Excerpt from Ghachar Ghochar by Vivek Shanbhag, plus links to reviews, author biography & more

She's surprisingly calm after he's gone. She picks up the books and her bag. For a few moments she sits with her eyes closed, breathing heavily. One of the boys sweeps up the broken glass. Coffee House had fallen silent as the few people present watched the scene unfold. Now the usual murmur resumes. On cue, as if this is all a play, Vincent goes to her table, and she raises her head to order something. It appears Vincent already knows her order and has it ready in the wings. A gin and tonic appears on the table suspiciously quickly.

I wave him over as he returns from her table. "What happened?"

Someone else in his place might say the couple is breaking up, or speculate that the man has been unfaithful. He might even observe that this is the first time the young woman has ordered a drink here. Not our Vincent. He bends down and says, "Sir—one story, many sides."

Had Vincent taken on a grand name and grown a long shimmering beard, he'd have thousands of people falling at his feet. How different are the words of those exalted beings from his? Words, after all, are nothing by themselves. They burst into meaning only in the minds they've entered. If you think about it, even those held to be gods incarnate seldom speak of profound things. It's their day-to-day utterances that are imbued with sublime meanings. And who's to say the gods cannot take the form of a waiter when they choose to visit us?

The truth is I have no real reason to come to Coffee House. But who can admit to doing something for no reason in times like these, in a city as busy as this one? So I'll say: I come here for respite from domestic skirmishes. If all is peaceful at home I can think up other reasons. In any case, visiting Coffee House has become a daily ritual. My wife, Anita, to whom I once laid out the case for Vincent's divinity, sometimes wryly says, "Did you visit your temple today?"

Somehow, my unvoiced appeals seem to be heard when I'm in Coffee House. There are times when the thought of being there enters my mind just before going to bed, and I pass the night in a dazed half-sleep, eager for morning to arrive. I come here, pick a table from which I can see the goings-on on the road outside, and sit down. There are usually only a couple of people here at that time of the morning. Vincent brings me a strong coffee without my having to ask. I sit there and watch people pass by: in the cold of December they hurry past in sweaters and jackets; in summer they wear light, thin clothes, offering some skin to the sun. After gazing out of the window for half an hour or so, I call Vincent over, engage him in small talk, and root for pearls of wisdom in whatever he says. If the weather in my head is particularly bad, I might order a snack and prolong my conversation with Vincent. At times, I'm tempted to unburden myself to him. But then, what's the point when he seems to know without being told? These interludes at Coffee House, away from the strains of home and family, are the most comforting part of my day.

That girl who just chased her friend away reminds me of Chitra. I wonder how often Chitra must have thrashed me like that in her thoughts—I'd slipped away from her without saying a word. Her pride would never allow her to come after me, of course. Not once in all this time has she tried to make contact. I used to join her on most afternoons, usually at that very table. She worked for a women's welfare organization, and would gradually grow incensed as she told me about her day. The things she said about men I took as applying to myself. I could only sit there mute, feeling vaguely guilty. She might say, "How could you break her arm simply because the tea was not to your taste?" Or: "Do you kill your wife because she forgot to leave the key with the neighbor?" I knew that tea shouldn't lead to a broken arm, or a forgotten key to a murder. It wasn't about the tea or the key: the last strands of a relationship can snap from a single glance or a moment of silence. But how was I to explain this to her? There was no room for anything other than her anger. How, then, could there be tenderness between us? There was really nothing there, I suppose, certainly nothing physical. I never once held her hand, though I probably could have. When we had just gotten to know each other, I believed we might draw closer. But we never did. Then, one day, whatever there was between us vanished. I stopped going to Coffee House at our usual time and instead began going in the evenings. That was it—we never saw each other again.

From Ghachar Ghoch: A Novel by Vivek Shanbhag and translated by Srinath Perur, published by Penguin Books. Copyright © 2013 by Vivek Shanbhag; English language translation copyright © 2017 by Srinath Perur.