Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

by Kiran Desai

  ‘Beware of the wild cats,’ said the goat herders she met, surprised at seeing this delicate-looking town woman out alone in the forest. ‘Beware of the snakes, the scorpions and leeches.’ But she didn’t care. She waded out into the muddy ponds to collect lotus stems, raided bird’s nests, prised open tightly sealed pods, nibbled at the grasses and buds, dug at roots, shook the fruit from the trees and returned home with her hair wild, her muddy hands full of flowers, her mouth blue and red from all she had sampled. The corners of her sari were tied into knots containing ginger lilies and rain-fever mushrooms, samples of seeds and bits of bark. Sometimes she brought back a partridge or a jungle quail, strung on to a stick and carried over her shoulder. She returned via the steep path that led to the back of the watchman’s shed so as to avoid the visitors and the talk which had ceased to interest her.

  In the tin-covered porch Mr Chawla had constructed at the rear of the house she had set up her outdoor kitchen, spilling over into a grassy patch of ground. Here rows of pickle jars matured in the sun like an army balanced upon the stone wall; roots lay, tortured and contorted, upon a cot as they dried; and tiny wild fruit, scorned by all but the birds, lay cut open, displaying purple-stained hearts. Ginger was buried underground so as to keep it fresh; lemon and pumpkin dried on the roof; all manner of things fermented in tightly sealed tins; chilli peppers and curry leaves hung from the branches of a tree, and so did buffalo curd, dripping from a cloth on its way to becoming paneer.

  Newly strong with muscles, wiry and tough despite her slenderness, Kulfi sliced and pounded, ground and smashed, cut and chopped in a chaos of ingredients and dishes. ‘Cumin, quail, mustard seeds, pomelo rind,’ she muttered as she cooked. ‘Fennel, coriander, sour mango. Pandanus flour, lichen and perfumed kewra. Colocassia leaves, custard apple, winter melon, bitter gourd. Khas root, sandalwood, ash gourd, fenugreek greens. Snake-gourd, banana flowers, spider leaf, lotus root …’

  She was producing meals so intricate, they were cooked sometimes with a hundred ingredients, balanced precariously within a complicated and delicate mesh of spices – marvellous triumphs of the complex and delicate art of seasoning. A single grain of one thing, a bud of another, a moist fingertip dipped lightly into a small vial and then into the bubbling pot; a thimble full, a matchbox full, a coconut shell full of dark crimson and deep violet, of dusty yellow spice, the entire concoction simmered sometimes for a day or two on coals that emitted only a glimmer of faint heat or that roared like a furnace as she fanned them with a palm leaf. The meats were beaten to silk, so spiced and fragrant they clouded the senses; the sauces were full of strange hints and dark undercurrents, leaving you on firm ground one moment, dragging you under the next. There were dishes with an aftertaste that exploded upon you and left you gasping a whole half-hour after you’d eaten them. Some that were delicate, with a haunting flavour that teased like the memory of something you’d once known but could no longer put your finger on.

  Pickled limes stuffed with cardamom and cumin, crepuscular creatures simmered upon the wood of a scented tree, small river fish baked in green coconuts, rice steamed with nasturtium flowers in the pale hollow of a bamboo stem, mushrooms red – and yellow-gilled, polka-dotted and striped. Desire filled Sampath as he waited for his meals. Spice-laden clouds billowed forth and the clashing cymbals of pots and pans declared the glory of the meal to come, scaring the birds from the trees about him. Kulfi served her son with an anxious look, watched his face like a barometer. Turning blissful lips to the sky, or at other times looking down in pain, with tears pouring from his eyes, his ears exploding, barely able to breathe, Sampath would beg: ‘More! Please, some more.’ And triumphantly Kulfi would rush back to get another helping.

  ‘You will poison him,’ said Mr Chawla, genuinely worried when she embarked upon these efforts at a new cuisine. She would manage to ruin their fortunes entirely. ‘If it were not for the family name, straight away I would take you to the mental home,’ he mumbled. As the years passed, he found he understood her less and less instead of more and more. What went on in her mind? he found himself wondering sometimes. Did she think like a human being? He saw expressions of anxiety, of happiness, of peacefulness upon her face, it was true, but was she considering how she felt, analysing and reasoning?

