A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
Genre: Romance/Politics
Story line: More about unsettled newly-independent India and its outcomes at various levels, and less about a desperate mother finding a match for her daughter
Sum up: An intelligent mix of ups with downs
Target readers: Contemporary
Number of pages: 1349
…But I too hate long books: the better, the worse. If they’re bad, they merely make me pant with the effort of holding them up for a few minutes. But if they’re good, I turn into a social moron for days, refusing to go out of my room, scowling and growling at interruptions, ignoring weddings and funerals, and making enemies out of friends… How true are these words uttered by the poet-cum-novelist Amit Chatterji, one of the prospective suitable boys in the novel and also a character strikingly resembling Vikram Seth himself… The 1349, no, one-thousand-three-hundred-and-forty-nine-page book had always put me off; occupying my book shelf unread but not untouched, for quite a long time. But once it was begun to be read, there was no question of putting it down.
Half of the poem, A word of thanks, in the first page makes sense only when read in the end, so a word of advice would be not to get stuck there. The way the contents page has been written in verses is quite charming, and I had to exercise a lot of refraining in order not to look it up before the beginning of a new chapter. After the first four chapters, I had comfortably settled for a modern Indian Jane Austen tale, when the fifth chapter jolted me out of my trance; whether I was displeased to suddenly be required to sit up and concentrate in the then political affairs or was pleased that it was after all not a happy-family sad-family topsy-turvy love saga, I am not sure. Though some of the main characters like Mrs. Rupa Mehra, Savita and Lata did remind me of Mrs. Bennet, Jane and Lizzy, the comparison might end there. While Austen is all worldly words and pretty prose, Seth is more simple and straightforward both in style and story.
It was initially very distracting and almost distressing to see the mention of an imaginary Brahmapur, which is the capital of yet another imaginary Purva Pradesh, among the likes of Calcutta, Kanpur and Lucknow, but somewhere down the road, the feeling dissolves. Similarly, it was hard to consider Nehru as one of the story’s characters, and though amusing that he should write to the Chief Minister of a non-existent Purva Pradesh, the clever usage of letters written by the ex-Prime Minister himself provides credibility. The criticism at the political level and [mal]operation at the rural level as a consequence of the proposal of the Zamindari Abolition Act, as described by Seth, are cynical and troubling respectively. The unwarranted communal riots, the boundless Hindu-Muslim tension, the liberated friendship among people of contradictory beliefs and the abiding courtship between the youngsters of other faiths: all coexist symbiotically in the story.
It was unnecessary for a flowchart of characters; they have been sketched so vividly that one hardly needs to refer to it. Maan Kapoor, whose life the novel follows for most part, fails to gain any attempted sympathy towards the end, when he lands himself in serious trouble, half so because his flirtation and obsession with his beloved gets annoyingly repetitive. Though a dogmatic reader and a strong opposer of any kind of blasphemy to books, I had to turn over several leaves as he goes through the same routine of getting physical after drenching himself in whisky or being thrown out indignantly, on his every alternate visit to her. The stint at the village of Debaria where he accompanies his friend-cum-teacher Abdur Rasheed, provides a fresh lease to the story; more so, because these villagers are not connected to everybody else, like the other characters in the book are. However, it is interesting to see the way in which most of the characters are related to one another in a flawlessly smooth fashion.
The Chatterjis are a delight. But for the elder sibling Meenakshi, who though is officially a Mehra by marriage from the start to the end, the rest of the Ballygunge gang, who “just exchange brilliances”, inclusive of Cuddles the dog and the one called Biswas Babu, constitute of an amusement park; and the ever-blinking, “ideal”-searching, indecisively-decisive, spiritual [crisis] guru Dipankar stands above all. Though some of Kakoli Chatterji’s couplets are both funny and intelligent, it is somehow baffling that most of the members in the story starting from a Minister’s son to a High court judge can recite poems with incredible ease. The letter exchange between Lady Baby’s parents, immediately after her birth, also form an amusing read. Lata Mehra, whose is the one to be hooked up with A Suitable Boy, provides a justification in instinctively choosing the “one” among her suitors, which sounds as unappealing as how one of my friends strongly believes that she will not be happy with a non-software professional; but given girls have peculiar prerequisites and checklists, there would probably be some reader empathizing with her choice.
Set in the initial years of India’s independence, I was wondering which middle class family even from as urbane a city as “Brahmapur” would converse in English among themselves, have at least a cook and two servants, serve alcohol and play cards at home. Probably, India once really was more broad-minded? If you are in mood for nothing in particular, the book would be an excellent choice. Though I would go back and re-read many of the chapters, I would not vouch that A Suitable Boy is the best-ever [as many people do] I have read.
