Ghachar Ghochar — The Tangled Mess of Life

‘The well-being of any household rests on selective acts of blindness and deafness.’

These lines made me wonder just how much well-being of households, of relationships in general, rests on acts of ignorance? Does wealth make those selective acts of blindness and deafness more challenging? Does the lack of money help such acts by making us kinder? Does wealth bring forth greed and ugliness in all of us that lay dormant before?

Domestic conflicts have often been addressed to the lack of wealth. But this story of the ascent of a nameless family to financial prosperity questions that belief.

To a family that, together, goes through challenging times as it transitions from a cramped, ant-infested house to a posh and spacious bungalow, anyone outside the family appears to be a predator. The family members have come to covet wealth over all else. Now, they must preserve their wealth at any cost, squashing predators as if they were ants trying to infest their wealth. A family that had never found itself on the wrong side of the law now employs tools of bribery, deception, and intimidation to protect their wealth.

Anita, the protagonist’s wife, has not witnessed the family climb out of economic devastation. Money does not seem to control her. She is not concerned with the protection of the wealth the family has accumulated. She matches the women of the house in the battle of insults and she is perceived as a threat to the family’s well-being. She is an outsider, looking in at the entangled mess (Ghachar Ghochar) of this family where each member tries to hold the space they have created for themselves, leaving none for outsiders such as her.

Ghachar Ghochar reflects how wealth changes people as morals take a back seat. An unwritten will becomes more valued than the life of the person who is to write that will. Silent insults and frustrations accumulate under the surface of a close-knit traditional family, waiting to erupt any moment.

Vivek Shanbhag’s Ghachar Ghochar, translated from Kannada, tells the cautionary tale of a family as it ascends into wealth, and experiences a change in its morals and principles. With a narration that seems very familiar, the concise and impactful story tries to explore the connecting link, if any, between money and domestic happiness.