Kiran Desai - Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Mr Chawla returning from town. Seeing his father’s face, the face of a man filled with a mission, irritated, angry, but determined, Sampath was positive there was more trouble to be expected. And he knew from previous experience that when you dread something so very much, it often happens. Poor monkeys, he thought. Poor, poor monkeys … And poor, poor myself … What would happen now?

Down below, Pinky looked for pen and paper to compose a note. Although she was happy to have bitten Hungry Hop, she was desolate at how this appeared to have signalled the end of their long association. From childhood days we have known each other, she thought. It is not nice to suddenly withdraw over one small thing. When she was little, she had bought ice cream from Hungry Hop’s father, who had been accompanied in those days by a small Hungry Hop. Later, when Hungry Hop himself had taken over the business, she had continued her patronage of their family van. She thought of what Sampath had said about worms being forced out by heavy rains and was heartened by it. No doubt if she barraged Hungry Hop with reminders of herself, hammered at his life in whatever way she found possible, flooded him with missives, he would have little option but to emerge and face her.

She put all her effort towards writing the note she had decided to deliver to him. After several alterations, it read: ‘I am so sorry to have bitten your ear. But it was done only out of affection. Please understand, the sight of you filled my heart with so much emotion, but it unfortunately came out in the wrong way. Here’s wishing you a speedy recovery.’

She felt rather proud of her reserve and simple eloquence. She was giving vent to her feelings, she thought, albeit in a constrained, reasonable and amiable way. Certainly, she had reached a new level of personal development, a new pinnacle of maturity. She hoped this would convince Hungry Hop of her ultimate good sense and sanity, and pave the way for many further notes and encounters. With the piece of paper in her pocket, she departed for town.

She arrived at the Hungry Hop residence, still calm and filled with the influence of Sampath’s wisdom. Although the men were out at work, the Kwality Boy was being kept closely guarded by the women of the family. They were all seated outside the entrance to their home, drying their hair in the sun after their once-a-week shampoo with soap nut. It looked like a good-tempered, leisurely family scene. They teased each other and painted each other’s nails, passing around a plate of guavas with chilli and salt, but Pinky was aware that if she was spotted and identified, these women could transform themselves into a formidable army. Despite her own laudable abilities when it came to out-and-out warfare, she would be unable to defend herself against so many of them once they were aroused.

She slipped into the back alleyway. Didn’t they know anything about family planning? Far too many women in that family, she thought with disgust as she made her way between the heaps of rubbish and scraps to see if she could catch sight of Hungry Hop from the rear of the house. And there — oh wonderful life! — looking wanly from the bathroom window, she saw his face.

Once more her spirits were caught up in their dervish-like tumble and her sense of calm, so solid a minute ago, vanished like vapour. The same compelling influence that had held her in its rabid rush the last time she had seen him in the bazaar engulfed her again. Helpless before it, knowing she had to do something quick, she picked up a stone and, her nerves in a thrum of she knew not what emotion, she fastened her note to the stone with an elastic band from her hair and threw it, with deadly aim, straight at Hungry Hop, who was absorbed in staring dolefully out over the rooftops into an empty patch of sky.

He had not even noticed her presence in the alleyway down below and starting from this bullet that flew out of nowhere to hit him squarely on the jaw, he staggered back, dislodging as he did so the hair-oil bottle that had been balanced on the windowsill. He collapsed on to an upturned bucket against the wall. When he realized he was not dead and when the black sheet that appeared before his eyes as if to signal his end had disappeared altogether, he picked up the missile that had inflicted the painful blow. Shaking, he read the note that accompanied it.

An hour later, he sat still dazed upon the bucket, pondering the strange possibilities of affection. Was this love? he wondered. Was it not love? How could it be? Was this a perversion, a malformation of the real thing? A trick?

Hammering at the door, his youngest sister shouted: ‘Come on out. What are you doing in there?’ She rattled at the door. ‘Come on,’ she said, banging. ‘Hurry up. We need the oil.’ Now that their hair was dry, she had been sent by the other eleven ladies to collect the hair-oil bottle; they were anxious to massage their heads with perfumed oil before embarking on the long and painstaking task of braiding it and arranging it into loops and buns.

Oh, but was this love?

The littlest sister had been joined by several older ones. Finally, they managed to open the door, by breaking the thin hook that held it closed, and discovered their brother still crouched down against the mildewed wall, but, though they searched and searched, the hair-oil bottle was nowhere to be found.

‘What have you done with the hair-oil bottle?’ they asked Hungry Hop, whose beautifully oiled and perfumed curls betrayed him as the last user of the product. They were terribly angry. The sight of the swelling on his jaw made them somehow even angrier. No doubt he had slipped while taking a bath and hurt himself. Their pathetic brother who had lost the hair oil, who was constantly getting injured or injuring himself. At first they had been patient and sympathetic, but there was a limit to these things after all, and his constant attempts to incite their pity were getting tiresome!

‘Ooh, now you are really getting on our nerves,’ they said in a quick about-turn of feeling.

‘It is time to snap out of things,’ said his mother. ‘Find your backbone and pull yourself together.’

But, amazed by love, Hungry Hop looked right through their exasperated faces. Redolent with oil, he was still thinking about Pinky Chawla, who was likewise indulging herself in thoughts of him as she took a whiff from the bottle she had caught beneath his window.

The very next day she arrived in the back alleyway at exactly the same time and, catching sight of Hungry Hop again — for it was his regularly assigned bath hour — she threw him a rose. This time, Hungry Hop, his heart aflutter, succumbed to the mysterious compulsion welling up inside him and responded with his mother’s hairnet. This incident marked an important change in their relationship: the beginning of a mutual involvement, a series of feverish exchanges that took place almost daily, with Pinky hovering about his house with some token of affection in her pocket and Hungry Hop waiting by the bathroom window. As the days went by, they managed to exchange all manner of bottles, toffees, sweetmeats, handkerchiefs and nightclothes. Also a comb, a toothbrush, an ear pick, a bar of soap, a pomegranate, some photographs and a towel.

Hungry Hop’s sisters and aunts, now forced to hammer regularly at the bathroom door, shouting: ‘What are you doing in there?’ realized quickly enough that something had gone very wrong. The bathroom was being emptied of supplies. Was Hungry Hop so depressed and troubled that he was spending hours flushing things down the toilet? But the toilet drain would not be able to take such a surfeit of offerings, and where was his jungle-print shirt that nobody could find?

When the truth came to light after a sister had spotted Hungry Hop throwing his mother’s petticoat out of the window to his previous attacker, the family became crazy with worry. Clearly he had lost his stability. As if under a dangerous spell, his fear of Pinky Chawla had somehow been perverted into an unsavoury affection.