Kiran Desai - Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

Kulfi watched the rain. It came down fast and then faster yet. It filled up every bit of sky. It was like no other sound on earth and nothing that was ever suggested by the thin trickles from Shahkot taps. It came down black with dust from the sky and dirt on the trees, and then clear. But always louder. She stretched out her hands to feel the weight of the drops on her flat palms and then put her face out too, holding it, luminous, pale, in this town enclosed within the dark heart of the monsoon.

As she did so, she felt Sampath kick inside her stomach. Her heart jumped in rhythm. He kicked harder and harder. The jamun tree in the courtyard thrashed and creaked. The rain streamed down Kulfi’s hair and washed over her face. Her husband shouted: ‘Get away from the open window.’ She paid no attention. He wrapped her in a square of plastic, but she shrugged it off. The rain descended in great sweeping sheets.

The neighbours withdrew in quick, sharp movements, slammed their windows, barred their doors, but Kulfi stretched out farther still, farther and farther until the rain took up all the space inside her head. It seized her brain, massaged and incorporated her into the watery sounds, until she felt that she herself might turn to storm and disappear in this blowing, this growling, this lightning flutter quick as a moth’s wing. If she would only let go of the metal window frame, she could take all those tedious days of summer and crash them to the ground, transform them into water and wind and pounding.

She felt her muscles contract as a clap of thunder echoed about her. Again, the thunder roared. Kulfi, soaking wet, opened her mouth wide and roared back. Below her, the ground had disappeared. Ponds formed, joined to make lakes and ran down streets to make rivers. Rivers took the place of roads.

A mere two hours later, Mr Chawla and Ammaji running back and forth with cloths and hot water, the storm still raging, rain pouring through windows that would not stay closed and flooding in beneath the doors, Sampath was born. As his face, with a brown birthmark upon one cheek, appeared to the cheers of his family, there was a roaring overhead that almost split their eardrums, followed by a vast crash in the street outside.

‘What was that?’ said Mr Chawla nervously, as the ground shuddered. Could it be that his son’s birth had coincided with the end of the world? Leaving Kulfi and the new baby, he and Ammaji ran to the window to investigate, and discovered that far from being the end of things it was more like the beginning.

Caught in their old jamun tree, they saw a crate of Red Cross supplies that had been dropped by a Swedish relief plane befuddled by the storm in a move that must surely have been planned by the gods. The departing plane rose high into the sky and vanished among the swirling clouds, unmoved apparently by the townspeople jumping and waving down below as they ran out despite the downpour to greet this unexpected largesse. Draped in the foliage of the ruined jamun, they discovered containers full of sugar and tea, of rehydration mixes, dried milk powder, raisins and digestive biscuits. There were unidentifiable powders in packages covered with pictures of smiling foreign women. There were nuts, sweets and baby-food tins galore.

Climbing high into the tree, the street urchins tossed down what they found lodged in the broken branches. Mr Chawla ran back and forth like a silly chicken, filling a shopping bag with supplies, while Ammaji alerted neighbours to the birth by shouting out of the window near Kulfi’s bedside. Soon the house was full of well-wishers, chattering excitedly, not knowing whether to talk of the baby or the rain or the food. ‘Wonderful,’ they kept exclaiming, water dripping from their clothes to form pools about their feet. ‘What a beautiful baby … and can you believe the monsoon? Oh and the food! … What a baby!’

Only Kulfi was quiet. She looked at the tiny creature in her hands, a creature that looked as if he had come from another planet altogether, or had been discovered in the woods, like something alien and strange. The baby’s eyes were closed and his fingers were tightly curled. His face was red and his skull pointed. She looked at his strangeness and felt a sense of peace and comfort descend upon her. Soon the storm would end and the world would grow silent and fragrant, the air weathered soft as the hour of sleep. Soon the winged ants would be flying and lizards would grow fat on dozens of multiplying insects. The water would turn muddy and soft. Doors would swell and it would be impossible to close them once opened, or to open them once closed. Fungus and mould would sprout green and voluptuous and armies of mushrooms would gather in the cupboard under the sink.

Attempting to include Kulfi in their high spirits, the neighbours assured her that her son was destined for greatness, that the world, large and mysterious beyond Shahkot, had taken notice of him. ‘Look! Even people in Sweden have remembered to send a birthday present.’ And: ‘Let’s name him Sampath,’ they said. ‘Good fortune.’ For though he might not be very plump or very fair, he was triumphantly and indisputably male.

In great good humour, chewing on famine relief, they celebrated by the light of a roomful of candles, for the electricity had, of course, gone.

Twenty years later, in the very same house and in the very same room, Sampath Chawla, with spider-like legs and arms, thin and worried-looking, lay awake under a fan. It thrashed and swung above him, making as much noise as a gale, although Sampath could feel only the faintest tremor of an air current playing about his toes.

All around him, his family lay and snored: his father, mother, grandmother and his younger sister, Pinky, swathed in quantities of flowered organza. Rrrrr. Rrrrr. Phurrrr. Wheeeeee. Rrrrrrr. What a racket! Sampath listened to each hostile inhalation. Even in sleep, he thought, disgusted, his family showed themselves incapable of pleasant displays of consideration. Self-indulgent as always, they worked their way noisily through their dreams, keeping Sampath, meanwhile, awake and tossing. Even his mother, whom he loved most of all, had forgotten him in sleep.

He kicked a foot up into the air with impatience. ‘Sshhhhh,’ he said out loud, but it was a poor, sad sound and they took no notice. Wheeeeeeeee. Rrrrr. Rrrrrr. It was too bad they were not rich enough for everyone to have their own room and their own fan. However, Sampath decided, for his own sake, it would be best to suppress his irritation. His family might be unable to respect the holy silence with which sleep should be imbued, but he would not lose his temper.

Making a new effort and a new start, he moved his body around so his head occupied the place where his feet had been. The puny bit of breeze picked up a strand of his hair and dangled it over his face so it tickled like a fly. He grabbed at it, pulled it out, scratched his face and composed himself again.

The fan squeaked. He thought it might fall on top of him, smashing his face as flat as a child’s drawing. This thought became more and more persistent. The electrician, after all, had just been cleaning it, and it was well known in the whole of Shahkot how shamefully bad Bunty Chopra was at his job.

Sampath got up from under this dangerous appliance and lay on the floor, spreading his arms and legs and fingers as far apart as he could, so that not a single part of his sweaty, uncomfortable body would touch another. He lay flat like that and opened his mouth wide to facilitate the easy intake of air and, he hoped, the quick arrival of dreams. As soon as he had thus arranged himself, however, the power failed and the fan slowed to a standstill. Instead of dissipating into some blissful, cloudy realm, Sampath’s concentration sharpened like a knife at all the places where his bones pressed against the hard floor. Once again, despite himself, he became conscious of the snores of his family who loomed alarmingly above him now he was on the ground, their hips rising like mountains far too high to climb.