  ‘I have fed the food to a chicken beforehand to make sure it is not poisonous,’ she assured him.

  One chicken after another had been named the official taster to Sampath. When one keeled over and died, from natural causes or tainted food, a new one was kept tethered in its place.

  So Sampath was safe and he made sure nothing would change when it came to his food; whenever he heard his father muttering about other cooking arrangements, he threatened to go on hunger strike. He had never eaten so well in all his life! His growing plumpness proved how well the meals agreed with him. Pink-cheeked and in an injured tone, as if he were being done out of his birthright, he said: ‘Every son knows there is no cooking like his mother’s cooking.’

  The devotees, watching jealously, had begun to think that perhaps there was cooking unlike their mother’s cooking. Previously, they had merely wondered at what Sampath was given to eat, but as Kulfi became more and more ambitious, more and more sure of what she was doing, just one whiff was enough to send them wild. Far from consigning her to a mental home, they hovered about her greedily, trying to peer into the bubbling pots, to draw their fingers through the piles of spices on the grinding stone. But she shooed them away fiercely. ‘Not for you, not for you,’ she declared regally, and they backed away from the authority of her voice, the dignity of her bearing, and shook their heads, wondering what was the matter with them. Charging down the mother of the hermit! What had come over them?

  ‘Baba, why are we so aggressive and greedy sometimes, when at other times we are just happy to sit beneath your tree?’

  ‘On a hot day the bee buzzes louder, on a rainy day it sits quietly in its hive,’ answered Sampath.

  Though he wrote down everything he heard religiously, the spy had given up trying to understand Sampath. The more he saw, the more he was convinced that the secret of Sampath’s presence, his odd words and antics, would be found in Kulfi’s cooking pot. More determined than all the rest, he tried again and again to sneak past her in an attempt to collect a sample of her food in a bottle he had provided himself with.

  But each time, as if she had been forewarned, Kulfi caught sight of the spy just in time and cracked him over the head with a broom. You could get yourself killed in the BUFHM, he thought, and watched from the bushes as she continued her work, slicing vegetables with vigour, beheading chickens and geese with nonchalant blows of her hatchet. But still, the more his efforts were thwarted, the more suspicious he became. The minute her back was turned again, he could not help but make one more attempt …

  What with all the trouble Sampath’s meals were causing, Mr Chawla decided to allow visitors only between the hours of lunch and dinner, between half-past noon and half-past eight in the evenings.

  With limited access, the popularity of Sampath and his hermit-like reputation grew. However, the trick of limited access could not be applied when the monkeys arrived.

  12

  ‘Look,’ Pinky yelled one day soon after the visiting hours had been put into effect. ‘It is one and the same monkey who chased us in the bazaar.’

  ‘Look,’ chortled Sampath from his superior look-out position, ‘a whole band of them!’

  ‘That monkey is following me,’ Pinky shrieked. ‘Everywhere I go, it goes.’ She turned to glare at her brother. ‘Why are you so happy to see them?’

  How could he not be happy? A whole cluster of interested silver-fringed black faces peered at him prettily from between the leaves of the neighbouring tree.

  ‘Haven’t I told you, Pinky, nobody is following you,’ said Mr Chawla yet one more time.

  But what did he know of the nasty qualities of these monkeys?

  ‘Wait and see,’ said Ammaji, showing
a warning flash of lurid yellow between her lips. ‘There will be trouble. You can see it in their faces.’

  Kulfi slapped some wet clay on to a bird pierced with cloves and threw it into the open fire to cook. The air filled with smoke.

  ‘Wait and see,’ repeated Ammaji darkly.

  And it was not long before the troupe from Shahkot, presided over by the Cinema Monkey, became regular visitors to the fields and forests surrounding the orchard. They rarely ventured out of town and people wondered why they’d made this trip up the hillside – had even the ape community obtained news of Sampath and organized a visit?

  The monkeys, when they first arrived, looked upon Sampath, the strange sedentary member of another species they had spotted up in their usual domain, with some trepidation and maintained a wary distance, baring their grotesque and discoloured teeth, pulling faces, chattering in a scornful show of contempt and derision. Unbothered by their mocking, glad of yet another distraction, Sampath turned their dirty game right back on them and hooted and howled. ‘Hoo hoo,’ he cried, rolling his eyes, puffing out his cheeks in a way that seemed to cause mutual satisfaction, for these antics continued and soon the monkeys drew closer, extended their dirty wizened palms and nudged Sampath, at first gingerly, to see how he would react, and then with a great rude push once they decided he was not a threat. And how he could contort his face! A look of being very impressed showed across their monkey faces.

