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Anita Gopalan

@anitagopalan16

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It is finally here.
Hallucinatory. Surreal. Distraught. Ranting.
Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi, who has one of the most distinctive voices in contemporary Hindi literature.

It was a joy and a privilege to translate this novel into English and to write an afterword for it.

I am grateful to those whose kindness accompanied this translation.
To Moutushi Mukherjee, for being ever supportive.
To Kanishka Gupta, for being ever gracious.
To Areeb Ahmad, for reading the manuscript with such care.

Yet the work is only half done. It is now for the readers to complete it. 💛
As Geet Chaturvedi writes:

Main aadhi samjhi gayi pankti hun
Abhi aadha kaam baqi hai tumhara.

Link in Bio

#translatedfiction #literaryfiction #anitagopalan #geetchaturvedi #coetzee by @anitagopalan16

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3 months ago

The riveting green of the English SIMSIM. A beautiful novel by the fabulous Hindi author @geetchaturvedi translated into English by me. This cover is by the talented @antrakay who has won many awards for her art. The English novel will be published in February by @penguinindia, and so grateful to Kanishka Gupta and @gaimangirl for that!

I am happy because one- it will be my first translated book of fiction. Two- I have worked very hard on this book. And three- the author happens to be a dear friend.

Thank you, everyone! 💚

#translatedfiction #translation
#englishnovels #geetchaturvedi #geetchaturvedienglish #beautifulbooks @geetchaturvedi.english by @anitagopalan16

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4 years ago

In the beginning, there is music.
In the end, there is music.
What lies in between is literature.

This beautifully sums up the new eclectic nonfiction by the wonderful @geetchaturvedi in my translation. Published this year by Penguin.

THE MASTER OF UNFINISHED THINGS

One-of-a-kind literary Nonfiction you'll enjoy. :)

Link:
https://www.amazon.in/Master-Unfinished-Things-Geet-Chaturvedi/dp/0143471635

***

What's unique about this book is its form it has of course heartwarming memoirs and thought-provoking essays and it also has diary entries—random musings that make you pause, that offer deeply contemplative standalone moments. Each one is like a drop of distilled thought, intimate and vivid. Sometimes translating the simplest, most concise piece is the hardest it's like trying to capture a fragrance.

There's also a section I particularly enjoyed working on—a compilation of scribblings on films. Here scenes from films are woven with author's thoughts in fine inter-textuality.

Translating this book has been an act of deep engagement with language, with culture, with unspoken textures of thought and feeling. I hope it will reach a wider audience. Do read. :)

#translatednonfiction #nonfiction #nonfictionbooks #geetchaturvedi #anitagopalan #translation
@emmukherjee @kanishka.gupta.754 @rhoskote by @anitagopalan16

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a year ago

For our first edition of #LetsReadIndianAuthors we (@escapingtheordinary_ and @jainands_diary ) read the Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan.

And so we thought to also introduce them to you - and bring some exclusive answers from them too. Swipe to see the post and shower some love on our very own Indian authors/translators.

If you have any questions for them, drop them below.

Also if we hold a discussion for this book - would you join in?

(Indian literature, indian authors, indian translators, indian books, books by Indian authors, translated books, translated literature) by @anitagopalan16

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5 days ago

Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi, translated from Hindi by Anita Gopalan

Wow! What have I just read? This was genuinely my first reaction after finishing this book.

It starts with a nameless man irritated by the smell of Cow-urine (Goumutra) on his armpits, and somehow, that strange detail stays with you throughout the book. From there, we follow the ordinary life of a middle-class office clerk living in a rented apartment in Mumbai with his wife and daughter, both of whom are nameless too. His wife is referred to as the cook woman, the laundry woman, the tea woman, the sleeping woman, and I found that particularly interesting. It's almost as if her entire identity is reduced to the things she does. Even his daughter feels more like a background presence in his life than a person with an identity of her own.

And then there's the debt. What begins with a credit card slowly turns into something much bigger, and watching this man's life unravel is both fascinating and deeply unsettling. The way debt starts consuming his dignity, his peace of mind, and eventually his sense of reality felt painfully human to me. There's something so strange about this man, yet something so familiar too. His thoughts, his frustrations, his absurd experiences, everything feels bizarre until you realise how much of it reflects the world we live in.

I especially loved how the novel blends satire with these increasingly surreal, almost hallucinatory moments. His boss Baba's dreams of Gandhi and Che, and his own dreams of Ganeshwar and others, the strange encounters, the fear of being murdered, the bank agent following him everywhere, the finance minister, and the references to people crushed under debt, including farmers. Everything feels like it's spiralling out of control, yet there's an uncomfortable sense of reality underneath it all. I kept wondering where his reality ended and his hallucinations began.
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#ScentOfTheNameless #GeetChaturvedi #BookReview #LiteraryFiction #CurrentlyReading taken in Mumbai by @anitagopalan16

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8 days ago

Okay what did I just read 🫣 I was seeing all the praises on my feed for Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan, but I wasn't prepared for it to be this level of intellectual writing. Sometimes I'm so glad some books reach me, making my shelves a proud space.

