Living with "A Suitable Boy"
"This time though, I don’t read “A Suitable Boy” as a young woman who has the world at her feet; but rather someone who has seen enough of the world to know how fragile it can be."
My copy of “A Suitable Boy", spotted in a cafe in Udaipur, circa 2017
"When will you find time to read such a thick book on a vacation?"
It’s 2017 and my mother is watching me stuff a worn-out copy of “A Suitable Boy” in a backpack. I am off to Udaipur for my birthday alone – and no one really knows why. I think it’s a great idea to untangle the annual Birthday Existential Crisis away from everything; my friends think it’s my Ranbir Kapoor-esque attempt at “finding myself.” (They were, sadly, right.)
Whatever the impulse may be, I am off in the January winter to a city I have never been to before – lugging along a copy of Vikram Seth’s 1,474-page debut novel.
“I will find time, Ma. I have read it actually. I need to re-read bits. And anyway, it’s a good companion – I will never be bored.”
My mother refrains from pointing out the low probability of me being bored for a weekend, in a city spilling over with palaces, and old havelis in every corner. I win the argument.
The next time I take out my coming-at-the-seams copy of “A Suitable Boy” is two days later. I am sitting in the lounge of the backpacker hostel I am staying in. The busy lane outside can be glimpsed through a door, and is in stark contrast to the red-and-orange pillows strewn around. (Because, Rajasthani décor.) The walls have sticky notes regaling experiences of travellers gone by. The hostel is just at the beginning of the main market in the city, and across the street from Bagore ki Haveli, which overlooks a lake. Udaipur is every bit as beautiful as I thought it would be.
I, though, am done with finding myself.
You see, dear reader, finding yourself is an awfully tedious process. What we see in films is a montage, with melancholic side-profiles of looking out at sunsets. What happens in reality, is you see a stunning stone engraving in a palace, turn around to tell someone about it, and curse yourself for thinking you could go three days without talking to someone. (Turns out, I really can’t.)
And so, on the second day of the trip, I defy my mother’s expectations. I walk across the street to Bagore ki Haveli, find myself a spot on the stairs overlooking the lake, and delve straight into the world of Lata. A world where Lata was also defying her mother’s expectations of meeting a suitable boy, by going on a boat ride with the handsome, but very-Muslim Kabir. Of course, I knew that this was not the happy ending Lata was in for.
I knew that she would later be heartbroken by Kabir’s indecision, discover herself joyfully in the company of the writer Amit (who I cheered for briefly) and finally choose the steady Haresh. But I was sitting alone in an unfamiliar city, far away from the people I love the most, trying valiantly to celebrate my birthday, in a way I disliked – who was I to judge Lata’s fumbling discoveries of a love she thought will last?
That winter evening, Lata and I, both enjoyed a boat ride.
“You are reading that book again?”
It’s 2020 and my mother is watching me curled up on my bed, reading “A Suitable Boy” – again. It’s a spring afternoon in Delhi, but the streets are curiously empty. A pandemic has hit the world, and the country. Everyone is trying to tackle the Unprecedented Times – which span phenomenon far beyond a natural pandemic to man-made disasters. (Riots, inefficient policy, governments, what have you.)
And, I am quite abruptly, unemployed. Which leaves me free to re-read Vikram Seth’s 1,474-page tome cover to cover – in a personal bid to feel like I am on solid ground again.
“I really need to read this book right now, Ma. And it’s been a while since I read it fully.”
My mother, again, refrains from pointing out that I have read enough bits of the novel over the years that everything is fresh in my mind.
This time though, I don’t read “A Suitable Boy” as a young woman who has the world at her feet; but rather the woman who has seen enough of the world to know how fragile it can be.
I silently tell Lata to focus on finding a job rather than any suitable men, I find myself wishing for a whole novel around the ambitious Malati, Saeeda Bai’s canny business sense jumps to the foreground, I nod along to Mrs. Rupa Mehra’s concerns about her wayward Varun.
And I get worried when Haresh also, unexpectedly, loses his job.
Like most people who read “A Suitable Boy,” I wasn’t #TeamHaresh at first. Over the years, as I encountered my fair share of Kabirs and Amits (the poets, my god), I realised why Lata chose the practical-and-straightforward Haresh. There is something to be said about the stability of finding a partner with whom you can grow with; rather than the uncertainty of a partner who makes you feel unlike yourself.
