‘A Suitable Boy’: Unsatisfactory retelling of a great novel

Circa 1992. Anthony Cheetham set up Orion, a new publishing house, and shelled out 250,000 pounds as an advance for Vikram Seth’s A Suitable Boy. The 1349-page novel consisting of 591,552 words was a huge success, which contributed to Seth’s fan following among critics and lay readers alike.

Almost three decades later, a six-episode web series of the same name that is based on the Seth novel and directed by Mira Nair (five episodes) and Shimit Amin (one episode), is available for streaming on Netflix. Although Amin has directed the fourth episode, Nair, it is abundantly clear, is the captain of the directorial ship. And she tries, gallantly one must add, to present an ambitious work by an author at the peak of his creative powers as well as she can.

‘A Suitable Boy’ isn’t ideal for binge-watching. The tempo, at times, is excruciatingly slow. However, serious viewers who decide to watch it are unlikely to abandon it midway.

The story is set in the early 1950s in the fictional town of Brahmpur in Purva Pradesh. While the plot unfolds at a leisurely pace, exquisite cinematography (Declan Quinn), good music (Alex Heffes and Anoushka Shankar) and appropriate casting (Karan Mally, Dilip Shankar and Nandini Shrikent) emerge as the highlights of the series.

The novel is an instance of old-fashioned storytelling. It is a deliciously overwritten work of an accomplished writer who had chosen to be self-indulgent without fear. The patiently sketched principal characters evolve gradually, acquiring unique personalities that make them memorable.

While the novel is a famously lengthy work, the attempt to present the story in the audio-visual medium in less than six hours is a partial failure. Also, one fails to understand why Andrew Davies had to be the screenwriter when Seth was involved in the making of the series as one of the executive producers.

The plot centres on Rupa Mehra’s (Mahira Kakkar) search for the right husband for Lata (Tanya Maniktala), her free-spirited daughter who studies English literature at the university. Lata falls for her college mate Kabir (Danesh Rizvi) without knowing that his surname is Durrani, which makes him Muslim, a fact that would not be acceptable to her mother.

Lata would come across Amit (Mikhail Sen), a talented poet, later. She would also meet Haresh, a down-to-earth shoemaker (Namit Das). Who will be the right man for her?

The 1950s was a period when the scars of partition that led to the division of India were fresh and acutely painful. ‘A Suitable Boy’ is set during this phase, a significant

creative decision that contributes to the reader's understanding of a newly independent India.

That would have been impossible had Seth chosen to limit the story to one about a search for the right groom for a North Indian girl of marriageable age. Such an approach would have been classic Jane Austen territory, which isn’t where Seth wished to enter.

One significant subplot features a courtesan and singer Saeeda Bai (Tabu). Maan (Ishan Khatter), the wayward son of the State Minister of Revenue Mahesh Kapoor (Ram Kapoor), falls for the much-older courtesan. The unlikely association turns into the talk of the town, which the father predictably hates. It also leads to a moment, which results in Maan’s imprisonment. What eventually happens?

Politics of the period plays an important part in the story. It is shown through the actions of characters with different motives like Kapoor, Raja of Marh (Manoj Pahwa), the Home Minister Agarwal (Vinay Pathak) and Waris (Ranvir

Shorey). While Kapoor is a principled man, the rest thrive on opportunism. The presence of these characters contributes to the depiction of modern India, which is what ‘A Suitable Boy’ is about.

The web series fails to be as engaging as it might have been because the retelling is a superficial one in every sense. Characters in this multi-lingual series mostly speak in English. The problem is, what screenwriter Andrew Davies markets as Indian English is, often, just bad English.

How the home minister switches from English to Hindi, for instance, is pretentious, tedious and laughable. Davies should have observed Indian English in far greater detail before setting out to write the story for the screen. That, clearly, is not the case.

‘A Suitable Boy’ is, despite its shortcomings, a watchable series. Unsatisfactory retelling notwithstanding, it does have its moments that keep us interested. As one watches it, however, one cannot help thinking that a series on the novel with a few more episodes and backed by good writing would have resulted in a far better outcome.

There is some fine acting, too, the best of which is delivered by Maniktala, Kapoor, Khatter and Kakkar. Tabu suffers because of weak writing, but the brilliant actress conveys vulnerability in a way only she can.

You can watch ‘A Suitable Boy’, although if you have read the novel, it is possible that you will be thoroughly disappointed.