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Marriage lies at the heart of A
Suitable Boy and is used to explore
key issues—from religion, class,
gender, and politics to national
and personal identity.the iniquities of the caste system,
poverty, and the status of lower-
caste Indians, such as the jatav,
who scrape their living in the evil-
smelling tanneries. Certain parts of
the plot revolve around land reforms
and the abolition of the zamindari
system, which sought to remove
property from large aristocratic
landholders. The novel explores the
roles of women in 1950s India, too,
comparing Lata’s dependence on
her family with the independence
of her friend Malati and the Muslim
custom of purdah, in which women
are segregated and wear form-
covering clothes such as the burqa.Real-life concerns
Unlike Rushdie’s magical India,
Seth’s novel focuses on the matters
of real life: work, love, family, the
intricacies of lawmaking, political
intrigue, the academic world,
and religious tensions. These are
presented in beautifully written
and lyrical prose that is compelling,
eminently readable, and often
amusing. It presents the English
language as it is spoken by the
people of India—embellished with
scatterings of Hindu and Muslim
terms, many of which do not
translate into English. The IndianEnglish novelist Anita Desai has
observed that it was only after
Rushdie “that Indian writers finally
felt capable of using the spoken
language, spoken English, the way
it’s spoken on Indian streets by
ordinary people,” something that
Seth also captures perfectly.Language of imperialists?
Vikram Seth is a skilled and
renowned poet as well as a novelist,
so it is perhaps unsurprising that
his text includes superbly poetic
passages. Many of these draw the
reader into the world of Urdu poetry,
Indian music and singing (ghazals),
and myths and legends as sung and
played by Saaeda Bai and her
musicians. Equally haunting are
descriptions of a tiger hunt, the
stinking pools of the tanning
factory, the Indian countryside, and
the Kumbh Mela festival. The novel
also includes the flippant couplets
nonchalantly tossed out by the
Chatterjis; and a contents page
that comprises 19 rhyming couplets,
one for each part of the book.
It took Seth more than eight
years to write his monumental
novel; it was a huge success and
was awarded the Commonwealth
Writers’ Prize. He has beenCONTEMPORARY LITERATURE
compared to Jane Austen—but
although A Suitable Boy, like
Austen’s novels, deals with family
events and is realistic and
perceptive, it is unmistakably an
Indian novel, written in English,
and a landmark of the genre.
There have been fierce debates
concerning the validity of Indian
English literature, and in particular
a questioning of why leading Indian
novelists, most of whom live outside
India, should even be writing in
English. In Rushdie’s words, “the
ironic proposition that India’s best
writing since independence may
have been done in the language of
the departed imperialists is simply
too much for some folks to bear.”
Nevertheless, the popularity of the
Indian English genre continued to
grow into the 21st century, with
writers such as Arundhati Roy,
Jhumpa Lahiri, Amitav Ghosh, and
Kiran Desai making significant
contributions, either setting their
novels in India or focusing on the
experience of rootlessness and
alienation in the diaspora. ■They agreed with
each other violently
and disagreed with
each other pleasurably.
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