This post first appeared on Totally Filmi on December 6, 2020.
The year is 1951 – four years after Partition, which gave rise to two states independent of British rule (India and Pakistan). Everyone is looking to the future of this new India, including Lata Mehra (Tanya Maniktala), a literature student. On a personal level, Lata’s sister, Savita (Rasika Dugal), is being married to Pran Kapoor (Gagandev Riar), the son of the prominent politician Mahesh Kapoor (Ram Kapoor), the State Minister of Revenue. Lata neatly sums up her sister’s marriage in one sentence: “She’s only met him once before, for one hour, chaperoned.” Lata’s mother, Rupa (Mahira Kakkar), is overjoyed at the match she’s made for her eldest daughter, firmly telling Lata, “You, too, will marry a boy I choose.” But Lata is refreshingly lively and moderately unconventional (“We were 20th century young women!” she laments to her best friend Malati (Sharvari Deshpande), after she must leave her college dorm to live with her sister and brother-in-law), teasing her mother that she won’t get married at all. Rupa firmly tells her that if an arranged marriage was good enough for her mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother, then it will be good enough for Lata. And thus begins the quest to find, as the title suggests, a “suitable boy” for Lata to marry.
Lata has no shortage of potential suitors, suitable or otherwise: there’s the handsome student, Kabir Durani (Danesh Razvi), whom Lata falls in love with, much to the horror of her mother – a Muslim man is, for Lata, a highly unsuitable choice for her daughter. Lata’s sister-in-law Meenakshi (who is married to Lata’s blowhard, stodgy older brother, Arun) suggests her own brother Amit (Mikhail Sen) – both come from the Calcutta Chatterji family. Rupa rejects him, too, partly because Amit, coming from a wealthy and important family, doesn’t hold down a proper job, publishing poetry instead; but also because Rupa’s own daughter-in-law, Meenakshi (Shahana Goswami), behaves in ways that her mother-in-law finds at best frivolous, and at worst scandalous — and this, without knowing about Meenakshi’s ongoing affair with Billy Irani (Randeep Hooda). Finally, there is Haresh Khanna (Namit Das), the keen shoe industry businessman – Haresh is the man deemed most suitable by Rupa: he is not too wealthy or high class, but is employed in a respectable and secure job (Haresh secures himself a management position at the Praha Shoe company through his determination and shoe-making skills). Against the backdrop of the post-Partition period in India and the 1951-52 elections, in a society dealing with communal tensions, land reforms, and a number of other issues, Lata must make her decision about whom she will marry.
Vikram Seth’s book is a massive tome that follows the four families: the Mehras, the Kapoors, the Khans, and the Chatterjis, whose lives and fates cross as they navigate the issues of a newly independent India. It has been compared to Tolstoy, for obvious reasons (not only for the sheer number of pages); but in some ways, the book reminds me of Dickens, with its mannered and detailed writing style, coupled with interesting characters navigating their daily lives and taking care of their more personal concerns, all the while giving us an insight into the greater societal issues that swirl around them.
For the series adaptation of the novel, director Mira Nair and writer Andrew Davies (who is no stranger to grand, sweeping stories, having more recently written a six-part series based on Victor Hugo’s Les Misérables for the BBC) remain true to the core of Seth’s work. There is a constant push and pull between tradition and modernity in the series, between Hindus and Muslims and the communal tensions that divide and inflame, and between various classes. One of the points of contention that some have raised about the series is the choice to have most of the dialogues in English – except in those situations where it was important to use Hindi or Urdu, in scenes taking place in villages, for example, or when Maan Kapoor (Mahesh Kapoor’s wayward son, played by Ishaan Khattar) visits the courtesan and singer Saeeda Bai (a resplendent Tabu, who appropriately is given top billing), with whom he is smitten, she makes a point of telling him that Urdu is the language of her soul, which is why he should learn it. Saeeda Bai sends Maan away with Rasheed (her sister’s tutor), telling him to use the opportunity to learn Urdu.
While on the one hand, I can understand these concerns – because even those characters who would have been capable of speaking English would likely not use it at home or amongst friends, and it’s also true that when these characters do speak in Hindi or Urdu, the dialogue delivery does immediately feel more natural. And yet, in some ways, I felt the use of very stylized English reminded me of the style of Seth’s own English prose, which is highly mannered and formal. I don’t know if this was the intention of either Nair (Mira Nair has spoken about the choice of English as the dominant language in the series as one made to not distance an international audience from the work) or Davies, but I found the connection interesting.
In some ways, six episodes do not feel like enough to capture the sweep of Vikram Seth’s novel. Of course, the point of adaptation is not to stick ruthlessly to the book – rather, the point is to remain faithful to the essence of the work. A Suitable Boy, the series, sticks mostly to the subject of its title – finding a suitable husband for Lata. But the point of that title was that the whole act of arranging a marriage takes into account so many other things – in fact, romance is the least of the things it’s concerned with. Instead, arranged marriages take into account family status, religion, jobs, society – all the things that Seth’s novel seeks to examine in the wake of Partition. There is no way that everything Seth packs into his tome would fit into six hours – but the six-hour-long episode limit also limits the scope of what Mira Nair can encapsulate, and fans of Seth’s book may be disappointed at what the series leaves out.
A Suitable Boy will premiere on the Acorn TV streaming service on Monday, December 7, with two episodes. Following that, one episode will premiere every Monday through January 4. Visit acorn.tv for more details. Check out the trailer, and then check out the series:
Posted on Sunday, 06 December 2020 at 13:01 | Permalink | Comments (0)