India has produced an obscene amount of literary fiction around family stories. Even if such tales have arcs that appear unfamiliar, they are too self-indulgent to worry about the reader’s interest in the narrative, which wanes easily because of ill-conceived trauma plots.
Kannada writer Vivek Shanbhag broke away from this mould with his 2015 novel, Ghachar Ghochar.The short volume rocked the entire subcontinent with its stellar, understated elegance of craft. Ripple effects of its popularity reached abroad, too, meriting the author’s comparison with the great Russian writer Anton Chekhov. With his latest, Sakina’s Kiss, exceptionally translated by Srinath Perur, Shanbhag shines as the master of the everyday yet again. He manages to capture the reader’s attention without making it overt—his attempts at prying open the hypocrisy of an educated, middle-class householder.
We meet the patriarch— Venkataramana aka Venkat—who thinks of himself to be moderately woke, in the middle of a search. He says, “It was like this whenever I tried to find something—I would dig up everything I had preserved over the years and lose myself.” It’s a clever way to invite the reader to delve into the personal histories of his family members, leading up to a chain of incidents that lay bare the corruptness of morals, highlighting conflicting viewpoints, and socialising the problematic expressions one tends to call love. One particular sentence captures this wonderfully: “This thing we call love, who knows how deep a disagreement it can withstand.”
Early on in the book, one learns that Venkat and his wife Viji’s daughter, Rekha, has got herself mixed into something incomprehensible to the couple. Her monoverse is drastically different from their life. Like many in their 20s, Rekha is consumed by idealism. She’s incapacitated either to understand the workings of the world, or her father’s saviour complex is too overwhelming for her to bear. But one knows in their heart of hearts that she wants, naively so, to make a dent in this world by doing the right thing. Had these conflicts been treated in a language employed by a reporter, it’d be dull prose. But in the hands of Shanbhag, one finds an array of delectable incidents, which make one laugh, think and yearn for a resolution that never seems to arrive.
As the novel progresses, one feels helpless because the narrator, guided by several self-help books, seems unable to acknowledge that people have a mind of their own and their actions lie beyond his influence. Occasionally though, he is clear-sighted. Sample this: “The ardour of a new marriage magnifies everything.” Or here, during the couple’s honeymoon, where he knows he’s in control: “I noticed the swaying of the black beads I had tied round her neck with my own hands, the more it resembled an animal’s reins and drove me to a frenzy. There is nothing as exhilarating as taking possession, establishing authority. I wanted this ride to last forever.”
But he seems to lose grip on his family; a realisation he finds disturbing. He fails to face the truth. For example, what Viji says troubles him: “You are only concerned because your daughter is involved. You would have no problem if it was some other young woman they were doing this to. I don’t know who you are sometimes. It’s like there’s another man inside you, waiting to get out.”
It’s almost as if his manliness was waiting to be verbalised. When the couple journeys to Venkat’s native village in search of their daughter, his deep-seated, unresolved traumas, which continue to haunt him, come to the fore. Sample this powerful metaphor: “I have not told Viji about many such details trapped in the crevices of my childhood. Revisiting them feels like taking a stroll near a dormant volcano.”
These and many such contours of his life, along with his far-right political leanings, casteist stand and borrowed victimhood, shine a light on his character, making this book a wondrous narrative, which holds up a mirror to the many truths that we, as a society, try to shy away from.