The Complexities of Intertwining of
Materialistic Tendencies of Consumer Culture and Cultural Conflict in Vivek
Shanbagh’s Gachar Ghochar
Dr.
Abha Tripathi
Assistant Professor,
Department of English
M.B.G.P.G. College,
Nainital, Uttarakhand,
India
Abstract:
Vivek Shanbag’s Ghachar Gochar is an unsettling story of a family terribly
cooped in their consumeristic and social culture and. The core members of the
family find it difficult almost unendurable to accept an outsider. The plot
advances with constant clash of cultures and complex materialistic tendencies in
narrator’s family who seem to have lost all values after
recently acquiring a financial upliftment The entry of Anita adds fuel to
fire. She is viewed as constant threat
to Amma’s and Malati’s position in the family. The novella is a representation
of constant discordance between Anita and the rest of the family. This paper
aims to foreground the complexities arising out of collision between the
consumer culture and its effect with the cultural conflict between the
narrator’s family and his wife which culminate in ghastly
consequences in the family. The writer ultimately gives freedom to his
readers to resolve the chaos due to the intertwining of the two big issues
which are responsible for the newly born ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ in the narrator’s
life.
Keywords: Conflict, Consumer culture,
Intertwine, Materialism,
Culture is a very extensive term. It can be defined as all the ways of
life including arts, beliefs and institutions of a population that is passed
down from generation to generation. Culture has been called "the way of
life for an entire society." As such, it includes codes of manners, dress,
language, religion, rituals, art, norms of behavior, such as law and morality,
and systems of belief.’ (LaMorte). A culture
therefore is an underlying belief system in a family, which provides a
framework to all the members regarding their social behaviour. It determines
the functional pattern of a family.
Consumer culture, on the other end is about a relationship between a
consumer and a service provider. Wikipedia defines Consumer culture as a
culture which ‘describes a lifestyle hyper-focused on spending money to buy
material goods.’ It focuses on the ability of people to spend which in turn
affects their lifestyle, their leisure activities and their position in
society. Ibrahim states,
Consumption behaviors are undertaken by
consumers to satisfy their desires, wants, and needs. While some of these needs
are physiological, such as eating, drinking, and breathing, others are
psychological, such as belonging, feeling valued, and being liked. In meeting
both needs, financial considerations take precedence. While consumers act
rationally in some cases, they do not act rationally in others. While consumers
act rationally by considering their income and the price of the products they
intend to purchase, they may also engage in irrational purchasing behavior to
appear to be high-status and wealthy.
The transition of a human being into a consumer in a society makes way
for the modern consumer culture. It allows the users of goods and services to
attain happiness and satisfaction from them. To sum up consumer culture is a
phenomena of self appeasing of people turned into consumers by availing
the materialistic services in exchange
of their paying power so that they are gratified psychologically.
Culture and materialistic consumer culture are intricately intertwined.
One affects the other and together, they exert strong influence in the society
so much so that our ideologies and belief systems are profoundly determined by
the impact of this union of cultures. Our cultural environment plays a
significant role in our ideals and expressions. It decides about what we think,
how we think and why we think a certain
way but there is a constant shift in our cultural adaptability. Over a period
of time we notice, a shift in our lifestyle patterns. Technology, economic
shifts, progression with time , generational transformations etc. contribute in
the change in our cultural patterns. What remains unchanged is the deeply
intricate social culture and behaviour. The complexities of this amalgamation
affect society irrespective of which culture we are a part of. A change in one
directly controls the impact on the other. This is what the novella Ghachar Ghochar
is all about. Vivek Shanbhag foregrounds the issue of how social culture and
materialistic consumer culture determine the behavioural pattern of a family,
which is so much under the influence of these complex cultures that they are
hardly able to resist the collapsing family structure.
Ghachar Ghochar
is an honest narrative of how money results in a fallout in a family. The family,
around which the story revolves, turns out to be emotionally destitute after
money creeps in. The narrator lives well bonded with his parents, Appa and
Amma, sister, Malati and his uncle, Chikkappa. Appa is the only earning member
in the family who somehow manages to keep the family going in spite of
insufficient earnings. But as fate would play its course, Appa is forced into a
voluntary retirement which is appalling for the family. It is now that Chikkappa
comes into scene. Situations take a turn
when the family escapes the crisis under the commercial leadership of Chikkappa
who starts the business of ‘Sona Masala’ with the funding by the money Appa
gets on his retirement. The business turns out a success and it is seen how the
position of the bread winner is relocated and Chikappa is the new family head:
thus the first move towards consumerism creeps in. The new reign of Chikkappa’s
patriarchal leadership invites multiple changes in the narrator’s family. It
commences with the shift in a big two storeyed house from a very tiny house
which ‘had four small rooms, one behind the other, like train compartments.’
