“Ghachar Ghochar” is a quietly devastating novella by Vivek Shanbag. It unspools a tale of imperceptible unraveling within a middle-class family in Bangalore.
At first glance, this is a story of material success: new house, fresh prosperity, the seemingly secure comforts of urban upward mobility. But beneath the veneer, fissures appear—siblings drift apart, the patriarch’s temper intensifies, and the narrator, a young man, grows increasingly alienated within his own home.
Shanbag’s prose is spare and precise, stacking small observations until they accumulate into an unnerving portrait of psychological claustrophobia. There are no dramatic speeches, no overt conflict—just the compulsive repetition of everyday routines and the slow gnaw of guilt, shame, and resentment.
By its end, "Ghachar Ghochar" leaves you with a single thought: how much of our family life—and our very identity—is held together by fragile, almost invisible knots? And what happens when those knots finally, quietly, begin to fray?
This is an intimate, haunting read—an emotional trigger, delivered with subtlety.