Kiran Desai - Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard

‘You know,’ she continued, ‘perhaps you can come along with the Hungry Hop boy and myself, for, you know,’ she whispered loudly, ‘we are planning to elope, you know.’

Who knows why she had to put in so many ‘you know’s?

‘I am not going to climb down from this tree,’ said Sampath.

‘But why not?’ said Pinky, climbing back down the ladder hastily when she saw the Cinema Monkey approaching to sit in his accustomed place by Sampath on the cot. ‘We can go all over in the van and travel from one place to another.’

Sampath thought of endless roads in the endless sticky summer that would arrive so very soon to stretch before them, of trucks billowing out exhaust, the vibration of engines through his head, nausea rising from his stomach, and he felt unbearably hot and then cold as ice. He thought of his old life in the post office, of the people milling about him, pushing him, shoving him in the streets, and he felt as ill as when the officials had visited him. In fact, he almost lost his balance and fell from the tree. In the background a loudspeaker crackled and the words ran into a nonsensical blur. His face had gone white.

‘What’s the matter with you?’ asked Pinky, alarmed.

‘Thank you for asking,’ he managed to say. ‘But it is better that you go on your own.’

‘Why is it better?’ Pinky demanded, exasperated.

‘Because it is,’ he said loudly and angrily, suddenly irritated by all of it and everybody. They would kill him. He would just die. ‘Leave me alone, I am going to be sick. Leave me alone, leave me alone, leave me alone …’

‘Oh, well,’ said Pinky, going away. He was very whiny today, wasn’t he? Who would have thought he would ever have had the enterprise to run away from home and into a tree? For a little while her brother had shown some character and now he was going backwards, as usual …

Little did she know of the events going on in the Hungry Hop household at that very moment, or she would not have been wasting her time talking to him in this fashion.

The day before Hungry Hop was to elope with Pinky, he was introduced to the girl his relatives had picked to be his future wife.

Though it is usually customary for the boy’s family to visit the girl’s, due to the unusual circumstances regarding Hungry Hop, his family arranged for things to be done the other way around instead. Before this chosen girl arrived, sandwiched fondly and closely between her parents in a rickshaw, Hungry Hop surpassed himself by throwing the biggest tantrum he had ever subjected his family to. They grew nervous at his fits of temper, the slamming of doors, his locking himself up, his emerging to shout something down the stairs, his locking himself up again …

‘But she is a very sweet girl,’ they pleaded. ‘Just take a quick look. She is pretty and good-tempered and you will like her.’ Really, his character had changed since he had been bitten by Pinky. Never did he used to lose his calm … They shook their heads over it all yet again.

‘If you like her so much,’ he said rudely, ‘marry her yourself and let her give you bother and trouble.’

‘But, son, just …’

‘You are eating my head,’ he interrupted, slamming another door.

But in the end, curiosity got the better of him and he went downstairs quietly enough when the girl arrived. He would look at her and then, with even a greater number of arguments to boost his point of view, he could, in all fairness, refuse her. He wore a white shirt and white trousers and, still a little thundery-looking about the eyes, he entered the room.

And …

Oh, but oh, who can plan against the powers of fate?

What a girl! What a girl he saw sitting demurely between an ugly Mummy-Papa when he stepped around the curtain hanging in the doorway of the room! She surpassed anything he could have ever expected. So plump, so pink and white! A complexion like that under the Indian sun! With such a sleepy face and sleepy eyes, such a good-natured sleepy smile … He could not believe his eyes! Her sari was rosebud-coloured, her cheeks were like vanilla pudding, her mouth like the rose on top of the icing of a birthday cake … Yes, he thought, she was exactly like a birthday cake, a pink and white birthday cake … The pearls in her ears and about her neck and wrists were like the little silver decoration balls. He opened his mouth and stared.

All about the room, his sisters and aunties, his grandmother and mother nudged each other. This girl had failed every examination she had ever taken, it was true, but there was something to her, wasn’t there? They were very pleased and proud with the good job they had done despite the difficult circumstances.

Hungry Hop retreated, his head in a whirl. When she left, his family closed in upon him, filling his ears with talk, bribing him with promises of a Maruti car and television, a wedding party of two weeks in duration … Stop! he thought to himself. How can I do this? But they continued and a pleased look could not help but show through the grumpy one he tried hard to maintain.

When they left, all his doubts filed back into his brain and that night he did not sleep a wink. He tossed and turned until his sheet wound uncomfortably and tightly about his legs. His thoughts tumbled and jumped, interrupted each other and became entangled in themselves. On one hand, he had given his word he would meet Pinky the next morning and he was a nice boy, after all … On the other hand, just think of how easy and pleasant it would be if he stayed … But yet, he felt embarrassed to give in so easily after he had made such a fuss before his family and held out for so many days. He thought of Pinky and all her notes and presents, her biting his ear and hitting him on the jaw. It was true, Pinky had something to her too. Nobody could deny that. And just that morning, it had seemed so exciting — he would jump into the van and drive away. But now … he didn’t know … he didn’t know … There was the girl like ice cream, like birthday cake, like wedding cake … Oh, look, now he was saying wedding cake, not birthday cake, and that seemed heavy with peculiar significance … even though they would not have wedding cake at his wedding, of course, but laddoos.

At 4.00 a.m. he rose, his mind still not made up, and sneaked out to the van. Amazingly, as if by fate, nobody heard him — they were sleeping soundly, sure of work well done and a safe future for their son. They slept and snored as if resting after months of unease and worry. Quietly he pushed his van down the road and only when he turned the corner did he start the engine and get in. He would drive to the tamarind tree and there, depending on how he felt, he would tell Pinky that this was impossible, or he would sweep her up and drive away in the Hungry Hop van … He took a maze of little side streets instead of the one-way main road so he might have plenty of opportunities to turn quickly around and return home, if that was the decision he made, or to move to the main road, if that was what he wanted. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake,’ he muttered to himself. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’

Deliriously, he drove in circles through the shadowed streets, when, all of a sudden, he became aware of a huge grey group of people and cars coming up fast behind him and remembered with a start that this was the day they were to catch the monkeys. No doubt these were the monkey catchers themselves, on their way to the orchard just like him!

‘Get out of the way,’ they shouted at him. ‘Get out of the way.’

Urgently he tried to turn into another street, but it was very narrow and his van got stuck. Such things are wont to happen at crucial moments in one’s life, of course, and it took him quite a while to turn into yet another side lane, to embark upon yet another loop of his journey. ‘Pinky or Miss Pudding and Cake …’ Or nobody, for that matter! Nobody! They were making his life a misery.