As a short story writer, Vivek Shanbhag has been compared to Chekhov, Machado De Assis and R.K Narayan for his impeccable penmanship. Translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur, this 100-page novella is the depiction of a rags-to-riches story and moral depravity of a Bangalore- based family.

Lately works in translation has gained momentum. Vivek Shanbhag’s ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ is my second Kannada read after Banu Mushtaq’s ‘Heart Lamp’.

The story opens at the Coffee House, which hints India is at the cusp of globalisation. Modernity speaks in the ambience. Though the name hasn’t changed in a hundred years’, it is ‘airy, spacious, high-ceilinged.’ As a reader, you are quickly invited to the café culture of Bangalore, where one tends to spend one’s time leisurely. The narrator is a regular at this Coffee House and is particularly captivated by the enigmatic Vincent, who serves at the table. Vincent, the author, surmises is better at knowing people than they know themselves. Owing to this quality of his, he longs to speak to Vincent whenever he is at the Coffee House. To him, Vincent is some sort of all- knowing Shaman, divine and the Coffee House, a temple. The character, Vincent, reminds me of the Chorus singing in Greek plays. Playing a key role in the development of the plot, his comments strike a link between the readers, the characters and the action that’s about to unfold.

At the centre of the novel is a family of six, including the narrator. Recalling the olden days of hardship to newfound riches from his uncle’s successful spice company, Sona Masala, the author impresses upon the simplicity of hard times to the complexities of material life. The newfound wealth upends the psychological balance of a family of five. Here, I am excluding Anita, the sixth member and the narrator’s wife. She is more of a commentator, an outsider questioning the narrator’s family’s moral lapse in ousting a woman from their door to their business and her husband’s lack of purpose. Anita is an ant, infested in their new circumstances. The whole family sticks together with Chikkappa at the helm. The tight-knit family is reminiscent of the Burari Case, where secrets were closely guarded until they threw the entire nation into a whirlwind.

Appa and Chikkappa share the same blood but not the mind. On a Sunday, a family of five gathered to have tea with Anita, still in Hyderabad. They had the house entirely to themselves. Appa had bought a packet of rusk from the bakery at their old house. Animated, they called out each other’s nicknames, invoking a story and a memory behind it. But soon the banter took a serious turn to committing crimes. Chikkappa revealed having to pay ‘protection money’. Soon, everything and everyone fell into disarray. The narrator left for the Coffee House in some ‘agitation’, and it got doubled with Vincent’s prophetic comment: ‘Blood is thicker than water, isn’t it, Sir?’

Though the business started from Appa’s retirement fund, Chikkappa took it further. Appa, getting a whiff of unscrupulous activities within the company, distanced himself, but the rest relied on Chikkappa, and his actions remained unquestioned. The family over the years entirely became ghachar ghochar- all tangled up.

The Narrator’s discomfort grows. Anita hasn’t called since she left. What started as an argument between the Narrator and Anita before she left takes an ominous turn. She hasn’t returned yet. He gets apprehensive. Has something happened to her? The Narrator stands to leave, but a glass breaks in his hand. Vincent points out: ‘Sir, you may want to wash your hand. There’s blood on it.’

The readers are left with a chilling cliffhanger ending. So much has been left unsaid. The Narrator ‘manages to further jam it up’ instead of teasing the strings apart.

A family comes into money. Coming out of hardships falls into the vicissitudes of riches. Social mobility, class structure, domesticity and the layered silences within are written with such depth and astuteness that the book retains the power of being a work of class without being pedestrian as well as scholarly.