The story starts with an unnamed middle-class man in Mumbai, living with his wife and daughter and working as a clerk. His life begins to change when a credit card enters it. For us credit card is just another financial tool but we saw how in this novel everything starts to change because of this. Infact as many people also said, I liked the fact how the author uses that situation to ask a much more uncomfortable question: how much of what we call choice is actually our choice when the world around us is designed to make us consume?

His financial anxiety doesn't remain isolated but contaminated all parts of his life. The writing and translation in these scenes were so nicely done where we see the strangeness and creepiness seep here.

I liked how while the character's financial status was deteriorating, the author shows a shift in his behavior as a man. His relationship with his wife becomes increasingly complicated and toxic. And how he deals with them is quite interesting.

The writing is great, I won't say it's easy but it's not a light or fast read. There are moments where you'll be feeling so strange but that is necessary. The novel's strongest idea, for me, is that debt here is much larger than money. It becomes a condition of living. Because it does dictate a lot of things, specially our perceptions.

There are so many more things I want to talk about, a second post is coming soon. I'm just glad our first #letsreadindianauthors pick was this. taken in Poach Kitchen by @anitagopalan16

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13 days ago

Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi translated by Anita Gopalan is a strange, bewildering, and at times, thought-provoking book about credit cards, which insidiously and gradually takes over the life of an ordinary middle-class office-goer in Mumbai.

The main character is an average Mumbai local, a clerk with a family of his own. Debt, which starts as a side guest in the household, grows rapidly out of control, engulfing all areas of the protagonists’ lives and changing them irreversibly. However, it is not the devastating financial situation and the loss of comfort associated with it that bothered me on the way through the narrative. What bothered me was the constant uncertainty about what was real and what was a product of the main character’s troubled conscience. The weird smell of cow urine, delusions, and generally surreal surroundings are the leitmotifs of this novel, in which the ubiquitous problems of an ordinary person turn out to be incredibly threatening.

On the other hand, I found the ambiguity of the protagonist’s name quite fascinating. Perhaps it is not accidental that he does not have a name, or maybe he had too many names in his troubled life. Either way, such a characteristic suits him to the last, signifying that he has become one of those faceless, average people, whose existence is now a permanent part of the system.

The whole book is a great example of how consumer culture can turn the most basic desires into a form of self-flagellation. Fortunately, the lasting impression that the novel left on me concerns not only the drawbacks of credit-based transactions but also the many positive aspects of the literary translation process. In particular, I found the afterword of the translator, revealing the critical details of the book’s creation, to be really engaging. It allowed me to perceive the work with even greater interest and excitement, noticing new nuances, and understanding them on a deeper level.

The book was disturbing and confusing, but the emotional experience of reading remained mostly positive. It made me think about a lot of different things – shame, anxiety, and the sense of identity in a modern person, in whom, by @anitagopalan16

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13 days ago

Scent of the Nameless

An ordinary life changed with the markets and the economy.

In this book the reality hits you and it does it fast as soon as the book opens it is doing it's work.

Living in Urban India is chaos which slowly dies to being done and alone with a rising pressure of survival or rather how to survive.

There are scenarios where the main character states hypothetical rather you call them hallucinations situations that incite an understanding inside you that something is stirring and it's so beyond our hand and we feel like we are drowning.

Life slowly dies we forget living forget having a smile on our faces women just became the carer rather than the actual equal partner.
This book depicts how urbanisation has killed humanity and its happiness all good days are over all we do is stress about loans and debts and panicking forever and loving never, no we don't have the time because again we are tightly packed from toe to head with the ways we think and overthink about our situation.

An important book for the era we are living in. taken in SCENT by @anitagopalan16

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18 days ago

One of my favourite reads of this year! And I cannot stop gushing about it, and so the caption wasn't enough to show the whole review here, so go and check the slides!

Read this for #LetsReadIndianAuthors which is a little initiative by @escapingtheordinary_ and I to explore the incredible range of Indian writing, one book at a time, where every month, we’ll pick one Indian book and read it together. Our reading timeline will be 15th to 15th of every month, so if you want to join, you can read at your own pace, in your own mood - no pressure, no rules. And this is our very first book and I couldn't have hoped for a better one than this.

Also, read it for #explorethediversityreadathon2026 a readathon @escapingtheordinary_ and I (again!) organised in September each year for 5 years now to promote more diverse literature from India, and I read it for a book translated from an Indian Language.

Also, I really loved this cover artwork and design by Amogh Bhatnagar and Shadab Khan, respectively.

