A Suitable Book. Review on Suitable Boy, A - Vikram Seth

Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy is a truly great book. Period.

A simply written book, it awes you by its size but draws you into it with more than a handful of characters trying to come to terms with their lives and situations. A huge amount of research has gone into this book but Seth smoothly dwells on the complexities of human nature. Not once does the academic investigation dwarf the narrative – the first sign of great fiction.

Set in the early 50s, A Suitable Boy talks of a newly independent India, its triumphs and its pitfalls. The narrative focuses on four families – the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Khans and the Chatterjees. The Mehras represent the growing middle class; the Kapoors are a mix of the political class and the academia with a liberal dose of middle class morality; the Khans embody the insecure Muslim royalty – one that chose to remain in India after partition and is now about to be dispossessed of its land; the Chatterjee’s characterize the Anglicized Indian intelligentsia. The four families are linked to each other by marriage and/or friendship.

Seth sets his book in an India that’s undergoing a radical change. The land reforms have threatened royalty; the musicians and courtesans are in danger of losing their source of livelihood; the middle class is emerging as a conspicuous entity; the radicals within and without the Congress Party have threatened Nehru’s vision of India, there are murderous riots and there are Hindus and Muslims saving each other. India is a land of complexities. Hindus and Muslims despite the communal backlash and the creation of Pakistan still live as brothers in some pockets but it is taboo for them to marry into each other.

Mahesh Kapoor, the Revenue Minister of Purva Pradesh has two sons – Pran and Maan. Pran has married Rupa Mehra’s elder daughter Savita. She has three other children – Arun the eldest, the spineless Varun and Lata, the apple of her eye, the daughter for whom she is in search of a Suitable Boy. Arun has married Meenakshi Chatterjee. Meenakshi and her siblings want Lata to marry their brother Amit while Lata herself is in love with Kabir Durrani. Enters Haresh, working at Praha shoe company as a foreman who Mrs. Mehra wants to wed Lata and the Austenian tenor is established.

The structure of the book is simple. It begins with one wedding and ends with another. The period between the two weddings is eighteen months. In between a lot happens - babies are born, people die, lovers unite and part ways, elections are won and lost, friends become bitter enemies and reconcile, unhealthy whispers of the past become the screaming reality of the present ... A Suitable Boy is peopled healthily. The characters are vivid and real to the core – even the minor ones like Durrani Senior, Prof. Mishra, Saeeda Bai, Tasneem, Rasheed, Baba, Netaji, Home Minister L.N. Aggarwal, Chief Minister Sharma, Mrs. Tandon, Bhaskar, Veena, Dr. Kishen Seth and many more.

There are many threads to the novel which one initially feels has the author rambling rather incongruously. But dwell deeply and what emerges is one composite whole. Humorous (Mrs Rupa Mehra’s character is dealt with sympathetic humor), ironical, moving (Rasheed-Maan, Maan-Saeeda Bai, Maan-Feroz, Lata-Kabir relationships do not fail to leave a lump in your throat), astute (the entire take on Indian polity) and whimsical (the finale is alas, indeed, whimsical) make A Suitable Boy a slight flawed, not to be missed book. Read it to know how a complex tale can be rendered so simply.