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A comical and unsettling exploration of the human delusion of being in charge of our own lives Vivek Shanbhag’s magnificent novella, Ghachar Ghochar, translated from the south Indian language of Kannada by Srinath Perur, and published in English in 2019, drew rapturous acclaim from far and wide. In these very pages, the critic Eileen Battersby wrote that it was “possibly one of the finest literary works you will ever encounter”. Now Shanbhag and Perur are back with Sakina’s Kiss, another compact masterpiece, about the uniquely human delusion of being in charge of our own lives. Our narrator is a middle-aged IT worker, a husband and father, living in a big city in India, possibly Bangalore. He’s a genial fellow who wishes trouble upon no- one, secretly relies on guidance from self-help books and is ever willing to compromise for an easy life. Rather than insist that people call him Venkataramana, the name given to him by his parents in honour of the family deity, he’s allowed his name to shrink in length over the years, and now goes by Venkat. “After all,” he reasons to himself, “when you want to win a swimming race, you don’t dive in carrying weights.” He and his wife, Viji, think of themselves as modern people: although their marriage was arranged by their families, they like to say that, actually, only the meeting was arranged, and the rest they did for themselves. After all, they liked each other right from the beginning, and they do seem to be a good match: on the first night of their honeymoon, the newlyweds open their suitcases to discover they have each secretly brought a copy of the exact same self-help book entitled – what else? – Living in Harmony. If it seems like a meet-cute Disney moment, that’s because it is, and the author is way ahead of you. A knock on the door sets the novel in motion: two young men, university students, want to speak to the couple’s daughter, Rekha. But she is out of town, uncontactable by mobile, and the men – thugs, as we soon see – aren’t too happy about it. Ominous shadows from a dark underworld soon threaten to disrupt Venkat’s peaceful life, and it remains to be seen whether his mantras will be of any help. By turns comic and unsettling, this is another triumph from Shanbhag. Change the editor font size Size: Medium 379 words 2159 characters 15 lines

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