But even Mrs. Rupa Mehra would balk at the idea of a jobless Haresh. And so, as he struggled to find connections and land a job at the Praha shoe company, I root for him. I watch in admiration as he decides to take this adversity chin-up; willing to do whatever it takes for him to land a job.
For Haresh, no fate of circumstance is severe enough to compromise his good faith in the world, and its people. The betrayal of his managers at his shoe company, doesn’t make him bitter. Neither does he hide his sudden ‘unsuitability’ from Lata, instead choosing to be honest and optimistic. He just thinks of his unemployment as another challenge to be overcome.
I finish my re-read — waving a fond goodbye to Lata and her monkeys on the last page, and wistfully thinking what it takes to write a novel like “A Suitable Boy.”
Then, I send my CV to a few friends.
Before we go to links of the week: I don’t know whether I am looking forward to the TV adaptation of “A Suitable Boy.” I am wary of the entire thing being a show for the Western gaze — an assumption which seems fair, when I found out that the show will only be available in India in September. Maybe.
Anyway, it seems actually watching the show is the only way to find out. Even if they have cast an unfairly handsome Mikhail Sen as Amit — setting up unrealistic expectations of poets and writers around the world. Was I the only one who imagined Amit as a short, unremarkable man, with a little paunch peeking out? No? I certainly wasn’t expecting … this jawline.
LINKS OF THE WEEK
Borders are man-made, and can’t contain people’s experiences. Yes, China is the enemy in our popular imagination now, but what about the Chinese-Indian community in India? How do you prove your love to your… home? This piece by Asmita Bakshi in Livemint is a must-read.
“As the train rattled along, others in the AC-sleeper began to voice their suspicion of the “Chinese man", assuming he had no idea what they were saying. Francis was quick to intervene. “I explained in fluent Bengali that I am from Kolkata, I have never been to China and I would not infect them," he says. “You should have seen their faces."
Back in Kolkata, Francis got a T-shirt printed. He lives right above the Central Metro station and thought it would serve as both a jovial disclaimer and an effective tool against racism. “I’m not the coronavirus. I was born in Kolkata and I’ve never even been to China," reads the neat Bengali lettering on Francis’s crisp white tee.”
This piece by Karolina Waclawiak in Buzzfeed on losing her mother, and wishing for a lifetime to know her more than just her mother, broke my heart. Prepare for some tears.
“Someone recently told me that losing your mother is primal. It is the deepest loss. I felt validated in my feelings of being absolutely adrift. I no longer had a planet to orient myself around. Who was I if I could not call my mother nearly every morning on my way to work? Who was I if I could not text her every day? Or ask for her help and advice as I navigated the world? She hadn’t given me enough advice, wisdom, knowledge to make it through the rest of my life. I hadn’t stored any of it away. I didn’t even really know who she was.”
Never thought I would enjoy reading a piece on…eels, but here we are. Brooke Jarvis writes a fascinating piece in the New Yorker. (You can use Pocket, if you haven’t subscribed.)
“The truth emerged only slowly, and was, in its own slippery way, stranger than the fiction. Careful observers discovered that what had long been taken for several different kinds of animals were in fact just one. The eel was a creature of metamorphosis, transforming itself over the course of its life into four distinct beings: a tiny gossamer larva with huge eyes, floating toward Europe in the open sea; a shimmering glass eel, known as an elver, a few inches in length with visible insides, making its way along coasts and up rivers; a yellow-brown eel, the kind you might catch in ponds, which can move across dry land, hibernate in mud until you’ve forgotten it was ever there, and live quietly for half a century in a single place; and, finally, the silver eel, a long, powerful muscle that ripples its way back to sea.”
IN BOOKS I READ THIS WEEK:
She Said by Jodi Kantor and Megan Twohey: Should be made mandatory reading for everyone, but especially is you are a journalist. Or want to be. (Though in this economy, why?)
Destination Wedding by Diksha Basu: A fun look at the lives of the ultra-rich and NRI, through a wedding. If you live in Delhi, there are plenty of spot-the-references you will enjoy.
Crowfall by Shanta Gokhale (currently reading): I will read anything — anything — Shanta Gokhale writes. In this English translation of her Marathi novel, “Tya Varshi” she doesn’t disappoint. And made me miss living in Bombay.
That’s it from me, for this week. I was asked by someone what my newsletter “brand” is about, and I hummed and hawed till he asked me something else. So if you, dear reader, know what the “brand” of this newsletter is, let me know. It would be good feedback for me too, to find out what works, and what doesn’t.
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