  They looked even more impressed when they had spent long enough in the orchard to identify Sampath as the nucleus of this bountiful community they had come upon. Funnily enough, all the food in the orchard seemed clustered about this hooting boy who possessed qualities that, though not admired in them, seemed to be greatly appreciated in him. No doubt, the closer a human was to a monkey, the more presents he was given: the freshest fruit, the best nuts, were brought to Sampath’s feet. He was not merely accepted, then, but endowed with elevated status within the monkey hierarchy. Through him they could receive the tastiest titbits. Before he knew what was happening, he was sharing his string cot with the cinema bully himself. Propped up simian-style against each other’s backs, they awaited visitors in this their shared state of splendour, for no longer did the troupe spend its time scavenging in the market, stealing from the shopkeepers, terrorizing the likes of Miss Jyotsna and Pinky. Why would they do that, when they had realized soon enough that they could obtain their meals much more easily by sitting near Sampath and receiving the kind people who drove up for the express reason, it appeared, of bringing peanuts and bananas?

  Fondly, the lady monkeys groomed Sampath as he sat, secretly pleased but shouting, ‘Ow, don’t pull my hair like that,’ and swatting them. But, with amused, sly faces that looked as if they understood he was playing a little game, they circled back after being chased away to continue their attendance upon his glossy and shining locks, which, to their credit, grew even shinier and glossier with their care. Sampath enjoyed this attention more and more as he became used to the occasional tug or scratch.

  ‘Look at that,’ said Miss Jyotsna, who, like Pinky, had let out a shriek when she first identified the ape who had humiliated her at the cinema. ‘Clearly he has charmed the monkeys.’

  They sat grouped about Sampath like a silver-haired and graceful bodyguard, yawning and scratching at their beautiful selves. Almost all the ladies had a story, second-if not first-hand, of torn saris and petticoats, and they marvelled: ‘Look at that monkey. Gentle as anything! The Baba has subdued the beasts.’ A priest visiting from the church in Allahabad was reminded, he said, of St Francis of Assisi, who was always depicted so touchingly surrounded by creatures of the forest.

  The behaviour of the monkeys was just another proclamation of Sampath’s authenticity. ‘Think of all those shams said Miss Jyotsna, ‘all those crooks posing in their saffron, those gurus who are as corrupt as politicians …’

  Oh, they gloated, their Baba was not like that. He was an endless source of wonder. He had even cast his spell upon the wild beasts of the market.

  ‘Hmph,’ snorted the spy, who was, to tell the truth, a little unsettled by this new occurrence. ‘No doubt it is just well-developed human–monkey interaction,’ he said.

  ‘Human–monkey interaction,’ said Miss Jyotsna, highly offended by this disrespect being paid to her old colleague. ‘Go ahead, brother, you try your hand at human-monkey interaction and get sent to hospital covered with monkey bites.’

  But though some of the visitors were happier about the monkeys’ arrival, seeing Sampath’s effect upon them, Mr Chawla thought his mother’s instinct had been accurate right from the start and he mourned his clever trick of selling and reselling the offerings provided by the visitors. Those greedy monkeys ate everything they could grab and run away with.

  Kulfi grew worried about her kitchen and began to store her things away more carefully.

  And Pinky, too, unelated by this onslaught of apes, was reminded of the insuperable Kwality Hungry Hop boy every time she saw them and consequently, several times a day, she burst into hysterical tears.

  Ever since her encounter with the Hungry Hop boy over the denture affair in the bazaar, Pinky had gained a new feeling of compassion for her brother. This was not a feeling she had ever had before; it was different from the exasperation or amusement she had usually experienced in relation to him. But one morning she had looked up at his feet dangling from the cot and realized that they must surely have hit upon a similar vein in the state of things. No doubt, weighed by the same concern with fragility, inevitability and doom, Sampath had been driven up into the branches, away from this painful world. She remembered his face as he was going to school, how he would always try to climb up on to the roof to be alone when he came home, and she felt terrible about how she had harangued him, shouting up the stairs … Now, she felt, she too understood the dreadfulness of life, recognized the need to be by herself with sadness, and from this moment of realization onwards, she spent hours sitting under Sampath’s tree, in a private cocoon within which she indulged her every thought, wrapping herself in endless imaginings, endless ruminations, snapping in quite an uncharacteristic way if she was interrupted.

