At what price can peace be attained? To what extent are individuals equipped to deal with a life of constant debility? In MR Dattathri’s novel, What’s Your Price, Mr. Shivaswamy?, we find these questions pique the readers’ curiosity. Written originally in Kannada and translated into English by the author himself, this novel is a tour de force of a retired man searching for answers that keep escaping him.
The story begins with Shivaswamy regretting going for an interview. He is retired from an HR position that stationed him in Ghaziabad all his life. Finally, with an opportunity to return to his home state, he plans a future for himself and his wife in Bengaluru. But life in this city is anything but seamless. To begin with, the flat for which he’s already made a down payment is still in its construction phase. The builders are only finding reasons to spike the budget of the construction without any reassurance. Secondly, his wife had to go to the US all by herself to be with their daughter because a new responsibility falls on Shivaswamy, and he is unsure whether he can justify it. As the dream of a retirement house and life beside his kith and kin crumbles with every passing day, Shivaswamy wonders what exactly went wrong. Pacy, engaging and touching, this novel plunges the reader into the life of a man who is barely holding together and yet manages to never give in.
Dattathri writes with a focus that is bound to charm his readers. It sucks you in right from the first page and makes one fly through the novel. In the very first page, he writes, ‘It was not just the interview; nothing went his way that day.’ This already sets the tone of what is to come in the novel. The writer wastes no time and gets straight to Shivaswamy’s story. Even when he spends words on building the city and the world that Shivaswamy inhabits, the reader still feels a part of the narrative, which can sometimes be daunting. One is reminded of Tanuj Solanki’s Bombay in Manjhi’s Mayhem—in the way the city came alive through its characters.
Shivaswamy’s character is spectacular. The reader delves into his mind and gets a sense of his thought process. On every page, you find the words beating with Shivaswamy’s soul. His burgeoning anxieties regarding his health, the pressure of a new job, the trepidation and mystery around the house, to his increasing loneliness, the author gives to his reader a convincing and memorable character in the guise of Shivaswamy. Of course, certain elements from his thoughts can seem archaic and deeply problematic.
What truly stands out in Dattathri’s novel is his attention to Bengaluru’s urban problem. He manages to write about the ongoing housing crisis in Indian cities post-liberalisation with brilliance.
While there is a lot to appreciate about the concerns of the novel and Shivaswamy as a character, what does not bode well is the subplots. The plot around the workplace fiasco between Shivaswamy’s employers is made dramatic with Dhaval Thakkar’s (the MD) character. What could have been a space for tapping into complicated workplace power politics wanes after a point. From Dhaval’s blind faith in a man whom he barely knows, the unattended concerns of the son and his relations to Dhaval’s being carried away by his employee’s philosophic musings, it becomes difficult to wonder if this book was not written for a film to lure popular attention.
Nonetheless, Dattathri’s novel will have readers glued to it without a moment of exhaustion. Shivaswamy wins his readers by his sheer presence and the emotional connection he eventually forges beyond the page.