons best known to herself, Ammaji decided in the midst of all this confusion, this raised dust and running, to take a bite of her ice-cream cone. As she did so, the dentures, which had been unsettled by so much activity, were dislodged from her gums. Stuck in the ice cream, they leered at her horribly like a ghastly cartoon: skeleton teeth mocking, beckoning from the chocolate mound, an affront to her old age.

  Horrified, Ammaji dropped the cone and, mistaking it for his favourite peanuts in a roll of paper, the monkey turned his attention towards her, caught hold of the denture-laden cone and rushed towards a tree.

  ‘Oi, you crooked thief,’ shouted Ammaji in rage, now turning around and shouting and chasing after the ape. ‘Give them back. They’re of no use to you, you stupid donkey.’

  ‘Stupid monkey, maji,’ said Hungry Hop, stopping in mid-track, stunned at her mistaking such vastly different animals for each other. ‘He’s a monkey, not a donkey.’

  ‘Munkey-dunkey,’ shouted Ammaji. ‘Don’t just stand there. Go after him.’

  And remembering his duties, the Hungry Hop boy went at the creature, screaming and yelling, waving two sticks in such an alarming manner that even this dreadful monkey, disgusted at finding no peanuts, and a little intimidated, dropped the cone, raced over the roofs of the shops and disappeared. The Hungry Hop boy retrieved the dentures from a melting pool of chocolate and delivered them, carefully balanced on the end of a stick,
to Ammaji.

  Pinky could not remember being so mortified in all her life. There she was, looking like a sweeper woman, with her grandmother’s dentures being displayed in public, first atop an ice-cream cone being borne away by a monkey, and then dangling humiliatingly on the end of a stick. What a spectacle they had made of themselves. A cheering crowd had gathered to watch the fun. But the Hungry Hop boy treated the whole occasion with a nonchalance that made Pinky weak with thankfulness.

  ‘Here you are,’ he said cheerfully and gave the stick a shake. ‘We have had enough exercise for a week, hm?’ He smiled such a nice white smile and then turned to bow to the crowd, who shouted their congratulations. ‘Of course, after seeing you,’ he said, turning back to Pinky, ‘this monkey had to follow. He must have thought you were a longlost relative.’ He laughed appreciatively at his own joke, winking at Pinky to show he did not mean his remark to be taken seriously. And – who can explain such things? Pinky, who had seen the Hungry Hop boy every week of her life, had stopped on almost every trip to the market to buy ice cream and thought nothing of it, felt her heart fall for the second time in the day, as if from a cliff: Boom! into wide empty space.

  This Hungry Hop boy was kind. He was not embarrassed in the least. Nor was he ugly, after all. His hair was curly and his nose was endearingly crooked, as was his mouth. To think she had seen him so often, beautifully dressed, and hardly noticed him at all … and today, here she was, staring at him with new-found interest, wearing an old white salwar kameez, badly cut and faded, with no nose ring, no toe ring, slippers without a trim or a puff, her eyes without the kohl that made them smoulder … So conscious of her drabness was she, she could not even manage to return his smile; in fact, it was all she could do to keep from bursting into tears.

  And as soon as she was home, she did burst into tears. She cried tears of rage because she had looked so plain, because it was all her family’s fault; she cried loud and long … Oh, she thought, her awful, awful father, who sent her out like a servant when other fathers went to all sorts of efforts to make sure their daughters looked well cared for and were properly dressed. Her horrible grandmother, who had added to her humiliation. Her terrible, terrible family, who would no doubt ruin all her chances of love for ever.