A Suitable Book

My friends are well-read. Formal education is a blast, of course, but it's nothing compared to the far more interesting self-education available in print. (This reality is why so many societies have struggled with banned books and access to literature - books can be dangerous, this is no joke)

Everyone had suggestions as to what I should read before coming to India. "Read Maxiumum City," said other journalists, ex-pats like I was soon to be, who had worked in the urban slums and the glamorous highrises built right on top of them. "Never read Maximum City," said everyone else, born Mumbaiikers. (The disagreement over Mehta's Pulitzer-prize finalist stems from the idea of relative value. I am not from Mumbai, and I found the book very educational if somewhat frightening. Mehta's Mumbai is the Mumbai of the gutter, a swirly pit of active gangs and inadequate policing. Most Mumbaiikers know about this cesspool but don't live in it, so Mehta is nothing to them but a glory-hunter) Everyone agreed I should stay away from "Shantaram," a bestselling Mumbai memoir by a self-aggrandizing ex-felon.

The best book I read pre-India was Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy." This medical dictionary-sized text meanders about 1950s Indian history, finding and subsequently losing the key strings that tie the plot together. As a story, it is pure frustration. It is neither a love story - although most of the main characters experience this grand emotion at some point - nor is it a political thriller - despite nearly 50 pages of verbatim transcripts of Indian Parliamentary debate. The major legislation of the era, a land reform bill that abolishes the Indian equivalent of serfdom, passes after vigorous test. The story's personal drama, meanwhile, is less satisfactorily resolved. The title comes from the main character's central quest to find a suitable husband for her daughter. Three candidates present themselves. The girl's scheming, wailing mother eventually satisfies herself, but not me. Like my own mother, who recommended the book to me, I left feeling as if they'd picked the wrong man.

Despite all this, as a primer on post-Independence India this novel can't be beat. From luxurious nawab-doms to raucous courtrooms to sun-baked villages, Vikram Seth presented me with that foremost thing any book can offer: a real education. I first learned of the Congress Party, MLAs, the Muslim League - from this book. I learned that communal strife and sectarian violence, even now the morally disgusting tools of power-hungry politicians, have a long history in Indian politics. (The recent overblown fracas over anti-Muslim remarks by BJP pol Varun Gandhi demonstrates that in India at least, threatening to lop off the hands of a few of the "Other" mops up more newspaper inches than even a sex scandal) I learned that in some circles it is common, even preferred, for women to marry a man their parents choose, but this choice is more fraught than matchmakers would like us to believe. (Nor are the brides themselves passive dollies, happily serving tea and snacks to a parade of balding suitors and potential in-laws) I learned that Muslims and Hindus can fall in love, but this does nothing to alleviate the first situation or alter the second. I learned that men's sexual freedom does outstrip women's, but not by as much as feminists suppose. In other words, that India is a country exactly like another country I know better and (as of now, anyway) love more deeply: the United States.

Needless to say, I'm excited but also nervous to hear that after more than a decade, Seth plans a sequel to this dyanstic opus. It's called "A Suitable Girl." I don't know much about it except that Seth netted a near-dynastic advance: Rs. 13-14 crore (~ $3 million), the highest ever for an Indian author. Will the new book be set in the modern day? Will it feature chatrooms and call centers and shaadi.com? (Shaadi.com is India's match.com) Will the lovelorn hero, as opposed to the lovelorn heroine, trot from one end of the Indian diaspora to the other in search of a beautiful, professional bride? (Will Varun Gandhi make an appearance in all his religion-baiting glory?)