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Introduction Desai’s work is known for its rich and colourful language, and detailed presentations of setting and character. Hullabaloo in th eGuava Orchard presents a fictitious small-town called Shahkot in North India. The town has a mixed culture of traditional Indian social norms and of modern life, wherein the runaway Sampath Chawla, who just wants to be left alone, is forced into being a holy man in spite of himself.
India is home to many religious groups, including Hindus, Buddhists, and Muslims It also has a history of political strife among those groups, exacerbated by the interference of British colonialism and modern globalization her work explores the toll that these cultural divides have taken on India’s population.
Protagonist: Sampath Chawla The son born to Kulfi and Mr. Chawla during the monsoon is the main character. He is born with a brown birthmark on his cheek and, because he came with the rains, he is called Sampath—Good Fortune He grows up a strange boy, imaginative, and attracted, like his mother, to sensuous beauty. Also like her, he seems to get lost in the objects of his perception, becoming one with them thus, at the wedding of his boss’s daughter, he takes the colours and textures of the wedding clothes into himself until he is drunk on the beauty and sings naked in the fountain.
He feels the tree in the orchard represents the first time he has truly seen life as it is—he is at one with its beauty. If he could only stay long enough, he could melt into it as the people converge on the orchard in a moment of Maximum chaos, Sampath apparently disappears as he holds a guava; like a Buddha, he is absorbed into its life force. The fruit bears a mark exactly like Sampath’s birthmark.

THEMES
• FREEDOM FOR THE MUNDANE• THE JOYS OF SORROW AND IMAGINATION• TRADITION VS. MODERNITY• LIMITATIONS OF POINT OF VIEW
• Folk Literature• Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard has some characteristics of folklore(folk tales, fairy tales, fables)