Half of the poem, A word of thanks, in the first page makes sense only when read in the end, so a word of advice would be not to get stuck there. The way the contents page has been written in verses is quite charming, and I had to exercise a lot of refraining in order not to look it up before the beginning of a new chapter. After the first four chapters, I had comfortably settled for a modern Indian Jane Austen tale, when the fifth chapter jolted me out of my trance; whether I was displeased to suddenly be required to sit up and concentrate in the then political affairs or was pleased that it was after all not a happy-family sad-family topsy-turvy love saga, I am not sure. Though some of the main characters like Mrs. Rupa Mehra, Savita and Lata did remind me of Mrs. Bennet, Jane and Lizzy, the comparison might end there. While Austen is all worldly words and pretty prose, Seth is more simple and straightforward both in style and story.
It was initially very distracting and almost distressing to see the mention of an imaginary Brahmapur, which is the capital of yet another imaginary Purva Pradesh, among the likes of Calcutta, Kanpur and Lucknow, but somewhere down the road, the feeling dissolves. Similarly, it was hard to consider Nehru as one of the story’s characters, and though amusing that he should write to the Chief Minister of a non-existent Purva Pradesh, the clever usage of letters written by the ex-Prime Minister himself provides credibility. The criticism at the political level and [mal]operation at the rural level as a consequence of the proposal of the Zamindari Abolition Act, as described by Seth, are cynical and troubling respectively. The unwarranted communal riots, the boundless Hindu-Muslim tension, the liberated friendship among people of contradictory beliefs and the abiding courtship between the youngsters of other faiths: all coexist symbiotically in the story.
It was unnecessary for a flowchart of characters; they have been sketched so vividly that one hardly needs to refer to it. Maan Kapoor, whose life the novel follows for most part, fails to gain any attempted sympathy towards the end, when he lands himself in serious trouble, half so because his flirtation and obsession with his beloved gets annoyingly repetitive. Though a dogmatic reader and a strong opposer of any kind of blasphemy to books, I had to turn over several leaves as he goes through the same routine of getting physical after drenching himself in whisky or being thrown out indignantly, on his every alternate visit to her. The stint at the village of Debaria where he accompanies his friend-cum-teacher Abdur Rasheed, provides a fresh lease to the story; more so, because these villagers are not connected to everybody else, like the other characters in the book are. However, it is interesting to see the way in which most of the characters are related to one another in a flawlessly smooth fashion.
The Chatterjis are a delight. But for the elder sibling Meenakshi, who though is officially a Mehra by marriage from the start to the end, the rest of the Ballygunge gang, who “just exchange brilliances”, inclusive of Cuddles the dog and the one called Biswas Babu, constitute of an amusement park; and the ever-blinking, “ideal”-searching, indecisively-decisive, spiritual [crisis] guru Dipankar stands above all. Though some of Kakoli Chatterji’s couplets are both funny and intelligent, it is somehow baffling that most of the members in the story starting from a Minister’s son to a High court judge can recite poems with incredible ease. The letter exchange between Lady Baby’s parents, immediately after her birth, also form an amusing read. Lata Mehra, whose is the one to be hooked up with A Suitable Boy, provides a justification in instinctively choosing the “one” among her suitors, which sounds as unappealing as how one of my friends strongly believes that she will not be happy with a non-software professional; but given girls have peculiar prerequisites and checklists, there would probably be some reader empathizing with her choice.
Set in the initial years of India’s independence, I was wondering which middle class family even from as urbane a city as “Brahmapur” would converse in English among themselves, have at least a cook and two servants, serve alcohol and play cards at home. Probably, India once really was more broad-minded? If you are in mood for nothing in particular, the book would be an excellent choice. Though I would go back and re-read many of the chapters, I would not vouch that A Suitable Boy is the best-ever [as many people do] I have read.
6 comments:
As usual, you have managed to condense quite a lot into not-too-long a blog. How do you manage that!! My friends are always complaining that my emails (my version of a blog, the poor folks!) are too long :). It was nice to see a book which I have read as well. Correction- tried to read. I could not keep track of all the characters in the book and ended up skipping pages to find out what happened to Latha. The others did not interest me as much, since I always did love a good love story :) I agree, her character and those of her parents did remind me of the Bennets. It is also a tome of a book. Maybe that had something to do with me skipping pages. :)
On the other hand, this post is not way-too-long since I decided to skip some points I wanted to make ;] for instance, it is strange that more than half the characters of the book fall into one of the categories of: studied/studying, practised/practising law making India sound like a law-obsessed nation!!
As you rightly said, this book is really lengthy and one needs lot of mention to start reading it. Anything over 500 pages is lengthy for me. That explains why Two lives and Shantaram are still lying unread in my bookshelf.
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