(35) The new house is too big for the scanty and misfit furniture they had
brought along. Eventually all of this goes to some or the other hiding place
and new furniture is permitted by Chikkappa. This is where the home takes a
shift towards their first buying culture.
One of the consequences of this financial streaming also resulted in the
failed marriage of the Malti. The story slowly progresses (or we could say
regresses in terms of family dynamics)
towards the upcoming turmoil. The narrator is married to Anita, a self-reliant
girl of a college lecturer father who stayed in Hyderabad. As a result of
Malti’s failed marriage, Amma had taken a preventive measure of not marrying
her son in a rich family. Little did she know that her first experience was
going to be more challenging than the first one. Anita proved a tough
competition to both Malti and Amma and the situations did not remain the same
ever again.
This is a brief summary of the entire ‘Ghachar Ghochar’ but the
novella is not a very simple plot. There is a dominance of consumer culture in
the leading family which influences their domestic interactions. The narrator’s
family is more or less in a hand to mouth situation until Appa retires and
hands over his funds to Chikkappa to establish their new business of ‘Sona
Masala’. This family has been living in destitute conditions until then but something
which kept it going smoothly even then was the strong bond amongst them. They
ate together, lived in a small house, managed everything well enough to remain
content in their lives. Everyone knew about everyone else’s life. There was
communication, togetherness and solidarity which vanishes once they are in
their big house. Everyone has a room of one’s own which is the first step
towards their incoherence. The narrator reminisces of his bond with his sister
Malti in his old house where there was dialogue between them. The rich culture
took away that closeness from them so much so that they were least informed
about the other. “She was outspoken, rude, aggressive, it is true; yet we had
lived for years in some sort of harmony. How could that aspect of our life
together have vanished entirely? She and I used to sleep in the middle room of
the old house, on mattresses that formed a T. Sometimes we’d chat late into the
night and she would confide in me. She told me about her college; her classmate
Vandana, whose stepmother served her leftovers, and who was in love with a boy
they called Koli Ramesh. It was Malati who carried letters between them. In the
new house, we were locked in the cells of individual rooms, and there was no
opportunity to exchange casual confidences. “(57-58)
He also wonders if ‘Sona Masala’
had not existed, would Malti be a happier soul. “Lying alone in my room, I
sometimes wondered if Malati’s happiness would have been better served had Sona
Masala not existed at all.” (58)
The open textbook of BC Campus defines Consumer Culture as: ‘a theory according to which modern human society
is strongly subjected to consumerism and stresses the centrality of purchasing
commodities and services (and along with them power) as a cultural
practice that
fosters social behaviors.’
There are several definitions to conceptualize Consumer
Culture in multiple ways but a broad definition of the term could be that it is
form of culture which emphasises
on consumption of goods by people which in turn affect their lifestyle,
values and behaviours. This is one of the aspects of Ghachar Ghochar. We
as readers are observant of the fact that the consumer tendency in the
narrator’s family eventuates in the dire consequences. The narrator’s family
who had lived in near poverty if not actual poverty, had better understanding
of the world and livelihood till they lived in the small house. ‘The five of us used to live in one of those
teeming lower-middle-class areas of Bangalore. Small houses, all packed
together.’ (35) This tiny space could hardly
accommodate much furniture. ‘There was hardly any furniture; the size of
our rooms accommodated very little: a cupboard and a table for the gas stove in
the kitchen; two green foldable tin chairs in the living room; a bench in the
front room. There was no question of fitting any beds into that house;
everything was done on mats laid out on the floor. (37)
There they all valued every
little purchase they made in special occasions as it was a budgeted and
essential purchase. They knew what excitement meant on buying things beyond
easy approach. An instance of buying a Gas stove portrays how much they valued
every new addition in the house.
‘Chikkappa saved for months from his small
income before managing to bring cooking gas to our kitchen. Along with it came
a table for the stove to rest on. There was such a bustle of excitement and
anticipation at home the day gas arrived. The workmen who brought home the
cylinder and stove only placed them in the middle of the kitchen, put them
together, showed us the flame, and left. We had already decided where to
install the stove, but we went over the matter again at some length just to
prolong the moment. Amma repeated at least ten times that she’d heard tea could
be made in five minutes on a gas stove. She wondered if food cooked standing up
would be as tasty. She joked: ‘Don’t ask me for tea again and again simply
because it will be quick to make.’ We had a long session about how the gas
cylinder ought to be turned on and off to ensure maximum safety. Appa warned
Amma: ‘Watch carefully now. You’ll forget everything otherwise.’ And she
listened quietly without putting up a fight. Amma had surveyed the
neighbourhood about its gas usage patterns. She told us how long a cylinder
lasted in each neighbour’s house and how it could be stretched. ‘If it’s used
only for urgent cooking, it lasts two months,’ she said. (38).
