Mahesh Kapoor There once lived a girl called Lata in a city called Brahmapur.
Maan Pran Savita Calcutta
Kalpana Gaur Rasheed Mrs. Rupa Mehra blah Dr. Kishen Chand Seth blah blah Saeeda Bai blah blah Lucknow parakeet Kanpur
Baitar blah Agarwal Malati Nehru
Blah Kabir Arun Czech Haresh Benston and Pryce Varun
Her mother wants to get her married off to ..you guessed it - a suitable boy.
Blah blah blah couplets
Praha Nawab Sahib Firoz Amit
Blah blah Dagh Imtiyaz
Netaji blah Kuku blah Baba Moazzam
Dipankar Meenakshi Prof. Mishra Mr. Biscuit blah
And they lived happily ever after
That’s right!
That’s exactly what this 1400 page tome is like. A very sweet story is woven into such a complex fabric, that the reader gets lost in the fabric itself and the main plot is forgotten. The reader has to keep track of where the main plot was left off and when it resumed. “A Suitable Boy” is an unsuitable title for a book that is more than just that!
Vikram Seth is a genius of a writer, as you will be able to tell from his innumerable formats of writing - in the same book ofcourse. He has written about ghazals, translated them beautifully into English, spoken complex math, diplomatically articulated laws and parliamentary debates, skillfully slit open surgery details, described a mela to the last and finest detail and ofcourse come up with Chatterji couplets at the drop of a hat.
Clearly he is very well read, has done his research thoroughly, is a keen observer and can sprinkle words like pixie dust just like that!
The story has a lot of characters and I really loved that. I personally love being a part of a big family and while reading “A Suitable Boy” I felt like I was a part of the family (although it is hard to tell which family). Once again kudos to the writing style of the author to get you involved.
Indeed, the author is very good at characterization.
Every character that he has built is complete and always true to its personality throughout the book. I loved Kabir.
The author seems modular in his approach of adding characters and incidents. Certain characters and incidents can be cleanly removed without disturbing the main plot.(Sanaki Baba, really?)
One thing that strikingly stands out in the whole book is Vikram Seth’s vocabulary. May be I don’t read as much and am not familiar with some commonly used good words in the English language. I would say I learnt as many as a couple of hundred new words in the course of reading this book.
Okay! Now comes the criticism!
Vikram Seth loses track of the story every now and then. The story which by itself is very sweet, has elements of love, suspense, heartbreak, relationships, deceit, culture, religion, traditions is enough to make a beautiful novel.
The whole dimension given by Maan - his relationship with Saeeda Bai, Firoz, Rasheed, Firoz and everything could have been easily eliminated.
The political turmoils and the parliamentary debates, letters between Nehru and Tandon bring the feeling that the author is taking the reader for granted.
Typically when a reader picks a book to read, as if out of respect, he does not put it down unless he finishes it. Vikram Seth has taken advantage of this to show off his writing talent.
It seems to me that Vikram Seth is a victim of the Bollywood “formula” system which requires certain elements to make the movie commercially successful. In this case it is talk about communal tensions, an extramarital affair, harassment at schools, political dramas, sexual harassment within the family among others.
The book seems to target the international reader who wants to know what India was like in the 1950s (and to some extent even today) and Vikram Seth has done just that...except that he has offered all the courses in the same plate!
Coming to the ending - the author has spent so much time and so many words on events and people not directly relevant to the suitable boy but the ending which is the climax of the whole story is rushed into. The decision Lata takes is not articulated convincingly and neither is the wedding itself.
And finally I think a woman should follow her heart especially when she is choosing her life partner.
All in all, “A Suitable Boy” a good read if only you have read it once before and the second time you know what to skip.
I miss being a part of the family already :)
