Sakina's Kiss
Translating from the regional Indian language Kannada, Srinath Perur has carried across the author’s light-fingered irony, narrative concision and deep humanity. Writers are too liberally likened to Anton Chekhov, but it is Chekhov’s classic story The Man in a Shell(1898) that this splendid novel most resembles in its deft illustration of the tyranny of obedience and the mortal dangers of shielding one’s eyes to injustice.
That the author has managed to dot such a short and powerful narrative with a number of such red herrings and blind alleys suggests that he is intent on showing how easily misunderstandings, abetted by self-interest and self-delusion, may multiply ... Such an accretion of incident might imply a hectic pace, but Shanbhag’s achievement is in his control of tone and volume (once again well realized by Srinath Perur’s translation); even as we learn of the dramatic backstory of Venkat’s maternal uncle, who is nudged away from his inheritance and later becomes enmeshed in radical politics and self-exile, and even as its links to Rekha’s interests and her whereabouts are revealed, a sense of stillness pervades. Each outburst of anger or terror is followed by an anxious dampening of emotion; each flurry of activity by a period of contemplation and stasis ... Ghachar Ghochar’s publication in English prompted comparisons with Chekhov and R. K. Narayan, probably suggested by Shanbhag’s ability to illuminate his characters’ interior lives against the complications of their social and political situations ... [Venkat] is that building block of fiction, the uncomprehending ordinary man forced to confront the realities around him, and Vivek Shanbhag’s cleverly and compassionately constructed novel allows us to see the price that process will exact.
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It’s a brave step to have a coward as your protagonist but acclaimed author Vivek Shanbhag’s unlikeable creation proves to be a memorable device for exploring power, patriarchy and politics in contemporary India ... Venkat’s weakness is gently humorous and relatable .... Author Shanbhag is also a playwright and clearly takes delight in the sound of words, evidenced by some comic passages such as a section where Venkat and Viji try out American pronunciations. It is a credit to translator Srinath Perur that both the fun and the sense is preserved in the adaptation to English from the original Kannada.
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