Thank you @readwithus_bookclub @penguinindia for the book 💫❤️

Have you read any books translated from Hindi? Any favourites? Let me know in the comments.

#jainands_diary

(Scent of the nameless, Geet Chaturvedi, Anita Gopalan, Goumutra, Hindi translation, hindi books, indian literature, indian books in translation, indian authors, indian translation, hindi book translation, literary fiction, indian books, favourite books, books worth reading) by @anitagopalan16

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21 days ago

A purchase by a credit card seems very alluring... until debt begins to eat away at your reality."

Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi (translated from Hindi by Anita Gopalan) is a deeply unsettling, brilliant meditation on modern capitalism, consumerism, and psychological decay.

The story follows an unnamed middle-class office clerk in Mumbai leading a quiet, routine life with his wife and daughter. Everything shifts when he gets a credit card. What begins as a simple modern convenience quickly spirals into a crippling trap of debt. But this isn't just a financial tragedy: it is a full-scale psychological unraveling.

As the weight of his humiliation and debt deepens, the boundaries between reality, hallucination, and absurd surrealism blur. From bizarre visions and Kafkaesque moments (like a watch transforming into an earthworm) to the persistent, inescapable phantom smell of cow urine under his armpits, Chaturvedi captures the terrifying way financial anxiety can morph into paranoia and madness.

A Relatable Social Mirror It delivers a sharp, honest reality check on plastic money, instant gratification, and the hidden violence of economic inequality.

Hallucinatory and Lyrical Prose The writing shifts effortlessly from coarse and jagged rants to tender moments with the protagonist's daughter. Anita Gopalan's translation captures a rhythmic, musical flow that keeps you completely hooked.

Unforgettable Scenes High-impact chapters, from encounters with the Finance Minister to the dog-chasing sequence, leave you constantly questioning what is real and what is hallucinated.

A Masterclass Afterword The Translator's Afterword by Anita Gopalan acts as an extraordinary literary piece on its own, casting the entire narrative in a fresh light and making you want to reread the book immediately.

Part Kafkaesque nightmare, part Dostoyevskian study of internal suffering, Scent of the Nameless is a quiet yet piercing wake-up call. It forces us to ask where we draw the line between our material desires and our peace of mind.

A haunting, thought-provoking, and essential read for lovers of literary fiction! 📚✨ by @anitagopalan16

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22 days ago

Scent of the Nameless by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan, is a gripping and darkly funny exploration of modern life in urban India. The story follows an ordinary middle-class office clerk living in Mumbai whose quiet, predictable life begins to unravel after getting a credit card. What starts as a simple convenience quickly turns into a trap of endless debt, shedding light on how consumer culture, money, and power subtly control our daily choices.

With its blend of sharp satire, deep psychological tension, and absurdly vivid moments, this book offers a hauntingly real look at the struggles of middle-class survival. It is a short yet powerful read that stays with you long after you turn the final page.

#scentofthenameless #bookreview #indianliterature #bookstagram #geetchaturvedi by @anitagopalan16

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23 days ago

⭐"When sorrow strikes, whistle,
just whistle,
but never give your heart to a joker".⭐

🔸A man wakes in the night and finds he smells of cow urine. He scrubs, tries scented soaps, scrubs again. The smell stays. That opening grabbed me at once, and I kept reading with a strange mix of discomfort and curiosity.

🔸'Scent of the Nameless' by Geet Chaturvedi, translated by Anita Gopalan, set against the background of new capitalist regime where an unnamed middle-class man in Mumbai, living with his wife and small daughter. Then a credit card arrives. It looks like convenience. Slowly it becomes wanting, then spending, then debt, then shame. That changed the whole life for the worst.

🔸What struck me is that he never gets a name. After a while it stopped feeling like a technique. He could be anyone, and the system treats him that way, as a number. Ordinary city life sits right beside the surreal, and the smell ends up being the most honest thing in the book.

🔸It is about debt, but not only money. It asks who taught us to want what we cannot afford, and it shows how owing seeps into marriage, dignity and self-image. The style is satirical and dreamlike, with tension humming underneath. Little essence of Kafka's psychology are reflecting throughout the book where it shows how carefully the shifting voices are held.

🔸What touched me most was the smell as shame. He keeps washing something that will not wash off. It made me think of how money worry settles into the body before anyone says a word.

🔸Read it because it treats debt as a wound, not a statistic. It is unsettling, and strangely tender. Exploitation is like a cycle without which market will fail to take shape.

🔸I would recommend it to readers of translated Indian literature, social satire and Kafkaesque fiction. Skip it if you want a light, and plot-driven read.

#bookstagramIndia #penguinindia #bookreviews #Indianauthors #fictionbook taken in India by @anitagopalan16

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24 days ago