Sampath as a Holy Man

Do you believe Sampath was truly a holy man or was he pretending? Were the sayings he proclaimed truth or a lie?

I personally do not believe that Sampath was a holy man. The people of his village believed he was because he knew about many people's personal lives. The information was not received through divine intervention however, but by snooping through people's personal mail. Then, it is even stated in the book that he was surprised how much information he retained from reading mail. He might not of even known what the significance of what he was saying meant. Towards the end everything became more garbled and hard to interpret. That probably came because he ran out of things to say that he had learned from the post office and throughout his whole life.

@cait13
i wouldn't say that Sampath was a holy man, but perhaps a wise man. he was there to give advice to people and help them through their lives. and while towards the end, the advice went fuzzy, he still helped people with decisions, by making them think about their choices. Sampath is no different then maybe a modern day psychic or advice columnist. he is there, to help people make better choices.

allysonbrianna wrote:I personally do not believe that Sampath was a holy man. The people of his village believed he was because he knew about many people's personal lives. The information was not received through divine intervention however, but by snooping through people's personal mail. Then, it is even stated in the book that he was surprised how much information he retained from reading mail. He might not of even known what the significance of what he was saying meant. Towards the end everything became more garbled and hard to interpret. That probably came because he ran out of things to say that he had learned from the post office and throughout his whole life.

I agree with allyson. He just knew what to say because of all the letters he read through during his time at the post office, and simply didn't admit it when people started to think of him highly... Hell, why would anyone tell them the truth if you were being considered a "holy man"?

Like Bre said, he's kind of like a life coach. But he probably doesn't know what he's talking about half the time.

I don't believe Sampath was a holy man, either. I think he enjoyed the attention, not that he was an "attention-whore" per say, but he had been ignored or lectured his entire life. He had the chance to have people look up to him (literally and figuratively), and he took advantage of that.

Like everyone above me I don't believe Sampath was a holy man. But I believe his turn of events could possibly have been brought around by a greater or "holy force." His snooping around became beneficial to him, and how many times does that happen? So in a sense, he got was under a lucky star for a while (they even had said something similar to that since he was born at the time of the monsoon) and it worked for him (until he turned into a guava, that is ).