Ghachar Ghochar : Vivek Shanbhag / Srinath Perur

 Brave new world

Societies rise and decline over time not unlike people. This involves birth pangs, separations, coming off age, and decline in fortunes among other things. Every so often there is a particular moment in time when a society transforms from one phase to another which is enthralling as well as painful for those people in the middle of it all. Of course this is fertile ground for literature and there are many instances where writers catch this transformation in all its complexity. Occasions include Dickens following the emergence of an England into the industrial age, Tolstoy tracing Russia’s break from feudalism and so on.

India too has gone through such a transformation in the last 25 years brought about by the economic liberalization started in the early 90s. The liberalization unleashed elemental forces that swept the entire population making some raise with the tide and some drown in its ferocity leading to the emergence of a new India. Most notably Aravind Adiga has captured this transformation in English at the macro level but here in this great Kannada novel we have Vivek Shanbhag capture this transformation at the basic unit of Indian society – the Family. ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ captures the opportunities unleashed by the economic liberalization and the joys, anxieties and fears it invokes in the middle classes who are the most impacted by it.  

The story revolves around a small lower-middle class family living in one of the many small rented houses in Bangalore where you could open the door and be on the road in ‘exactly four steps’. It’s a family of five where the father is a diligent salesman with meagre earnings and the mother who manages the household with their son – the narrator – and their temperamental daughter. The fifth member is the father’s younger brother ‘chikkappa’, a commerce graduate with initiative and vigour. The family subsists on the salary of the father who goes out every morning to sell tea powder and tallies the money accrued and sends it to the head office the next morning. They have a hand-to-mouth existence and limited desires but are a satisfied lot since ‘when you have no choice, you have no discontent either’.

The author manages to capture the lower-middle class life of the pre-liberalization era and it deeply resonates with those who lived that life. The small unventilated houses which were barely furnished save for a table and chair, the way the entire family helped the bread winners in their job, the euphoric celebration on the arrival of a ‘gas connection’ (something which is taken for granted now), the numerous tea sessions conducted to pass time, the washing of ‘vessels’ – all these bring to life the India of those times beautifully.

There is an affecting scene early in the book where the father makes an error in his tallying which results in 800 rupees left unaccounted and the entire household toils to find out the error to save the father from having to pay the amount from his pocket. The mystery is solved early the next morning by the chikkappa after a sleepless night of poring over tally sheets and the family celebrates the triumph the next morning as if it’s a festival. The scene touches you because it brings to memory those times when such acts of collective responsibility and collective joy were possible and are no longer possible now. It recreates an era that is gone right in front of our eyes.

Then comes liberalization which gives the educated middle class people who have the enterprise a great chance of social mobilization. And chikkappa is the right man at the right time and he invests his brother’s retirement money (in exchange for a 50% stake) and sundry loans to start a trading company which flourishes beyond imagination making the entire family rich. The rest of the novel is a brilliant study of the effects of the sudden wealth on the family members and how it changes their equation with each other and with society at large. It explores what happens when the lower middle-class crosses that coveted line and becomes the upper-middle class within a short span of time. It explores the impact of new money on age old middle class values such as decency, honesty and thrift. And finally the impact it has had on Indian families. The study is fascinating and all this is done in a little over hundred pages which is a miracle of conciseness.

Probably such a story can only be narrated in an Indian language as it is more suitable to explore the family life of a typical middle class family. Having said that the translation by Srinath Perur brilliantly conveys the ideas and thoughts of the original and keeps the Indian-ness of the original text. The Kannada idioms are translated faithfully hence you have new English sayings like ‘Holes in dosas in everyone’s house’ or ‘the newly rich carry umbrellas to keep moonlight at bay’ or 'this girl is good as gold'. The translation also weighs in on its own by contributing phrases like ‘chemical warfare’ to describe the mother’s use of potions and powders to fight an ant menace in the old house. But the biggest success of the translation is something else. Every piece of art conveys something unsaid and it is the recreation of this unsaid in a language like English which is as different from a language like Kannada is the biggest success of the translator.

The ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ of the title is a nonsense word invented by the narrator’s wife to describe a situation that is entangled beyond recovery. At the end of the book most of the characters find their lives to be in such an entangled state owing to the choices they made in response to the challenges posed by liberalization. It is a beautiful metaphor for modern India and a cautionary tale for the generation ahead as they face the brave new world created by liberalization.

