Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard / Kiran Desai / 1998

Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard / Kiran Desai / 1998 

Thank you to RJ Walker for gifting me this wonderful book years ago, which I only just read in India. HITGO cleverly employs a cartoonish humor to tell a story about a lazy son turned accidental sage when his refusal to participate in the day to day grind of contemporary Indian work culture and instead sit in a tree all day and all night for months on end. There, his clapbacks at his disappointed father and society,  as well as his closeness to nature are read as sage-like. The humor crackles with moments of emotional truth that made me smile, cackle aloud, and simply vibe.  Take the surprising emotional depth of the moment the lazy son/sages sister in a fit of infatuated passion accidentally bites her beloved's ear off in her aggression. Or take the intro, where Indians of all social strata dream up ways of artificially, magically, or otherwise bringing a monsoon to conquer a months long heat wave that has them all exasperated.  Their ideas are hilarious, ridiculous, cartoonish, and while this isn't realism, it humorously pokes at the levels of desperation we are all melted to in heat. Another one of HITGO's merits is that it features a roving gang of drunken monkeys. The ending was a little bit of a deus ex machina, but I'm not even mad.  The book is a vibe and tickles so well I have no qualms calling it 5/5.