Reflections: Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’–An Epic Portrait of 1950s India

I am cross-posting an essay I wrote about my favorite novel: A Suitable Boy. This essay was originally published in 2012

There are some works of literature that are like comfort food–ready for one to dip into whenever one is in need of a pick-me-up. For me, Vikram Seth’s 1993 magnum opus, A Suitable Boy, is one such work. The characters–ranging from the anxious and melodramatic Mrs. Rupa Mehra to the crazy Chatterjee family to the beautiful Muslim courtesan Saaeda Bai Firozabadi– are like old friends whom one has missed after a long absence. Every time I read the novel (and I have read it several times) I find new things to delight and ponder.

The novel begins with what in my opinion is one of the best openings in modern literature, one that immediately alludes to Jane Austen. Just as Pride and Prejudice begins with the narrator stating “It is a truth universally acknowledged ,that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife”, A Suitable Boy opens with the sentence: ” ‘You too will marry a boy I choose,’ said Mrs. Rupa Mehra firmly to her younger daughter.” With this sentence, Seth immediately lets the reader know what the book will be about: Mrs. Rupa Mehra’s search to find a suitable match for her daughter Lata. The novel opens at the wedding of Lata’s elder sister Savita. It will conclude with another wedding, that of Lata herself.

Though the plot ostensibly revolves around getting Lata married off, the novel is really a portrait of 1950s India, similar to the “condition of England” novels of the mid- 19th century. These novels (such as Charles Dickens’s Bleak House contain, apart from their fictional plots, a debate or discourse about the current state of the nation. Just as Bleak House draws attention to the problems of the London slums and the need for reform of the Chancery courts, A Suitable Boy includes plot lines devoted to issues of land reform and religious communalism. Seth also includes several other aspects of Indian culture in the novel, such as the tradition of courtesans, Urdu poetry, and Hindustani Classical Music.

All these issues are addressed through the four families who make up the cast of characters, all of whom are related to each other through marriage or friendship. The novel opens at the wedding of Savita Mehra with Pran Kapoor, an English professor who is the son of Mahesh Kapoor, a politician in the Indian National Congress, and the Minister of Revenue in the (fictional) North Indian state of Purva Pradesh. One of Mahesh Kapoor’s most important legislative goals is the passing of the Zamindari Abolition Act, which will result in the dissolution of the large estates of the landed aristocracy known as zamindars. This act will have negative consequences for Kapoor’s friend, The Nawab Sahib of Baitar, who is a member of this hereditary class. Similarly, Seth brings in a description of the life of a courtesan by creating a plot line involving a doomed romance between Mahesh Kapoor’s younger son, Maan, and Saeeda Bai Firozabadi. The issue of religious communalism is brought into the novel by focusing on a conflict over a mosque which was supposedly built over a temple (clearly inspired from the Babri Mosque issue in Ayodhya). There are also sections describing rioting between Hindus and Muslims that occurs when a Muharram procession happens to cross a performance of the Ramlila. Several critics have argued that Seth uses these incidents to make a plea for secularism and against religious fanaticism. For example, Seth includes a scene set in the Alamgiri Mosque after Friday Prayer. For the past few months, a Shiva Temple has begun to be constructed next to the mosque, much to the dismay of the local Muslim community. After a particularly fiery sermon by the local Imam, a riot takes place. The narrator describes the scene as follows:

No one knew how the men who were gathering in the narrow alleys of the Muslim neighborhood that lay on one side of Chowk became a mob. One moment they were walking individually or in small groups through the alleys towards the mosque for evening prayer, then they had coalesced into larger clusters, excitedly discussing the ominous signals they had heard. After the midday sermon most were in no mood to listen to any voice of moderation. A couple of the more eager members of the Alamgiri Masjid Hifazaat Committee made a few crowd-rousing remarks, a few local hotheads and toughs stirred themselves and those around them into a state of rage, the crowd increased in size as the alleys joined into larger alleys, its density and speed and sense of indistinct determination increased, and it was no longer a collection but a thing-wounded and enraged, and wanting nothing less than to wound and enrage. There were cries of ‘Allah-u-Akbar’ which could be heard all the way to the police station. A few of those who joined the crowd had sticks in their hands. One or two even had knives. Now it was not the mosque they were headed for but the partly constructed temple just next to it. It was from here that the blasphemy had originated, it was this that must be destroyed. (Seth 251)

This scene ends with the police shooting at the mob, resulting in several deaths and injuries. A similar incident occurs later in the novel, a stampede at the “Pul Mela” on the banks of the Ganges (based on the Kumbh Mela celebrated in Allahabad every six years). The narrator writes:

Within fifteen minutes more than a thousand people were dead…. It was still not clear what had happened.

Dipankar had been among the spectators on the other side of the main route. He watched with horror the carnage that was taking place less than fifty feet away but–with the nagas between him and the ramp–there was nothing he could do. Anyway, there was nothing he could have done except get killed or injured. He did not recognize anyone on the ramp, so tightly packed was the crowd. It was a hellish scene, like humanity gone mad, each element indistinguishable from the other, all bent on a kind of collective suicide (796-797).

Through such episodes of communal clashes, Seth makes a plea for secularism, and more generally against passion and for rationality.

