If you think that 1500 pages novel is something not worth spending time, this novel can definitely prove you wrong. Vikram Seth’s book is a real masterpiece. you feel like you are reading several novels and several stories going together yet related to each other.
It is the story of the search for a suitable match for Lata. Both Lata and her mother are having different ideas yet having lots of common things between them. But this narrative recedes into the background for long stretches, as we follow the fortunes of various members of three families, including Lata’s own, in the years immediately after the partition of India.
Two of the families are Hindu, one is Moslem, and the three are linked to one another by marriage or friendship. There are the Kapoors, whose most prominent member, the charming if rather feckless Maan Kapoor, falls deeply in love with a Moslem singer and courtesan.
There are the Khans, who are Moslem, and whose son Firoz is a close friend of Maan’s, a friendship which eventually results in near-tragedy. And there are the Chatterjis, a family of brilliant and highly Anglicised young men and womem: Amit, the poet and novelist, Dipankar the would-be mystic, and Meenakshi and Kakoli, two beautiful and amoral sisters who continually exchange verse couplets with each other in a sort of verbal tennis match of wit. Politics runs through the story as well, and Nehru himself appears occasionally; I have to say that for me these sections were less successful and I was tempted to skip some of the set speeches.
Another minor problem at times was a certain vagueness about which language the characters were speaking. This matters, because the characters themselves make a lot of it; Lata’s pompous brother Arun, for example, who is a yuppy before his time, is scornful of Haresh, Lata’s husband-to-be, because his English is less than perfect (although, in a delightully ironic passage, he is eventually forced to admit that he, Arun, has never been to England while Haresh has lived and studied there). Mostly, however, Seth manages these linguistic transitions adroitly. Long though this book is, I wouldn’t wish it shorter.
In fact, it’s so rich that when I reached the end I felt like rereading it; and I’m sure I will.