Can close relatives be too attached to one another? A middle-class family in Bangalore is a single unit that shares every aspects of their lives, thanks largely to poverty. When they suddenly come upon better days, their bonds as well as their secure existence begin to disintegrate.

The story is told by the son, who slips into a life of pretence employment and would rather spend his days with his new bride. She, however, has her own views on how the man she is married to should lead his life and, more important, work. Suddenly pincered between his wife, a sister with a failed marriage, a toothless father, a helpless mother, and a manipulative uncle, the narrator finds himself in a state of enormous anxiety.

As the finances improve, the moral crises deepen. The sinister possibilities of what will be revealed if the knot – the ghachar ghochar – in the drawstring of the petticoat is unravelled mark Vivek Shanbhag’s sharp portrait of the (almost) nuclear urban family in post-liberalisation India.

Published in Kannada in 2014. Translated into English by Srinath Perur, published in 2015.