Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, Translated by Srinath Perur

A very short and crisp book, translated from Kannada to English. I finished it in merely 2 hours, owing to its smooth flow and closely knitted characters.

The story starts with a guy sitting in a Coffee house pondering over his The story starts with the narrator sitting in a Coffee house thinking about his recent life events and reflecting upon his time spent in the coffee house. He is observing the other people at the coffee house, and their behavior is taking him back to his memories of other people in the past. Swiftly we are introduced to his family, his elder brother is highly respected in the family as he runs the family business with his father. They are rich now, but their financial position was not so flourished always. We are taken back to the time when they were poor, and every penny spent in the house was discussed with all the family members. The family survived on a limited income. That meant that if there was an added expense, it was settled by cutting another expense. Soon, due to recession, his father, who is the sole earner of the family, loses his job. His father and his brother started their own business, which brings them a lot of money.

Their financial situation as a family has completely overturned for good in a matter of a couple of years. Along with the money, their family dynamics also change but not with the same pace. They weren’t able to catch up and probably changed too much. It’s essentially a story about how a family gets rich overnight, and how they handle it. After they are rich, the narrator marries a girl who is bold and wouldn’t hesitate to speak against wrong. She doesn’t buy the attitude of the family for long, and how the story for the narrator and his wife turns out is the main theme of the story.

The story is gripping and flows like a breeze through pages. It’s merely a hundred pages long, but we are reading more than what is written. You know what more has happened, which is not said. It ends with suspense, which was built in the last few pages. I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to read translated literature, or is looking for a quick read with a deeper story about family and money.