Book Review: Sakina’s Kiss

Vivek Shanbhag
The Weight of What’s Unsaid: Silence and Masculinity in Sakina’s Kiss”
Vivek Shanbhag’s Sakina’s Kiss is a slim yet well-layered work of storytelling, written in
Kannada and translated into English by Srinath Perur. Known for his unsettling and
psychological depth, Shanbhag’s idea of crafting the story is dynamic, remarkable and widely
accepted. He has been acclaimed internationally for the mysterious characters, elegant
restraints, sharply observant writing narratives, themes of socio-cultural ideas, and moral
issues or objectives. The story is unsettling, and Shanbhag uses silence as a theme, method,
and mastery tool.
Vivek Shanbhag is a Kannada writer who announced his arrival with silence and quietness
lingering around just as his stories, which made his emergence as one of India’s compelling
literary storytellers in recent times. He has been balancing his work/corporate job while
writing stories, plays in Kannada and is also an editor of a literary magazine, Deesha Kala.
Shanbhag’s stories are often found in subtle, claustrophobic middle-class Indian families,
rippled and sandwiched between ordinary lives.
The book is more than a story of a family living in C-3, it's about silence, erosion of life,
political turmoil, patriarchal debates, appearance and disappearance of characters,
misinterpretation & misrepresentation, effects of modernism in Indian families, coming
aligned with an unreliable narrator and an unassuming engineer, Venkat (Venkataramana). He
is found to be looking for his voice and unmarked authority, which was lost in the growing
modernism. While Venkat is responding to the knock on the door, it gradually takes him back
to unravel his long-buried burdens and fear of obsolescence as a father and as a man. He is
married to Viji, and they have a daughter, Rekha. The whole story, the characters, and the
middle of all this, can be explored through the lens of silence. As a man, Venkat is haunted by
silence and whispering continued by his wife and daughter, which grows unceasingly. Venkat
is aware of all this but is unable to reassert his position and voice in the family, losing the
authority as the mother and daughter silence him. He is being shaped and moulded for his
personal, political, and social views and losing his identity and authority. With the
accumulation of silence, tension, and uneasiness, the reader also grows unsettled when they
see Venkat being unsettled with his own space and unable to find sleep, which is caused by
Rekha’s presence and absence in the house. More than her absence, it’s the presence that
creates an uneasy rivalry for Venkat, reminding him of his marriage, where he overheard
Viji’s relatives wishing Viji’s parents that the burden is over for them. The silence also shows
unspoken and unresolved wounds of Venkat, his emotional withdrawal and complications that
he never shows. As the narrative of the story progresses, Venkat catches sympathetic
attention. Still, he is seen as an unreliable narrator, not a villain or a victim, but a man whose
identity collapses. The discomfort can be felt in the middle of the lines, but Shanbhag refuses
to provide clarification, letting the reader wander with independence of interpretation. He
continues to prove that the most powerful tales don’t require being the loudest ones. The
gender and power spaces are also intricately intertwined, creating a reflection of Indian
society and the hidden truths and lies; it replicates how gender and power operate within the
systems of family and society. Throughout most of the story, Viji and Rekha extend silence
while withholding their expressions. They live in their forms, and whenever they sense
Venkat’s presence, their conversation is cut short, making Venkat uncomfortable. The silence
is not merely in the middle of lines but among the characters and their spaces, which gives
rise to deeper issues, unvoiced fears, sadness and betrayal. In one of the scenes when the
story goes back in time, the reader is reminded of a particular incident which caused huge
chaos on Rekha’s attending the concert, in middle of the chaos when Venkat tries to get hold
of Rekha, she pushes him of the ground where Venkat finds himself weaker than his daughter.
“I did not relax my grip. In an instant, she twisted her arm free and shoved me with such a
force that I would have fallen backwards if not for the dining table.” (56)
The defeat didn’t bother him much; what bothered him more was that he was defeated in
front of his wife. He wondered how he should respond to an instant incident like this; he
chose silence and accepted his defeat against the mother and daughter. “I did not know how
to come to terms with this defeat, that too before my wife’s eyes.” When Rekha’s friend
appears at their home in the middle of the night, it creates innumerable questions for Venkat,
and her arrival doesn’t seem usual to him. He didn't get any response when he asked them
what it was about, and he was always kept out of their conversation. Furthermore, Venkat
realises that everything seems upright and around our world, yet he is unable to see what is
coming around.
“Oh, it’s a long story. I'll tell you later. But nothing serious. She was upset about something at
home, that’s all.”
He received this standard and mutual response whenever he questioned them. Things are
going around him, but he is unable to find any response. Talking about the cold responses of
the mother and daughter, he uses a metaphor of being stabbed so quickly, it can be the
stabbing of silence that has taken over him, and Venkat is being robbed as a man. “I tried to
find out what happened after I left, but both mother and daughter would say nothing.”
Sakina’s Kiss is an intriguing work of fiction that grapples with readers, making them think a
lot, yet they may reach any conclusion about what has happened. The narrative style is
masterful. Shanbhag has used a lot of metaphors and symbols, which provide loose ends to
the story, and he doesn’t feel the need to condemn Venkat, as Venkat’s silence is the
condemnation in itself. The increasing silence is not passive; it's an agent of memory, tension,
guilt and trauma that comes along, capturing the instability of the characters. The silence is
also a way of representing the invisible scars of the characters, wounds that don’t bleed but
pain, render their lives throughout. It’s not a simple story of an Indian family, appearance and
disappearance of characters, but it is beyond the usual. It can be considered a seminal work of
Indian fiction, with a tangled tale of a family living in Bengaluru. The story is twisted as the
lives of the characters; it doesn’t show much, but the readers have to use their curiosity and
imagination to get along with the story. It is frustrating that you have to wait to know what is
happening and what might happen. I couldn’t relax myself as the story slowed down for a bit,
being frustrated, I couldn’t stop myself from assuming what the reason could be for this
particular incident, unable to find any concrete answers, I continued reading it with a heavy
head and an uneasy heart. In my opinion, this book is for those who like reading mysteries
and psychological thrillers. This one comes directly from the writer of Ghachar Ghochar,
and those who are aware of Shanbhag’s chilly writing technique will find it more interesting.
The title carries its own significance; it might have been influenced by the Quran, where the
word, Sakina, stands for the spirit of tranquillity and peace of reassurance. The title also
refers to misunderstandings of truths and lies, of the people and their intentions, and the
misinterpretation of the knock on the door. It might be a tool that Shanbhag used to make the
reader wonder what the reader interprets; it is just a misinterpretation for them, and the truth
lies beneath the heavy silence in the story. He attempts to avoid direct melodrama, but that
doesn’t hold back the story that Shanbhag is telling,