As the unnamed (or perhaps unreliable) narrator keeps ruminating about his humdrum life at a local coffee shop, the reader gets a sense that something is wrong with this man and his family-something eerie is lurking beneath these well-crafted sentences. The book opens with a commonplace declarative statement: “Vincent is a waiter at Coffee House.” Not the best of hooks-yet there is something fascinating about the description of this “airy, spacious, high-ceilinged” place. The Nepali translation has done justice to the English translation however, the primary focus of this review is the English language novella. In around 28,000 words, Shanbhag masterfully narrates the nitty-gritty of an Indian family, stripping the finest details to its bare bones and thus depicting the true, unapologetic picture of modern-day India. Originally written in Kannada and doubly translated-first in English, then in Nepali-Vivek Shanbhag’s gripping novella, Ghachar Ghochar, tells the story of a Bangalore-based nouveau riche family and quite amazingly secures the slim book’s position among weighty tomes like Midnight’s Children and The God of Small Things.
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