A 'Suitably Safe' Adaptation

 

I vividly remember enjoying Vikram Seth’s ‘A Suitable Boy’, and if you have read it you will know that you have to be sufficiently invested in Lata Mehra’s quest to find her Mr. Right to get through the 1300+ page tome. Mira Nair’s visual adaptation of the book remains faithful to the main plot and characters. For those who haven’t read the book, it is a sufficient reflection of the trials and tribulations of how difficult it might have been to fall in love in the post-Partition era, let alone have a Hindu girl court a Muslim boy. So Mrs. Rupa Mehra has all the zest of a 19th century Mrs. Bennet from Pride & Prejudice when it comes to setting her daughter up with a decent match. The BBC One produced Netflix televised series has all the makings of a literal translation of page to screen with opulent backdrops to convey the post-Independence era in the fictional town of Brahmpur, the Nawabi havelis, the courtesan’s kothi and the British-influenced colonial architecture of erstwhile Calcutta. Lata’s sarees are ethereal and beautiful in their simplicity. Delhi-based debutante Tanya Maniktala playing Lata is a fresh face, and exhibits the necessary spunk that Lata embodies as she straddles the traditional Indian value system with her modernistic, youthful attitude to love and relationships. Maan Kapoor, one of the most intriguing characters in the story whose journey from boy to man is a noteworthy one, is earnestly played by new Bollywood boy-on-the-block Ishaan Khattar, who makes an effort to look convincing as the flawed black sheep in the righteous Kapoor khaandaan. Tabu shimmers subtly as Saeeda Bai, a woman who struggles to give a respectable upbringing to her ward- Tasneem while battling desire and social status accorded to her by her clients like the Raja of Marh. A special mention to my St. Xavier’s alumni and trained classical singer Namit Das who emotes with his eyes to essay his true feelings for Lata convincingly. 

Amidst the rich fabric that makes up this era, what I found deliberately missing in the TV series are the strong political undercurrents that were running through the country at this time that laid the foundations of what India was going to be all about for the next few decades. There are glimpses to the destruction of the Masjid and its repercussions and the oppressive zamindari system. However, the elections in which Mahesh Kapoor loses his seat to Waris, the communal riots and the climactic changes brought about by Nehru’s eventual intervention in the nation’s state of affairs are largely overlooked to give the love story some precedence. In that sense, perhaps the on-screen version lacks the gravitas that the author of the book made his readers engage in and Mira Nair chooses a rather safe way to angle her story for today’s polarised audiences. The story of A Suitable Boy is as much the story of the slow and aspirational rise of the self-made man in newly minted independent India, Haresh Khanna as it is of Rasheed, the Urdu teacher hopelessly in love with Tasneem and struggling against both family and the feudal system in his village. Much sparkle is added in the book through smaller characters but with no lesser depth as the mains like the little boy genius Bhaskar Tandon or Kabir’s father Dr. Durrani, the mathematician. The supporting cast are not just there to add mere flesh to the lead characters’ slow tread towards their eventual destiny. The appeal of this book for me is in the impact of what the British left behind in our country- in the anglicised Chatterji family where Lata is welcomed by her philandering sister-in-law Meenakshi, in the democracy that has been and continues to be threatened by religious factions in India till date and despite western education and influence, how society is governed by a strongly overt moral code when it came to conjugal ties, old friendships and illicit relationships. 

Nowhere is this more apparent than in another highly-criticised and reviewed show, Indian Matchmaking on Netflix again. This is an obvious representation of how we Indians are obsessed with finding the ‘right match’. High-flying and veteran matchmaker ‘Sima Taparia from Mumbai’ as she likes to introduce herself, is proficient in her matchmaking algorithms. She has figured the conflicts of what parents want against what young suitors today really look for in a life partner. The result: She knows for sure one size does not fit all. For someone who has never been part of an arranged marriage set-up, Indian Matchmaking made me as curious as it would a person alien to Indian culture. So it was interesting to see how two random people are actually put together on something like an excel sheet, some calculations made, some divine intervention sought, stars tallied, criteria ticked and voila! We have a pair! So what if the pair or pairs in this series, do not quite make the cut in the end. Post-coverage reveals none of the matches came good and the potential suitors remained only that. Given that the whole process of meeting and greeting was staged, I doubt we got to see what really went on behind the scenes and how serious anyone was about getting hitched through this show. It looks like a great compilation of well-heeled, ready to mingle but highly skeptical individuals who drop the potato at the first sign of a negative trait. It questions the authenticity of ‘first meetings’ and how many are enough to come to that big decision. How much of a person can you get to know when all he or she is projecting his or her best face and attributes to make that big impression. It also hit me that men have no clue what women want from a marriage.  No matter how badly they want to play the role of a 21st century urban equivalent of Prince Charming, they aren’t too far from the conventional mark when it comes to expressing their expectations when it comes to their ‘dreamgirl’. She has to charm the mother, make a valiant effort to ‘fit in’ and is a threat to his ambitions or ideas of domestic bliss if she has firm opinions and comes across as smart, independent and highly educated. The perpetual mother-in-law figure is also as intimidating and overbearing when it comes to deciding on a match for the good-as-gold son, a trait made infamous in countless saas-bahu soaps. So while women may have reached the moon, the roles they must play as wives remain morally ridden in strict ethical codes, writ in stone by other women.