Ghachar Ghochar English 2015

Vivek Shanbhag is an Indian Chekhov illuminating the romantic and financial tensions in middle-class urban India with a doctors precision and sensitivity' - Suketu Mehta'It's true what they say - it's not we who control money it's the money that controls us. When there's only a little it behaves meekly when it grows it becomes brash and has its way with us.' From a cramped ant-infested house to a spacious bungalow a family finds itself making a transition in many ways. The narrator a sensitive young man is numbed by the swirl around him. All he can do is flee every day to an old-world cafe where he seeks solace from an oracular waiter. As members of the family realign their equations and desires new strands are knotted others come apart and conflict brews dangerously in the background. Masterfully translated from the Kannada by Srinath Perur Ghachar Ghochar is a suspenseful playful and ultimately menacing story about the shifting consequences of success.