Vivek Shanbhag’s novel, deftly translated by Srinath Perur, unpeels layers of middle-class realities, moral and political corruption, and the dynamics of power and anarchy
Not many works of literary fiction revel in the plush, undivided attention of readers. Most books come and go, leaving only faint traces of their existence — perhaps in a quaint review column or a momentary spotlight at the airport bookstore. At the same time, however, those that make it to the bestselling charts are often quickly categorised as genre fiction or gain ground in Chetan Bhagat’s fan club.
Only a handful of literary fiction trudge the middle path. Vivek Shanbhag’s Sakina’s Kiss (Penguin Random House) is the market’s new apple of the eye. Shanbhag came into light after his novella-length Ghachar Ghochar (2016) was translated into English and later made to the shortlist of the LA Times Prize for Fiction. Loved for its simple language and themes that weren’t popular with English readers, the novel succeeded in bringing the anguish of a modern, economically sound middle class to the forefront.
Quite like the title itself that espouses a sense of disorder, Ghachar Ghochar interrogates the tenuous relationship in a middle-class family. Always steadfast in their belief of sticking together, the life of the family gets upended when two external forces jolt them — wealth and the son’s wife. What follows is a sequence of seemingly innocuous (and largely mundane) events which, interspersed with the writer’s perceptive observations, makes for a wonderful read.
Spotlights India’s moral and political corruption
Sakina’s Kiss is again a typical Shanbhag — a seemingly loose-ended plot that acts as a rough scaffold to propel the story ahead. It’s usually a pretty basic structure — this time, an upper-middle-class nuclear family of three, the couple Venkatramana and Viji with their daughter Rekha, who live in a residential complex in Bangalore. Their content life takes a steep curve when two rowdy boys, Rekha’s batchmates, who call themselves RK and MP3, come knocking at their door.
They want to urgently talk to Rekha but Rekha is not at home. She has gone to her paternal village, where (quite unbelievably) there is no network. Initially indifferent, the father-cum-narrator feels the heft of the situation when the two older men come with a similar ask. He calls his elder brother Antanna in the village only to find out that Rekha had decided to cut her trip short on a whim and had boarded the bus back to Bangalore. Now that Rekha hasn’t reached, the parents panic and get into a searching mode.
They turn to the village where they meet a sharp-tongued, tabloid journalist Suresh, who informs them of the secret mission that she has embarked on. As they try to pick the strands together, the narrator is disturbed by the memory of Ramana, his maternal uncle, who turned orphan quite early on and was dispossessed of the piece of fertile land by his own father and elder brother.
Without harping on any specific details, the novel successfully weaves in a sense of anarchy, or the gunda-raj that plagues the country. (It hands us threads and has us twist them into rope that can later be used to hang us). From the petty issue that kickstarts the entire story to the local party leader Shankar Rao, with the highest odds of winning the elections, who has commented how girls should dress, become reminders of the moral and political corruption that plagues contemporary India.
The tentacles of patriarchy
Even when the comment on modern women’s dressing had immense potential to be turned into a complex political issue, the novel doesn’t veer in that direction. Instead, it takes another intriguing route and traces the aftermath of such a statement on a middle-class household. Soon, the home splits between the resentful daughter-mother duo who strongly condemn the statement (and the politician), and a confused father who thinks, ‘Now that a political party is saying openly what I cannot say at home, my vote is definitely for them.’
In fact, this is what seems to be the central theme of the novel: to highlight the changing ideas, motives and aspirations of a middle class that is economically sound, inhabits modern spaces and thinks they are progressive in their approach. The novel does so by bringing two generations in focus — and their quite palpable changes.
From the crude change in terms of village-city divide, this change registers in much subtler forms. Take, for example, the patriarch father who doesn’t pay any heed to the pleadings of his wife to return Ramana’s land. Or the elder brother Antanna who lives in the village, and whose anger and resentment towards his wife became the reason for her painful, untimely death (she could never open her mouth as the lump grew in size and metastasized to the entire body.) This stands in total contrast to his self-help book-reading, self-doubting brother Venkat, who is far more liberal and believes in equality for women.
However, their rightful space to exist and argue diminishes as soon as it is put into practice. The tentacles of patriarchy fan out in full force. When Viji asks his permission to wear a skirt on their honeymoon in Kodai, he agrees only because he enviously looked at boys who ‘kept the company of girls in Western attire’ in college. But he is unable to take it when Viji wears it because the (too-) short skirt that ‘barely covers her knees.’ Swooned over the actor Rekha at the peak of her career, he christens his daughter after her. He never reasons with his daughter and repeatedly tries to assert his dominion over her. ‘But after a point,’ he remarks towards the end, ‘our own children end up becoming hot ghee in the mouth for us.’
A delightful translation
One of the subtler ways to depict the change in conservative moulds as a matter of modernizing times and upward social mobility comes in the form of a mangalsutra. Viji doesn’t allow him to unclasp it on their honeymoon, but as years pass by, she not only removes it but forgets it in a damp corner in an almirah. But there is no escaping from middle-class conditioning of a married woman to not keep the neck bare — and the beaded, delicate mangalsutra is replaced with a more comfortable chain.
For this reviewer, Ramana is the star of the novel. Dogged by misfortune, he first lost his parents, and then his land — about which he didn’t come to know till the end. The inability of self-centered people to understand this truthful, justice-seeking Ramana is symbolized by his atrocious handwriting referred to as ‘crows-and-sparrow-feet.’ One of his last letters only mentions his heart-pounding love for Sakina after which we never hear from him. The exploration of this rebellious love story could’ve been the most poignant portions, but Shanhag refrains from delving into it further, dedicating no more than a single line to it.
Srinath Perur’s erudite translation shines through. Instead of using generic words and attempting a literal translation, his choice of phrases tries to deliver the meaning in the best way possible. Whether it is sonorous alliteration of ‘bucktoothed baboon’ or a sense of urgency felt in ‘jolted into alertness’, his translation is a delight to engage with.
At times, one might indeed feel that the plot leaves unresolved conflicts and too many loose ends, but the real joy of reading Shanbhag lies in his acerbic, tongue-in-cheek remarks about the middle class — always struggling, always evolving, and so full of contradictions and aspirations.
