The poetry of the ordinary

Kiran Desai is an Indian-born American author whose second novel, The Inheritance of Loss (2006), became an international best seller and won the 2006 Booker Prize. Her work focuses on the themes of multigenerational family dynamics, postcolonialism and immigration. In 2025 she published the long-awaited novel The Loneliness of Sonia and Sunny.

There is a certain kind of magic and poetry in the ordinary, and that is where Desai’s stories shine.

Poetry of the ordinary and a hullabaloo

Fresh and funny and delicious, Hullabaloo in the guava orchard is the story of Sampath Chawla, born into a family a bit off kilter, to a mother not quite like her neighbours, in a town not quite like other towns. For years Sampath fails at everything, from school, to work, and generally in life.

“‘But the world is round,’ says his grandmother. “’Wait and see! Even if it appears he is going downhill, he will come up out on the other side. Yes, on top of the world. He is just taking the longer route.’”

No one believes her. Until he climbs a guava tree in search of a life of peaceful contemplation and becomes unexpectedly famous as a hermit.

Reading Kiran Desai’s Hullabaloo in the Guava Orchard reminded me how rich those small, unnoticed moments can be when seen through a storyteller’s eye.

Desai takes a sleepy Indian town, full of gossip, longing, bureaucracy, and the strange theatre of everyday life, and turns it into something luminous. Her world is absurd and enchanting at once - a place where fruit sellers philosophise, postmen dream, and Sampath’s rebellion turns into sainthood.

The extraordinary often hides in plain sight, dressed in the ordinariness of routine.

Your personal guava orchard

It made me wonder what our own guava orchards might look like here in South Africa.Maybe they’re not orchards at all. Maybe they’re the coffee shops in Alberton where the same people meet every morning, or the quiet streets of Van Wyksdorp at dusk when everyone greets each passer-by by name. Maybe it’s a Saturday market in Parys, where stories are traded as easily as fruit.

Every community has its own rhythm, its own comedy of manners. We just have to listen. The gossip that swirls around the local café, the drama of a broken water pipe, the eternal queue at the licensing department - these are not just frustrations; they are raw material for storytelling. In the right hands, they become portraits of who we are, how we hope, and how we navigate life.

Writers like Desai remind us that we don’t need grand events to write meaningful stories. We only need to notice. Pay attention to the way light moves across a familiar landscape. Catch the poetry hidden in ordinary talk.

Because perhaps, in the end, the guava orchard isn’t a place at all. It’s a state of seeing - an openness to wonder, humour and life’s small moments.

Write with me

What does your “guava orchard” look like? A living room couch, a farm road, a neighbourhood park, or a restaurant kitchen? Take a moment this week to write about something utterly ordinary - and see what magic reveals itself.

If you’d like guidance on turning everyday moments into memoir or creative nonfiction, visit Koorsboomstories or join one of my upcoming Write Your Memoir workshops. The poetry of the ordinary begins right where you are.