Read Online B006NZAQXW EBOK by Kiran Desai - Free Book Online

up fell from him like a gust of wind that comes out of nowhere, rustles through the trees and melts into nothing like a ghost.
    The passengers who happened to be looking out of the window might have sworn they saw a monkey man leaping in the orchard, causing the leaves to jump and quiver. But they were tired from selling their milk all morning and rubbed their eyes before they looked again so as not to be deceived. By then the bus had left Sampath’s tree far behind and everything was its normal self again.
    The tree Sampath had climbed was a guava tree. A guava tree larger and more magnificent than any he had ever seen before. It grew in the orchard that had been owned by the old District Judge of Shahkot, before the government declared the land to be part of an area reserved for national forest.
    Concealed in the branches of the tree he had climbed, Sampath felt his breathing slow and a wave of peace and contentment overtook him. All about him the orchard was spangled with the sunshine of a November afternoon, webbed by the reflections of the shifting foliage and filled with a liquid intricacy of sun and shadow. The warmth nuzzled against his cheek like the muzzle of an animal and, as his heartbeat grew quiet, he could hear the soft popping and rustling of plants being warmed to their different scents all about him. How beautiful it was here, how exactly as it should be. This orchard matched something he had imagined all his life: myriad green-skinned globes growing sweet-sour and marvellous upon a hillside with enough trees to fill the eye and enough fruit to scent the air.The leaves of these trees were just a shade darker than the fruit and the bark was a peeling away of tan over a milky paleness so delicate and so smooth that his fingers thrilled to its touch. And these trees were not so big, or so thick with leaves, or so crowded together, as to obscure the sky, which showed clean through the branches. Before his eyes, flitting and darting all about him, was a flock of parrots, a vivid jewel-green, chattering and shrieking in the highest of spirits. This scene filled his whole mind and he wondered if he could ever get enough of it. This was the way of riches and this was a king’s life, he thought … and he ached to swallow it whole, in one glorious mouthful that could become part of him for ever. Oh, if he could exchange his life for this luxury of stillness, to be able to stay with his face held towards the afternoon like a sunflower and to learn all there was to know in this orchard: each small insect crawling by; the smell of the earth thick beneath the grass; the bristling of leaves; his way easy through the foliage; his tongue around every name. And then, as the afternoons grew quick and smoky and the fruit green-gold and ripe, he’d pick a guava … He’d hold it against his cheek and roll it in his palms so as to feel its knobbly surface with a star at its base, its scars that were rough and brown from wind and rain and the sharp beak of some careless bird. And when he finally tasted it, the fruit would not let him down; it would be the most wonderful, the most tasty guava he could ever have eaten …
    Yes, he was in the right place at last. Tiredness rolled over him like a wave and, closing his eyes, he fell into a deep slumber, lodged in a fork in the guava tree.

7
    The day their son moved into a tree, the Chawla family, worried and full of distress, took up residence outside the local police station. They sat on the bench beneath the station’s prize yellow rose creeper and waited for news of his whereabouts. That is, the three women sat on the bench while Mr Chawla walked around and around the building, making the policemen dizzy by shouting through every window he passed during his circuits. If he were the Superintendent of Police, he said, Sampath would, right this minute, be back in his usual vegetable-like stupor between them.
    The town made the most of the drama. Neighbours came by regularly for