The family was more associated and excited when they knew they had to
live in minimal but the big house seizes hold of this excitement from them unobtrusively. The narrator reminisces emotionally of the good old days back in the old days,
when, as he says, “The whole family stuck together, walking like a single body
across the tightrope of our circumstances.” (19) They disintegrated once they became rich. Their purchases in the
new house never invited the same attention any more.
‘We needed things for the new house, and this
freed us in the matter of making purchases. For the first few weeks we bought
as we had never bought before. Amma and Malati obeyed Chikkappa’s instructions
with diligence and emptied his friend’s furniture shop. Soon the house was
crammed with expensive mismatched furniture and out-of-place decorations. A TV
arrived. Beds and dressing tables took up space in the rooms. In retrospect,
many of the new objects had no place in our daily lives. Our relationship with
the things we accumulated around us became casual; we began treating them
carelessly.’ (47)
The new accumulated
wealth is what summons the consumer culture in the house. Irrespective of what
is needed and essential they buy anything they feel like to exhibit their newly
earned wealth. This is exactly where the new cultural ideology creeps in the
same family which believed in frugality and strong bonds prior to the establishment
of their family business. Speaking of
the new finances which are directly proportional to Malati’s change of
attitude, the narrator’s sums up in the following words:
‘Malati had always been unstable – a pile of
gunpowder waiting to go off. The spark she needed came in the form of our
improved finances. She was in college when we moved to the new house. We’d been
painstakingly frugal until then; what choice did we have? We consulted each
other when money was to be spent, gave precise accounts. We thought of the
family as being interdependent: a person who spent money was also taking it
away from the others. All that changed overnight. ’(47)
He continues to explain how Appa’s authority over his family swept away
swiftly.
‘There was enough now to buy things without
asking for permission or informing anyone or even thinking about it. Appa’s
hold on the rest of us slipped. And to be honest, we lost hold of ourselves
too.’ (47)
There are several other instances in the book which describe how the
housemates change after they have access to more than enough money. Anita, from
her honeymoon trip brings gifts for all family members which are hardly
considered valuable because they no more feel the need of those objects and
neither are they able to attach any value to them. Another example of the behavioural change out
of this new fortune is in the narrator who gets the job as alms but he seems
reluctant to do anything worthwhile. Anita, being self made and a woman of
principles, questions and rebukes her husband for his negligence towards his
job. He confesses when he says, ‘The
biggest disappointment for Anita after we returned from Ooty was the matter of
my employment. (77)
Tell me the truth, she said. What exactly is
your work?
I told her, Ther’s no dearth of anything. It
doesn’t matter who’s doing what as long as it all runs smoothly. There’s lot of
money in the family.
‘Why did you cheat me?’ she asked furious.
Why did you marry when you are living off other’s. I don’t need all this . I
can survive on very little. (87)
And she simply could not accept the fact that
I had no personal income. In my thinking, what came to the family was mine. In
her mind, my family and I were separate entities.(88)
Both families from different backgrounds hold different views on the
matter of employment and self respect. Where one considers employment as a
matter of respect and pride, the other regards employment as a matter of
comfort at the cost of the other’s labour.
The entire family seems to show signs of arrogance, seclusion and
stubbornness in the family but the most observable change comes when some
outside associations are built with this family. Ravi, Malti’s husband is the first addition
to the family. Much is not precisely mentioned about him. All we know is his
estranged relationship with his wife which seems to be started by Malti more
than Ravi. It appears that Malti fails
to make cultural adjustments with him and the primary reason for her parting
ways with him can be attributed to the after effects of the excessive money and
its ill effects on her attitude.
