‘Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard’: Social Acceptance Versus True Identity

Does a true identity have to be unique, and does showcasing one’s true it mean being rejected by the norm? Kiran Desai discusses this relation between social acceptance and true identity in her novel ‘Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard,’ through the characters of Kulfi Chawla and Sampath Chawla. Desai portrays Kulfi as a rather adamant character, having a consistent and enduring personality through the entire plot; Sampath, though, is portrayed as a submissive character, yielding to society and consciously eclipsing himself as he becomes a celebrity for the people as Shahkot, being known as “the monkey baba”. Desai portrays the conflict between acceptance in society versus the existence of true identity through the actions of and insights on the characters of Sampath and Kulfi. Kulfi, right from Desai's portrayal of her all consuming craving for food at the inception of the novel, is deemed an outcast in society because of her odd behavior. Desai describes Kulfi “enormously large” woman that leaves “people stopped short in amazement as she walks down the street.” People’s reactions to seeing her, and the gossip, hints that she was already cast out and was being mocked by society. By the time Kulfi was completely infatuated with food and was drawing food on the walls of her house, she was thought to have existed in her own bizarre world, portrayed an independent and free bubble floating around the complex town of Shahkot. The people of Shahkot claim to shun her away, but still allow her to exist in the complicated world of Shahkot, almost looking at her with hidden envy. This, in fact, is the true identity of Kulfi as she can exist independently of society, and is kept consistent through the book no matter what the situation might be or what conflict may arise.
Desai introduces Sampath as the second character that existed independently of society, but as an indifferent and passive character who people talked little about as opposed to Kulfi, who had become a hot