5 - The Nation at Work in Post-Independence India: A Suitable Boy

Summary

The eleven years that Seth lived in the US, studying at Stanford University, were very productive. He was able to write and publish two volumes of poetry, a travelogue, a verse novel and learn Chinese. He could not however finish his PhD thesis. In 1986, after the publication of The Golden Gate, he made up his mind to return home to India. We must remember that he decided to leave America when he had made a name for himself there and was the toast of literary meets for his astonishing accomplishment in using the sonnet form for a verse novel. His decision to return home to his parents' house in Delhi was governed by a feeling that he had been away for far too long: he was missing the company of his family to whom he had always been very close (Two Lives 39). He also aimed to write a novel set in post-Independence India, based on the theme of a mother's search for a suitable boy for her daughter. This theme had autobiographical elements which we shall examine below. Seth thought it might be a short novel of around two hundred to three hundred pages and that he would finish it in a year or two. However, the original theme was to expand exponentially. It was 1987, Vikram Seth was 35 years old and the novel was published in 1993. He was to say later that A Suitable Boy, a massive novel, carved a huge chunk from his 30s (Guardian Talk).