Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard - first edition cover
The Sermon in the Guava Tree by Kiran Desai appeared as a short story on page 90 in the June 23, 1997 issue of The New Yorker. The novel appeared a year later.
The Sermon in the Guava Tree by Kiran Desai appeared as a short story in the June 23, 1997 issue of The New Yorker
The short story begins with Sampath moving into the Guava tree and the police being unable to trace him. Later he is found in the orchard. “We must formulate a plan. Only monkeys climb up trees,” says his father and a doctor is called in to examine him, but concludes, “Nobody except for God can do anything about him.”
A holy man is consulted, and he says all Sampath needs is a mate, for whom there is a standard roster of requisite qualifications. This was the subject of the passage Saras read from the novel. A talcum-powdered girl is found and she is hoisted up the tree to Sampath.
Sampath notices people he knew in the audience below, whose letters he had secretly read in the post office after steaming them open. He proceeds to divulge snippets and after a few such episodes of seeming clairvoyance, he is confirmed as a Baba, a god-man.
Mr. Chawla, has the racketeer’s epiphany: Sampath might make his family's fortune. They could be rich! “How many men of unfathomable wisdom possessed unfathomable bank accounts?” At this point begins the pampering of Sampath who is provided every comfort for his chosen arboreal existence:
“He made a lovely picture seated there amid the greenery, reclining on his cot at a slight angle to the world; propped against numerous cushions, tucked up, during chilly evenings, in a glamorous satin quilt covered with leopard-skin spots. On his head he sported a tea-cozy-like red woollen hat that had been knitted by his grandmother.”
Thus ensconced in his orchard bower, Sampath gave what came to be known as The Sermon in the Guava Tree. Sampath uses his secret knowledge from steamed (and steamy) letters to amaze the audience. Then he issues a series of wisdom sayings, which Kiran Desai attributes in the novel’s acknowledgement, to Bhargava’s Standard Illustrated Dictionary of the Hindi Language, compiled by R. C. Pathak, BA, LT.
– Many a pickle makes a mickle . . .
– When the buffaloes fight, the crops suffer.
– It is a hard winter when dogs eat dogs.
– Every cock fights best on his own dunghill.
Etc.
The short story ends with Sampath making the news:
POST-OFFICE CLERK CLIMBS TREE
“Fleeing tedious duties at the Shahkot Post Office, a clerk has been reported to have settled in a large guava tree. According to popular speculation, he is one of an unusual spiritual nature, his child-like ways being coupled with unfathomable wisdom.”
But the novel has a more mysterious ending in which a metamorphosis of Sampath takes place into a Buddha-like Guava with his own birthmark. The langurs then spirit him off, thus transformed, to a distant forest in the mountains.
A holy man is consulted, and he says all Sampath needs is a mate, for whom there is a standard roster of requisite qualifications. This was the subject of the passage Saras read from the novel. A talcum-powdered girl is found and she is hoisted up the tree to Sampath.
Sampath notices people he knew in the audience below, whose letters he had secretly read in the post office after steaming them open. He proceeds to divulge snippets and after a few such episodes of seeming clairvoyance, he is confirmed as a Baba, a god-man.
Mr. Chawla, has the racketeer’s epiphany: Sampath might make his family's fortune. They could be rich! “How many men of unfathomable wisdom possessed unfathomable bank accounts?” At this point begins the pampering of Sampath who is provided every comfort for his chosen arboreal existence:
“He made a lovely picture seated there amid the greenery, reclining on his cot at a slight angle to the world; propped against numerous cushions, tucked up, during chilly evenings, in a glamorous satin quilt covered with leopard-skin spots. On his head he sported a tea-cozy-like red woollen hat that had been knitted by his grandmother.”
Thus ensconced in his orchard bower, Sampath gave what came to be known as The Sermon in the Guava Tree. Sampath uses his secret knowledge from steamed (and steamy) letters to amaze the audience. Then he issues a series of wisdom sayings, which Kiran Desai attributes in the novel’s acknowledgement, to Bhargava’s Standard Illustrated Dictionary of the Hindi Language, compiled by R. C. Pathak, BA, LT.
– Many a pickle makes a mickle . . .
– When the buffaloes fight, the crops suffer.
– It is a hard winter when dogs eat dogs.
– Every cock fights best on his own dunghill.
Etc.
The short story ends with Sampath making the news:
POST-OFFICE CLERK CLIMBS TREE
“Fleeing tedious duties at the Shahkot Post Office, a clerk has been reported to have settled in a large guava tree. According to popular speculation, he is one of an unusual spiritual nature, his child-like ways being coupled with unfathomable wisdom.”
But the novel has a more mysterious ending in which a metamorphosis of Sampath takes place into a Buddha-like Guava with his own birthmark. The langurs then spirit him off, thus transformed, to a distant forest in the mountains.
