A Suitable Boy- VIkram Seth

To complete this book is achievement in itself for me, for never have I attempted such a behemoth of a novel and to have successfully completed it is a big deal for me. Second of all, it is among one of the many novels that I had bought more than a year back and had been collecting dust and cobwebs on the shelf. And what a book it has been. The characters are so well thrashed out, the story so beautifully narrated that not once I felt I needed to skip any part. More than anything it gives you a peak into the tumultous times of post independent India. The communalism, socialism, caste divide and the ineffectual laws to curb the same and other anachronistic fiefdom that existed during those times some of which that still exists even today. It touches upon so many different themes at so many levels and yet remains true to the essence which is the search of a mother for a suitable boy for her daughter, Lata. I loved all the suitors that had been created for Lata, somewhere down wishing I had been regaled with such attention during my college days. But the suitor I loved best was the bengali poet/author Amit, who wooed Lata with his poems. The story veers through various backdrops of the Congress party's slow disillusionment post independence, the Zamindari Act, the political milieu and the religious accord  of those times and in the well knit dysfunctional hindu family fabric, where you know what is happening even in lives of relatives twice separated. It is a poignant story of love, loss, despair and above all forgiveness. I am usually not the kind who laughs out loud when I read something funny in a book, but humour at certain points did crack me and I couldn't help but break into a laugh quiet a few times. 

The book for its length does not feel unnecessarily stretched as each and every incident narrative thread adds up at the end and adds to the storyline, without weighing it down. Although at times I did feel difficult holding the book up when I was at the beginning and at the end of the novel, when the weight shifted to one side. Its task well completed and even more so for I enjoyed this book thoroughly, and someday I might just re-read it.