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Intro
During what’s supposed to be the monsoon season, the small town of Shahkot, India experiences a prolonged and terrible drought. A strange woman named Kulfi begins to act even stranger than usual, as her pregnancy seems to give her powerful, exotic cravings for food that the drought has made difficult to acquire. Her husband Mr. Chawla and her mother-in-law Ammaji try to explain Kulfi’s odd behavior to the curious neighbors, but the cravings only intensify. One day, after Kulfi scrawls elaborate crayon drawings of all sorts of food on the walls of her house, the monsoon finally arrives. At that same moment, Kulfi goes into labor and gives birth to her child, and the Red Cross drops long-awaited food and supplies into Shahkot. The neighbors suggest she name her newborn boy Sampath, which means “good fortune.”
Twenty years later, Sampath is a restless and absent-minded young man who works at the Shahkot post office. He still lives in the same house where he was born, with his mother Kulfi (whose odd behavior and cravings have persisted), his demanding father Mr. Chawla, and his kindly grandmother Ammaji. He also has a headstrong teenage sister named Pinky, who lives in the same tiny house with them. Sampath has never done well in school, and his career prospects seem to be just as bleak, to the annoyance of Mr. Chawla. Sampath hates his dull job at the post office, only able to entertain himself by secretly reading through the private mail of the citizens of Shahkot. Sampath is fired from his job one night at the wedding of his boss's daughter, where he gets drunk and makes a fool of himself by stripping and dancing in a fountain.
Overwhelmed by despair over his depressing circumstances, Sampath has a sudden epiphany when he accidentally causes a guava fruit to burst in his hands. The morning after he’s fired, he takes a bus to the outskirts of town, enters an abandoned guava orchard, and climbs the largest guava tree he can find. Resting up in the tree, he finally feels at peace. Bewildered by his behavior, his family tries to bring him down at first, but Kulfi seems to understand why her son wants to live up in a tree. During one attempt to bring him down, Sampath speaks to a crowd gathered around his tree, telling them surprising things he only knows because of his snooping through people’s mail in the post office. Believing his knowledge to be miraculous and otherworldly, the crowd spreads the word that Sampath has become some sort of holy man.
Realizing that he could make a profit from this situation, Mr. Chawla allows Sampath to remain in the tree and live as a famous wise man. As Sampath’s family finds creative ways to take care of him from below, Sampath continues giving “sermons” and improvised advice to his reverent visitors for the fun of it. One regular visitor is secretly a spy from the Atheist Society who’s determined to expose Sampath as a fraud. But he seems to have no luck with this as Sampath’s fame grows along with Mr. Chawla’s fortune. Sampath seems happier than ever, and Kulfi is also content, as she has complete freedom to forage for exotic ingredients for the elaborate meals she cooks for Sampath. One day, a group of monkeys appears in Sampath’s orchard and takes a liking to him. But before long, they discover alcoholic beverages brought to the orchard by one of Sampath’s visitors. The monkeys become drunk and violent, and they’re soon hooked on alcohol, seeking it out wherever they can find it.
Soon enough, the monkeys begin terrorizing the town of Shahkot in their unruly search for alcohol. The inept government officials of the town come up with various plans to solve this problem, but nothing seems like a good enough idea. Eventually, the monkey crisis becomes a controversy that divides the people of Shahkot, as some believe the creatures deserve respect, while others simply wish to get rid of them. Sampath feels sick and overwhelmed as his visitors argue furiously about the monkeys. He ran away and started living in this tree to escape from his responsibilities, but now he’s being forced to face new, more stressful expectations. He realizes that the peace and simplicity of the grove has been ruined, and he longs to escape before he’s trapped in this life forever.
One morning, as Shahkot’s government officials and military arrive to forcibly remove the monkeys from the orchard (and the Shahkot area), they discover that Sampath has somehow transformed into a large guava. The monkeys carry the guava away from the pursuing crowd, into the wilderness, and out of sight. At the same time, the spy from the Atheist Society has climbed a tree directly above Kulfi’s large cooking pot, which he suspects contains drugs intended for Sampath. But the branch he’s clinging to snaps, and the spy falls into the bubbling cauldron. The crowd wonders about the source of the splashing noise as they slowly approach the cooking pot.
