Ghachar Ghochar - Discussion (Manasa Book Club)

by Cibi 

My room-mate who hardly asks about books, spelled loud the title “Ghachar ghochar”. The story is
intriguing as its title. It is about how the inherent cruelty in a close knit family develops with their
sudden rise in status. The sudden shift in power from father to chikkapa, from salaried poverty life
to rich business life makes the cruelty on outsider pronounced and internal ones starts to surface.
Father is the first one to receive it. To them he is now just a man who tries unsuccessfully to make
others laugh with his feeble jokes. The tendency of respecting the principal earner only for their
income is not uncommon. After the death of renowned tamil researcher Vedasagayakumar three
meetings were conducted to commemorate him. His family were invited and his colleague were
requested to attend as chief guest. None came.

So the narrator’s family keeps him in the loop just so that he doesn’t will his inheritance to others.
When the middle class becomes suddenly rich, there is insecurity with the lavishness.
The narrator is rooted in that insecurity. He moves the story by his reminiscence of each family
member and their part in bringing the family to the present state. All this introspection happens to him
only from the Coffee house. There he tries to reconcile his feeble conscience with his well-settled
blind compliance with the family’s unsaid rules, by waiting for an external sign. It usually comes from
the smart, oracular-like waiter Vincent.

He is introduced in the first line of the story itself and has such descriptions that readers expect a
bigger role for him. But he remains more a plot tool.

The plot style reminds one of Chekhov’s. Though it seems better to consider it as an extended short
story, some sections of Kannada literature consider it a good novel. A short story views a mountain
from one side; a novel views it while circumambulating. Being a modernist novel, it successfully
shows the dynamics through which cruelty actuates. There are well-set gaps for readers to imagine,
but they are one-dimensional. A present novel is expected to show different sides, maybe through
different lives as in “Return to Earth”, or through alter-egos as in “Kaadu”. Since modernist works
are individual-centered, collective views from such related novels are a suggested alternative. Eg this
novel can be viewed juxtaposed with Al Giza, where the supremacy of family bond holds out
even at the most cruel of times. Sometimes a modernist work can cross its limitations through poetry,
like Basheer’s “Pathummayude Aadu”.

There are few good poetic moments - narrator’s first embrace with his wife, where two strangers
surrenders to other and feels entitled too, other is the narrator’s apprehension of seperation while
going through his wife’s wardrobe.

Anitha, his wife, loses her love for him after finding out his lack of self-dignity. She holds
skirmishes but waits. But seeing Chikkappa unloading the sack of the company’s goods at night and
him staying in bed, she realizes that the narrator will never attain the status of a man. Then Chikkappa
too becomes her target. This is when the family reduces her to an ant.

Mother is the first to indicate that. She is portrayed as the primary protective face of the family. She
is the first and foremost in reacting to any suspected invasion, be it ants, a secret lover of Chikkapa, or
Anitha. The mysterious way through which this protective force transforms into cruelty is beautifully
shown. The discussion had many gripping points to carry home.