Vivek Shanbhag’s widely admired Ghachar Ghochar (2017) was a brief and brilliant novel about the corrosive effects of sudden wealth on successive generations of a south Indian family. Many of that novel’s subjects and strengths can be found in Sakina’s Kiss, the second of Shanbhag’s nine works of fiction to appear in English. Again, Shanbhag makes efficient use of just under two hundred pages to tell a tale of globalised India. The narrator is Venkat, a middle-aged engineering graduate from a small village who finds himself safely ensconced in Bengaluru’s professional class, married with a good job and a large flat. 

In the novel’s opening sequence, two young men arrive at Venkat’s flat one Saturday evening asking for his daughter, Rekha. They claim to be working on a college project together. Venkat is suspicious, but as far as he’s aware Rekha is visiting his home village and staying in his old house, the only place ‘on the planet that can’t be reached by phone’. The men return the following morning, accompanied by the entourage of a local gangster. They explain that Rekha is the unlikely prize in a neighbourhood turf war. ‘When it is about the safety of girls it is our duty to interfere,’ one of them declares. Venkat, for his part, isn’t unduly concerned, appearing more interested in the men’s similarity to film characters.

The nearest landline to Venkat’s ancestral home is in the house of a neighbour. On Monday morning, Venkat calls with an urgent message for his uncle Antanna, who still lives in the village. When they speak later that day, Antanna is convinced that Rekha left for the city on Saturday.