  And then, down in the bazaar, there was the Hungry Hop boy, who did not even know of the misery she was going through. ‘Baap re!’ she concluded, he certainly ought to know, for it was a very awful and upsetting way to feel. This was an unbearable state of affairs. Here she was, no longer her own strong self and without anything else that might be of some consolation. Suddenly angry, she began, once again, stormily, to cry. And while she was crying over the Hungry Hop boy, she was simultaneously horrified that her own mind could create such a terrible cage, and she longed for the freedom of her earlier life, wished she could catch hold of this dreadful boy, throw him down the hillside, stamp on him and hit him with a stick.

  ‘What should I do?’ she asked her brother, as he sat high above her clucking his tongue at her tears while also examining the green veins of his arm, the woodiness of his heel. ‘I am going crazy,’ said Pinky. ‘I feel like a firework that has been lit by a match.’

  ‘If a firecracker has been lit,’ said Sampath, ‘then it is going to explode, like it or not. Unless you throw it into a bucket of water. And then, what a waste of a firecracker.’ He looked at his arm, the mahogany of his skin. He watched the sun’s watermark upon his belly, its rise and fall through the leaves.

  Pinky decided her brother was quite right. There was no reason for her to drown herself in a bucket of tears, and neither would she sit and suffer through feeling like some faulty firework, with all the sparks flying inside her instead of blazoning outwards in a display that would surely create some sort of effect, make some sort of an explosion. And an explosion, she knew, is never without a certain amount of satisfaction.

  The next morning, filled with resolve, she changed her clothes, painted her face, waited for the time when her family was distracted by the commotion of Sampath’s daily bath and made her esc
ape up the path that led from behind the shed. She had painted her eyes thickly and blackly about the upper and lower eyelids, and pinned a bunch of flowers to bloom like detonations over each ear. Like an actress ready for a performance, she was prepared. Her lips pressed tightly together, earrings swinging from her unusually small earlobes, she strode down the path towards the bus stop, breaking the branches that threatened to bar her way, kicking the stones from the path, despite her flimsy slippers and delicate, unprotected toes.

  The spy, barred from Kulfi’s cooking pots by the new visiting hours, had been loitering about outside the orchard, trying to think up an excuse that would allow him in anyway, when he saw Pinky on her way to the bus stop. He decided to kill the time before he could be legally admitted into the orchard by following Pinky instead, just this once, just to make sure there was nothing more going on there than an ordinary trip to the bazaar …

  Here and there she caught a glimpse of him ducking, always just a little too late, behind bushes and tree trunks. But for once she was not bothered, although she noted with satisfaction that her father was certainly wrong: men were following her. On she strode. She climbed on to the bus and, when he did as well, she speared around her ruthlessly with her hairpin, giving the spy such a jab he was forced to rush straight to Dr Banerjee for a tetanus shot when they reached the bazaar.

  It was still early. The smoke from the fires that were being started in the tea stalls obscured the pale winter sun. The Hungry Hop boy stood in the grey bazaar with all the shopkeepers, who were only just getting ready to open their stores, yawning and scratching at their bellies meanwhile.

  By any standards this boy was rather slow. He had some humour, it was true, and was well-meaning and good-tempered for the most part, but he was not very conscious of what was happening in the world about him. Until the Cinema Monkey had begun to forage elsewhere, he had considered it part of his daily duties to chase him away. Thus he had not thought twice about his rescue of Ammaji’s dentures, and neither had he realized that now Pinky’s ice-cream buying was a significant ice-cream buying as opposed to an insignificant ice-cream buying. The various times she had endeavoured to bump into him in the street had not affected him in the least, for again he often bumped into her in the street. As impervious to Pinky’s charms as always, he had continued upon his way, his life rock-solid and unbothered by love. When the right time came, the right girl would be found for him without the disruption of romance. In the meantime, he enjoyed himself singing along to love songs on the radio and pinching and poking the odd girl on the bus who happened to catch his eye.