Vartika's Reviews > A Suitable Boy

4.5 stars: A Great Indian Novel in both scale and scope

Those familiar with the unique dramatic phenomenon that are Hindi television soaps would see why many tend to bring them up in comparison with A Suitable Boy: both are interminably long and contend, prima facie, with the quintessentially Indian concept of arranged marriage. And yet, this is where the similarities largely end, for Vikram Seth's delightful literary behemoth extends its scope beyond the personal destinies of its characters and deals, too, with that of the fledgling democracy within which their lives come together.

At the center of this magnificent saga lies the young Lata Mehra, whose her mother's attempts to find her a suitable husband through love or through exacting maternal appraisal rope the reader into a story that intertwines four families—The Mehras, Chatterjees, Kapoors, and Khans—across a journey spanning vast tracts of Indian society, many of its vibrant cities, and the tumultuous year before the great elections in 1952 that officially turned the country into the world's largest democracy.

The colourful cast of characters reflects people from various sections of society, from academic circles in Brahmpur to a class of anglicised professionals, poets, and foreign diplomats in Calcutta; from enterprising middle-class shoe tradesmen in Kanpur to the caste-oppressed leatherworkers and untouchable tenant farmers; from the Muslim gentry in Baitar to lower-caste muslim peasants in Rudhia; from courtesans and musicians living off of royal patronage to powerful politicians—the story is knitted, plain and purl, to display the diverse, multifaceted, and often tragic social fabric of the country.

The author portrays delicacy and romance, humour and antagonism, rituals and riots, and the tragicomedy of their contingent coexistence through the immensity and realism of his pointed prose—A Suitable Boy is dramatic, but no more than lived reality, informed as it was by the painful memory of a communal Partition and the realities of class, gender, and (more prominently) caste becoming known through the electoral experiment of universal adult franchise. Seth manages to effortlessly weave into his narrative nuanced discussions on a rarely spoken about period in Indian history, including major events such as the passage and contingencies of the Zamindari Abolition Bill and the split in the Congress Party. I was pleasantly surprised to find issues such as coloniality, the oft-ignored intersection of caste with communal divide, and the Sanskritisation of 'Indian' culture and languages being discussed in what is essentially a love story with both effectiveness and subtlety.

Unlike most tales in its genre, A Suitable Boy does not shy away from exploring how politics influences personal decisions, especially those concerning marriage. Arranged marriage, in particular, is a form of maintaining the prevalent hierarchies drawn along the lines of caste, class, ethnicity and religion, and therefore a 'suitable' match for Lata would, according to convention, be a Hindu and a Khatri. Whereas the author breaks prescription in some ways, he reaffirms them in others—is it perhaps too much to ask for a truly happy ending in a story set in the 1950s? Perhaps not, but it sure isn't realistic. In any case, the tale manages ample comedy in another sense of the word: given the richness of contextual humour and subtle play of words, light-hearted cultural commentary, and other deliberate jokes, I found myself laughing out loud at several points during this book, whereas the simplicity of language and fullness of detail certainly made it a delight to read.

One of the most acclaimed books to come from the Indian subcontinent, A Suitable Boy does not disappoint: with its nuanced exploration of a host of serious themes and its serious physical bulk, it nevertheless remains light and well-rounded—much like life itself.