My only memory of that epic novel A Suitable Boy is seeing the tome lie in my late uncle’s storage room when I was quite young. As a boy who wanted to devour books, it looked enticing. I stole a few glances at it. But that was too much. I couldn’t read more than 1,000 pages that too by what sounded like an old school Indian writer whose name didn’t sound very cool.
My second and proper meeting with the novel happened yesterday as I finished my breakfast to watch the 6 episode Netflix series over the entire day and it was worth it. Apart from the intricately woven story itself, to which of course the screen can only do so much justice, there were several other things that caught my attention.
The most outstanding one perhaps was the English. The actors being mostly Indian and playing parts set in a newly independent India, the English did not have the inane quizzicality of American English, nor the so-called poshness of the British accent, and least of all the half-broken, never full formed, metropolitan English I transact it on a daily basis. The language of the film was clean, clearly enunciated, and, if I may say, authentic. I realise that is an awkward word to describe a borrowed tongue, a clear legacy of the British Empire, marking out class divides in a postcolonial country. Yet, if there is such a thing as an Indian English, I say this is what it must look like at its very best. Self assured, confident, without pretense.
The setting and the landscape that marks the background of the film was of course striking. The ghats of Banaras, the rural countryside, the bustling streets of a town, the lovers’ river - all come together to bring alive a distinctly “Indian” story. Marc Augé speaks of the proliferation of non-places in the time of late capitalism, zones such as airports, cafés, highways, modern apartments, company offices, that are indistinguishable from one another even if located on opposite sides of the globe. More and more of our life - my daily life certainly - is lived and inhabited by these places: except perhaps the old street in front of my house and corners of the university campus. Most popular cinema also in unremarkable in its setting. The frames in A Suitable Boy then add a richness to the narration that we are more and more deprived of.
I also loved the honesty of the film’s politics. The fraught Hindu-Muslim relationship in a country just rising from the ashes of the Partition is not smothered over nor is it made into a question larger than life itself, pre-occupying everything else. There is a cross-religion troublesome love affair that forms the bedrock of the story, yet remains unconsummated. You have two male friends (I add “male” because I noted with interest the raw, brotherly intimacy between them displayed with a comfortable physical closeness) - both coming from affluent families on either side, yet trapped in a communal mob that only desires to kill. There is the rural life of the countryside, mired with the misfortunes of zamindari and navigated through caste-class-religion politics, but also a Nawab offering his unabashed support to a secular Hindu politician. I was almost surprised to learn that this series came out in 2020 for it makes no apology for what it shows.
The musicality of the film is really the centerpiece I think. The illicit affair between the politician’s Hindu young son and the older Muslim tawaif allows us to tune in to the Urdu ghazals of the accomplished courtesan, rendered beautifully by Kavitha Seth. While the series as I said in rendered in English, the occasional exchanges in Hindu, the pleasantries in Urdu, and most importantly, the ghazals mark the messy and very alive hybridity and pluralism of what now feels like another India. The ghazals speak of love and loss, longing and desire, mostly of pain. They paint the film’s canvas in the colour of a constant hearth ache. The other dominant music element is the Indian classical backtrack composed by Anoushka Shankar and Alex Heffes that permeates the entire film. Modern and classical at once. Add to this the boatman’s songs while rowing across the river, and you have beauty right there.
The pace of the film is what I want to end upon. Before venturing on this 6 hour binge-watch, I asked my friend if she would recommend it. She said “it’s a little slow, so take it at your own risk.” Well, it’s a risk worth taking. Our generation is accustomed to speed (I am finding it incredibly hard to read Orhan Pamuk’s much acclaimed novel The Museum of Innocence because it’s so slow!). But A Suitable Boy is, I think, perfectly paced. It is most definitely not fast. The ghazals and the classical music, the ghats of Banaras and the countryside, the fully enunciated English, and the slow, considered intimacy between its characters slow down the film, allowing one to relish what it has to offer. I do not think I would have captured the language, the landscape, the musicality, the pain of the film if it had been a package meant to quickly deliver entertainment. If that’s what you want, you might want to give this a go. But if you are in for a 6 hour blossoming of a beautiful work of art, go watch it now!