The story takes a more enthralling turn with
the entry of Anita, the narrator’s bride. She brings with her a spark of
individuality and vociferousness which is totally inadmissible in this family
especially in a daughter-in-law. The family had a unique social structure with
first Appa and then Chikkappa as the proclaimed patriarchal heads but
inherently it is Amma and Malti who rule the domestic space. Anita brings along the most unexpected
cultural variations along with her which do not find a tolerable position in
this family. Many a times she reminds the narrator of Chitra, his one time
friend, who was always very vocal about women plight and their rights. She
opened her heart and mind before the narrator whenever she was deeply moved by
any injustice meted out to any of the women but the narrator’s indifference and
gutlessness quietly took her away from him. Anita was a more intense form of
Chitra. She had a mind and voice of her own. She was born and brought up in an
educated and liberal family where she was taught to raise her voice. This was
the characteristics difference in the two families, one taught women to follow
patriarchy at convenience while the other gave freedom to women to stand for themselves
whenever required. Anita belonged to the latter style of upbringing. There are
numerous instances where she speaks explicitly and expresses her resentment for
several things in her husband’s family. For instance, she doesn’t like Malti’s
over involvement in her parent’s home even after her marriage. She confesses
about Malti in the following words ‘If she wasn’t like this, the situation in
our house would have been so much better’ (617). She also takes jibe at the
special preference given to the son of the house in food choices while her own
choices were least cared about because she was an outsider, ‘I hope the prince
will eat in comfort. So what if the rest of us starve.’(61) Anita is a woman who respects hard work and
hard earned income. She does not like her husband shirking away from his duties
and responsibilities. There is a noticeably vast difference in her attitude
towards work in comparing to that of her husband. She indirectly makes it
obvious to all the family members, about their apathy towards the careless
attitude of the narrator. It is even louder as the reality was not stated
before the marriage. To quote the narrator, ‘Amma flares up every time Anita
speaks disrespectfully to me, or makes barbed remarks about my sloth or my
tendency to procrastinate or brings up the fact that my rightfully earned
personal income is precisely zero. It’s also Anita’s often-repeated allegation
that this last fact was not properly revealed to her before marriage. (61-62)
There is a vast difference in the social, financial and cultural status of
Anita’s and the narrator’s family. Where on one side Anita strongly believes in
the concept of individuality and self dependence, the narrator’s family is
content with the family income solely earned by Chikkappa. Moreover, Anita
completely disagrees with how Amma and
Malti ill-treat Tuvvi , the woman who came to meet Chikkappa. Chikkappa was the
real head of the family. No one ever speaks a word against him but Anita does
not miss an opportunity to speak against even the breadwinner himself. She is
sarcastic, sometimes provoking but different from the others. She refers to the
curry brought by Tuvvi and says: ‘Oh, but masoor dal curry goes very well with
chapatti. If you had been more careful in the morning we could all have had
some.’ (94)
Anita was completely different from the rest of the family. All women of
the family were equally outspoken whereas the men hardly spoke even when
needed. Appa as usual was silent and Chikkappa
hardly interfered with domestic matters and the narrator had no strong point of
view to express either. Basically Ghachar
Ghochar is about the complexities of two things: materialistic bent due to
consumer culture and different cultures of the two families of the narrator and
his wife, Anita. Anita was a strong headed woman unlike the narrator or his
family and was competent enough to analyse or sense the situation. She
belonged to a family where viewpoints
mattered, where hard work was rewarded ,
where women were not mere spectators. They had an equal say in every family
matter. The narrator’s family was different and even more different ever since
they became rich. The women here spoke only in particular matters. Men too did
not hold strong positions. The power here revolved around those who earned
money. Earlier it was Appa who was the head and later after the inception of
Sona Masala, it was in the hands of Chikkappa. The narrator had a puppet
existence and nothing more. The family was closer and strongly knit prior to
Sona Masala but money segregated the network within and the family dynamics
changed and became complex. To add on the complexities, Anita comes in the
scene. Her cultural and financial discrepancies with her husband’s family
create a gulf of ideologies between them. When she decides to go to work for an
NGO, unlike the conspicuous consumer
which her family was, she decides to by train instead of Plane. (99) Anita is
too vocal whereas the narrator does not open his mouth even when necessary. The
family tie seems to weaken with time and no proper leadership of the head. Rules are distorted and gender biased. Money
determines the family values and therefore Anita who is from a completely
different background finds it difficult to cope with them. The narrator points out thus,
It was a difference of culture too.
Sometimes, Anita would fly into a rage after sparring with Malati and Amma and
resort to snide remarks about Appa or Chikkappa. The rest of us would fuss
about lest they heard her. Amma valued the household’s well-being more than
winning the day’s fight. She would surrender at once, and Anita would feel she
had emerged the victor. So, when the family was together there was always a
slight air of dread regarding what verbal bomb Anita might drop next. (94)
Therefore, we can conclude that the dread referred to here is the result
of the intertwining of the complexities of the consumer culture and the
cultural diversity in Shanbag’s , GhacharGhochar.
Works Cited
B.C. Campus , web. https://opentextbc.ca/mediastudies101/chapter/consumer-cultures/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consumer_culture
Ibrahim AVCI: Materialistic Tendency and
Conspicuous Consumption Behavior: The Mediating Role of Social Media Usage ,
Journal of Economy Culture and Society 2023; 67: 155-169 ISSN: 2602-2656 /
E-ISSN: 2645-8772
LaMorte, W. MD, PhD, MPH. “What is Culture?”. Boston University
School of Public Health. May 2016. https://sphweb.bumc.bu.edu/otlt/mph-modules/PH/CulturalAwareness/CulturalAwareness2.html
Shanbhag, Vivek. Ghachar Ghochar. Translated by Srinath Perur. Uttar
Pradesh. Harper Collins, 2015. Print.