Chinaman - The Legend of Pradeep Mathew : Shehan Karunatilaka

An Ode to Sport

Everyone who follows sport has encountered this inevitable question from family and friends at least once: What is the point of sport? The question acquires an edge especially when one does not play the sport or in any other way benefit from watching it. This amazing novel is a long, rambling attempt to answer this question and as a result it is an ode to sport. It is also the great Sri Lankan novel we have been waiting for as it intimates us with the culture and recent history of the country and the exaggerated role Cricket plays in its life.

WG Karunasena is an alcoholic Cricket journalist who in his heydays has written for the best journals in the country and abroad although he is largely ignored now. He is a lover of sports who sees beauty in “free kicks, late cuts, slam dunks, tries from halfway, and balls that turn from off to leg”. He is a drunk too and claims that alcohol has rid him of cliches and made him into a better writer and unabashedly admires the "drug refined over the centuries by all civilizations".

But he is dying. Thanks to his prolonged drinking habit. However to make the most of the remainder of his ever shortening life he has embarked on a quest to discover Pradeep S. Matthew, an elusive chinaman bowler who has been erased from the cricketing history who he considers as the greatest cricketer ever. On this quest WG discovers startling truths about Sri Lanka, cricket and himself. In the process he tries to answer the above mentioned question about the significance of sport. Time is short and we as readers are not sure whether he will manage to make it that long but he is confident as he philosophically puts it "there is nothing as inspiring as a solid deadline".

Sri Lanka is in the middle of a civil war, a consequence of the high-handedness of the Sinhala majority who "knew the Tamils could out-bat, out-think, out-everything" them. Amidst this war cricket is the only outlet for normalcy and the country is indeed blessed with a talented bunch of cricketers one of whom is Pradeep Matthew. A Tamil, he practices the rare art of left-arm chinaman and owner of numerous mystery deliveries including the unearthly double-bounce ball. However he does have a reputation for brushing the people in authority including fellow players the wrong way and after a promising start to his career has mysteriously disappeared. But WG knows he is a genius as he has watched him live in a match where he bamboozled the visiting team by taking 9 wickets including his famed delivery. The match is abandoned for some political reason and it is forgotten in everyone’s mind except WG’s who is now inspired to discover him and write about him.

WG is aided by his friend Ari and together they embark on this quest overcoming major squabbles (‘Murali chucks or not?’) and talking to various people connected to Pradeep including his family, fellow players and coaches. In the middle of this quest comes the 1996 world cup and to everyone’s surprise Sri Lanka "whack the cup" and cricket becomes even more popular in the country. Monetary rewards chase the players, even lesser known ones become millionaires, except Pradeep that is,  who stays out of it all and thereafter undergoes a slide in form and finally disappears. The rest of the book is about if and how WG tracks Pradeep down, how he comes to term with his family and whether he will have a happy ending to his life’s innings.

The book is remarkable about its insight into sport as WG admits that "Of course there is little point to sports" but hastily adds "there is little point to anything. In a thousand years, grass will have grown over all our cities. Nothing of anything will matter." But sport he says produces magical moments that can be remembered for hundreds of years and that is the whole point of sports. As he puts it…

“Sport can unite worlds, tear down walls, and transcend race, the past and all probability. Unlike life, sport matters.”

It’s a beautiful sentiment and one that we sport lovers can use to counter when someone inevitably questions why we follow sport.

The novel also explores the state of the Lankan nation and also on the Sinhala-Tamil tension. He laments the Murphy’s law of nations which Sri Lanka seems to have followed where by the colonized country becomes a parody of the colonizers and instead of inheriting their good traits they inherit their bad ones. As he ruefully says "we inherit the power lust of our conquerors but none of their vision". This I dare say is true of India too. 

He says that although the British as part of their ‘divide and conquer’ policy created a fissure between the communities, "by the 1950s, we begin to develop our own dangerous ideas without any foreign assistance. The idea that the nation belongs to the Sinhala or that Tamil deserve a separate state." The novel cites the example of India which despite more diversity has managed to create a united, peaceful state. Finally the author compares how similar the two communities indeed are and hopes for a reconciliation in the not too distant future.

In the end, this novel can be described as the arrival of Sri Lankan literature in English, indeed it is the ‘Great Sri Lankan Novel’ and all that English literature aficionados like us can do is echo that famous quote ‘Let a thousand flowers bloom’.