Another way in which the novel makes the case for rationality is through the heroine’s choice of a husband. Though she falls madly in love with Kabir Durrani, a fellow student at her university, Lata eventually comes to realize that because she is Hindu and he is Muslim, her family would never accept their marriage. She eventually agrees to marry another man, a candidate who has been approved by her mother. When her friend Malati upbraids her for compromising and giving up on love, Lata tells her: ” I’m not myself when I’m with [Kabir]. I ask myself who is this–this jealous, obsessed woman who can’t get a man out of her head–why should I make myself suffer like this? I know that it’ll always be like this if I’m with him.’ (1417). A few pages later, she goes on “‘All I meant was, Malati, that when I’m with Kabir, or even away from him but thinking about him, I become utterly useless for anything. I feel I’m out of control–like a boat heading for the rocks–and I don’t want to become a wreck’”(1419). Lata chooses companionate marriage and stability over romantic love. Even the man she ends up marrying has given up on romantic passion. Just as Lata was in love with an “unsuitable” Muslim boy, her future husband Haresh, was in love with a Sikh girl, Simran, whose family would never have accepted her marriage to a Hindu man.

Another example of passion destroying people is the relation of Maan and Saeeda Bai. Maan’s jealousy over Saeeda Bai causes him to stab his best friend, Firoz Khan (the son of the Nawab Sahib of Baitar) and to be sent to jail for attempted murder. The shock of his arrest causes his mother to die from a stroke. Maan himself is only acquitted when Firoz changes his testimony to say that he was not stabbed, but fell on the knife while trying to disarm his friend. In contrast to the Lata-Kabir and Maan-Saaeda Bai relationships, the most fulfilling relationship in the novel is that of Lata’s elder sister, Savita, and her husband Pran–a relationship that was an arranged marriage in which the parties learned to love each other afterwards. It is a relationship based on companionship and stability rather than grand romantic passion.

As a student of Hindustani Classical Music, another aspect of the novel that was especially appealing to me were the scenes having to do with music. Seth introduces Saaeda Bai’s character by having her sing at a Holi function at Mahesh Kapoor’s house. He describes her as follows:

She moved the pallu of her silk sari further forward over her head: it tended to slip down, and one of her most charming gestures–to be repeated throughout the evening–was to adjust her sari to ensure that her head was not left uncovered. The musicians–a tabla player, a sarangi player, and a man who strummed the tanpura–sat down and started tuning their instruments as she pressed down a black key with a heavily ringed right hand, gently forcing air through the bellows with an equally bejeweled left. The tabla player used a small silver hammer to tauten the leather straps on his right-hand drum, the sarangi player, adjusted his tuning pegs and bowed a few phrases on the strings. The audience adjusted itself and found places for new arrivals. Several boys, some as young as six, sat down near their fathers or uncles. There was an air of pleasant expectancy. Shallow bowls filled with rose and jasmine petals were passed around: those who, like Imtiaz, were still somewhat high on bhang, lingered delightedly over their enhanced fragrance(86).

This description expertly conjures up the glamour of the courtesan and the expectant atmosphere at the start of the ghazal concert.

Later on Seth describes a scene between Ustad Majeed Khan and Ishaq Khan, Saeeda Bai’s sarangi accompanist. He describes the Ustad practicing Raag Todi:

There was no tabla player, and Ustad Majeed Khan began to sense his way around the raag in a freer, less rhythmic but more intense manner than Ishaq Khan had ever heard from him before. He always began his public performances not with a free alaap such as this but with a very slow composition in a long rhythmic cycle which allowed him a liberty that was almost, but not quite comparable. The flavor of these few minutes was so startlingly different from those other great performances that Ishaq was enraptured. He closed his eyes, and the room ceased to exist; then, after a while, himself, and finally even the singer. (395).

In this scene, Seth beautifully describes the trance that well-performed classical music can produce in the listener.

Another aspect of the novel that I would like to discuss is the characterization of the Chatterji family, upper-class anglicized Brahmins from Calcutta. The Chatterjis are related to Lata through her brother Arun, who is married to the “glamourous Meenakshi”. Meenakshi’s older brother, Amit (based on Seth himself) becomes one of the contenders for Lata’s hand. The other siblings include the “spiritual” Dipankar, the flighty Kakoli, and the baby, Tapan. Each member of the family is deeply eccentric in their own unique way. Seth writes: “The Chatterji family at breakfast presented a scene of cordial conflict. It was an intelligent family where everyone thought of everyone else as an idiot. Some people thought the Chatterjis obnoxious because they appeared to enjoy each others’ company even more than the company of others. But if they had dropped by at the Chatterjis for breakfast and seen them bickering, they would probably have disliked them less” (441).

A particularly interesting aspect of the Chatterjis is their tremendous facility with couplets. Seth writes:

“Aren’t there any Chatterjis who don’t make flippant couplets? asked Lata, unaccountably annoyed. Weren’t they ever serious? How could they joke about such heartbreaking matters?

“Ma and Baba don’t,” said Kuku. “That’s because they’ve never had Amit as an elder brother. And Dipankar’s not quite as skilled as the rest of us. It comes naturally to us, like singing in a raag if you’ve heard it often enough. People are astonished we can do it, but we’re astonished Dipankar can’t. Or only one a month or so, when he has his poetic periods….

Rhyming, rhyming so precisely-
Couplets, they are coming nicely,”

gurgled Kakoli who churned them out with such appalling frequency that they were now called Kakoli-couplets, though Amit had started the trend. (526).

The Chatterjis are great comic creations and the chapters featuring them are some of the most enjoyable in the book.

In conclusion, A Suitable Boy is an epic novel, involving everything from music, to poetry, to politics, to the business of shoemaking. It is rather melodramatic at times and its length is truly enormous (I must confess I’ve never read it all the way through). However, it features something for everyone: if you are not interested in politics or land reform, you might enjoy the chapters dealing with music or poetry or even the romance between Lata and Kabir. It is truly Seth’s masterpiece, providing a complex and detailed portrait of India immediately after Independence.