Kozhikode: “Globalisation and an open market have had an immense impact on everyday lives,” author Vivek Shanbhag said. “This has come with a loss of ideology, which has not been replaced with anything else.”
Shanbhag, speaking at a session at the Kerala Literature Festival on Friday (January 12) on his book Sakina’s Kiss, was explaining why his protagonist Venkat – like many others in society – is confused, and why this confusion has led to the growth of the right wing.
Sakina’s Kiss follows a family – Venkat, his wife Viji and their daughter Rekha – through four days of their lives, as they navigate certain extraordinary circumstances and a chasm in their relationships (particularly Venkat’s relationships with Viji and Rekha).
Shanbhag is the author of nine books and three plays in Kannada, and has co-translated U.R. Ananthamurthy’s Hindutva or Hind Swaraj to English. Sakina’s Kiss is Shanbhag’s second novel to be translated to English, after Ghachar Ghochar. Both have been translated from Kannada by Srinath Perur.
On the sidelines of the festival, Shanbhag spoke to The Wire about his books, their context and more. Edited excerpts from the conversation follow.
You spoke in the session today about the impact of globalisation and the changes that has brought, and the influence that has had on your work. But the way you look at some of those changes is rooted in the family, and the internal dynamics of families.
The kind of changes that we see – it is not possible to escape globalisation. And that has brought in a lot of changes. We are not in a position to say whether that is good or bad, because it is a mixed bag. It is difficult to take a stand on it. How do we feel any change? We feel the change when it impacts a person. In India, the family is the smallest unit, unlike the West where the individual is the smallest unit. So anything that impacts the family impacts us as individuals. And I see the changes brought in by globalisation, the conflict it has resulted in, has impacted families. And that’s what I was talking about.
In both the books that have been translated into English, there are male protagonists who have had their masculinities questioned, internally within the family, and then they act in reaction to that. Is that because of how much you see this happening around us?
These changes have happened in a system where women did not have access to knowledge, where they weren’t exposed, or where they were curtailed or controlled or oppressed in some way. With globalisation, the money that has flowed in has enabled awareness. The kind of exposure that women have, girl children have, has changed in our society. And I think that has brought out a big change. And that is being challenged – if you see in smaller places, in smaller families, everywhere it is being challenged. And there lies the big change; not just the challenge, but the moment you challenge, there is a conflict. I see that everywhere. And the rise of all that we see of the right wing – that’s what my novel is trying to say – is a response to this challenge. Because people want to retain control, they want to control women: how they dress, what they say, everything. Which is why I think it’s there in these two novels. It’s not like I write only about this, but it so happened that these issues have seeped in, because that’s what you see around us.
Particularly from Sakina’s Kiss, it suggests you believe stories, like life, don’t need to have a conventional ending, where things are neatly wrapped up. Is that a fair assumption?
See, it is also a literary tool where you have an open end. An open ending is not done because you don’t know how to end the story, there is a specific reason for it. And the reason is that when there are options opened up, and you have to choose one of the options, as a reader that’s a responsibility that you take. That is a point I am trying to make. That any option that you choose, any ending that you pick, it’s a responsibility on you, not on the writer.
And the reason I have done that is also that today we are in a situation where – be it in TV debates, media, anywhere – people wanted everything to be discussed and for them to be given an opinion. Everything has to be given on a platter, people don’t want to think. Which is one of the problems today, and also it has brought this agitation, this discouragement, around questioning that we see. And this repression in the current regime, wherever you see. Thinking is not encouraged. And people want the writer to resolve everything and give it on a platter. I refuse to do it – though all my novels are not like this – because in certain cases, I would really like the reader to get involved and take responsibility for the ending.
I wanted to ask you about translations, since you’ve been on both sides of the exercise. How do you make those choices – that these are the two books of yours that would be translated first to English, and also about which book you decided to translate?
The book that I have chosen to translate is also a kind of a political statement. I felt that the book was really the need of the hour. The reason I got involved in it is also because of Ananthamurthy, this was his last book and more information was required to bring clarity to the text. And I thought I had that access [Ananthamurthy was Shanbhag’s father-in-law] and that how I got involved. It’s also a beautiful text, a very strong expression of the concerns of the time.
With Srinath [Perur], I knew Srinath for a long time and he’s a creative writer, though he hasn’t published anything. I like his language, I liked his sensibility, I liked his book (the travelogue If It’s Monday This Must Be Madurai). So I went to him and asked him if he would want to do a translation. He hadn’t done any translations till then. This [Ghachar Ghochar] is his first translation ever. And that is how this relationship began. There is always a lot of discussion, there are many things that go into coming out with these translations. And I have thoroughly enjoyed working on both these translations with him. He’s a very insightful literary mind.
You recently had a short story out in Mint Lounge, in which the protagonist is a writer. One of his beliefs is that this idea that writing happens better in solitude is not necessarily true.
He’s making fun of it.
Yes, exactly. Is that a reflection of your beliefs?
No, it’s a story. I have written in all kinds of circumstances, because I was working. Many times we don’t have that choice. But it is important to disconnect your mind from the rest of the world at the time of writing, so that it is filled with your own story, your own characters, and it is not distracting. Because one needs a certain kind of heightened sensibility, heightened imagination to write. So to that extent that cut off is necessary, but it might not need to be a physical cut off.
