{"id":487320,"date":"2025-10-10T03:27:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-10T03:27:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/487320\/"},"modified":"2025-10-10T03:27:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-10T03:27:11","slug":"longing-to-belong-review-of-sachin-kundalkars-silk-route-translated-by-aakash-karkare","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/487320\/","title":{"rendered":"Longing to belong | Review of Sachin Kundalkar\u2019s Silk Route, translated by Aakash Karkare"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Author<\/p>\n

\n Author Sachin Kundalkar
\n | Photo Credit: Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni\n <\/p>\n

Silk Route\u00a0reads as a logarithmic sequel to Marathi writer and filmmaker Sachin Kundalkar\u2019s first and well-acclaimed novel\u00a0Cobalt Blue. Brother and sister love the same person in both novels.\u00a0Silk Route\u00a0begins with the same starting point and curves the trajectory. The sister, who is expecting a child outside of marriage, commits suicide. The brother, Nishikant, is pushed off to Mumbai from Pune. The memory of the dead sister and their common lover, Nikhil, torments Nishikant as he moves from one relationship to another looking for comfort and completion in a society that is repressively heteronormative.<\/p>\n

This is a book about the quiet despair experienced by the queer community and the even lesser acceptance of their sexual orientation in a seemingly progressive society \u2014 not just in Mumbai, Pune or Chennai but even in the U.K. and the U.S. The aches of loneliness and of separation, pining for freedom from the nights of sleepless darkness can be expressed only in poetry or through the suggestive language of silence.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The title \u2018Silk Route\u2019 is open to interpretation. The narrative structure reminds one of the delicate undulating flow of a silk garment. Nishikant, ashamed of his middle-class family, listens to Def Leppard, writes poems, stares at the sky, walks for hours and dreams of his sister\u2019s lover, Nikhil. Then he moves to Mumbai where he meets Shiv Malhotra who has come to the same campus from Delhi. We are taken through Shiv\u2019s life and that of his ambitious parents. Shiv leaves for California. Nishikant goes to London.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There, he meets Srinivas and we are taken through the latter\u2019s life. Srinivas tells us about Jules. Jules leads us to Sophia\u2026 the movement is like that of a lazy camera that zooms into one image, explores its every angle and then, figuring out the pointlessness, fades away only to pick out another image and its particulars. That\u2019s the silken flow \u2014 unhurried, languorous, carrying the aftertaste of a lethargic intoxication. The story, without a centre, is like that silk fabric that slips through your fingers.<\/p>\n

Opinionated narrative voice<\/p>\n

While it is imperative to give space and voice to the marginalised, this lack of a centre and the slovenly narration may not entice all readers. The narrative voice, not different from those of its main characters, is overwhelmingly opinionated. The world is clearly at fault. There is an irreverence towards everything. Every heterosexual marriage is a sham. Academics are dull; social workers transform happy people into unhappy ones; village women are cunning; capitalists are sharks; socialists did no work; Paris is overrated as her intellectuals preached nonsense to the world.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

\n

A poster of the 2022 film Cobalt Blue, adapted from Sachin Kundalkar\u2019s first novel.\n <\/p>\n

Then there are the prejudiced universal truths: being an intellectual in India doesn\u2019t require being particularly smart or far-sighted or original. Like everyone who studies medicine in India, Nishikant has become lethargic and dumb. The room carries the distinctive scent of naphthalene balls, used by diligent housewives to balance out their lack of worldly intelligence.<\/p>\n

The nightmares and fantasies are compelling; but the reference to Blanche and Stella from\u00a0A Streetcar Named Desire\u00a0is contrived.<\/p>\n

Swinging like a pendulum<\/p>\n

The novel is laced with violence without a context or purpose: Jules\u2019 alcoholic father hits his mother with an iron frying pan, killing her instantly. Chimaji is fatally bitten by a snake; Pushkin by a ferocious guard dog. Srinivas spends his spare time killing ants and squirrels; Suhasini feeds poison to stray dogs that howl at odd hours. Jules is shot dead by the police in Mumbai; Shiv is shot dead in the U.S.<\/p>\n

Sometimes, it feels as if the novel is demonstrating Schopenhauer\u2019s deeply comfortless, but not unfounded, thoughts on existence, on the will to live: \u2018Life swings like a pendulum backward and forward between pain and boredom.\u2019<\/p>\n

Kundalkar has been lucky with his translators. Aakash Karkare is almost as good as\u00a0Jerry Pinto, who translated\u00a0Cobalt Blue.\u00a0The cover photo by Anurag Banerjee is intensely dazzling.<\/p>\n

This novella ends with the line: \u201cTo Be Continued.\u201d The blurb to the book says that this is the first part of a series. We have waited for over a decade for Kundalkar\u2019s second novel. We can wait for the sequel as well.<\/p>\n

The reviewer is a Sahitya Akademi translation award winner.<\/p>\n

\nSilk Route
\nSachin Kundalkar, trs Aakash KarkarePenguin\u20b9299<\/p>\n

Published – October 10, 2025 07:47 am IST<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Author Sachin Kundalkar | Photo Credit: Umesh Vinayak Kulkarni Silk Route\u00a0reads as a logarithmic sequel to Marathi writer…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":487321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3938],"tags":[161089,3444,77,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-487320","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-books","8":"tag-book-review-silk-route-author-sachin-kundalkar-cobalt-blue-queer-novel","9":"tag-books","10":"tag-entertainment","11":"tag-uk","12":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115347747329241007","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=487320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/487320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/487321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=487320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=487320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=487320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}