Vikram Seth's 'A suitable girl'- first review

In keeping with this blog's long-standing commitment to passing judgement on tomes it hasn't read, we take pleasure in bringing you our review of Vikram Seth's latest book fresh from the redoubtable pen of Prof. Vagina Dentata Choothopadhayay, dipped, we need hardly add, in her own copious menstrual blood.

In consideration of our readers' tender sensibilities, we have taken the liberty of excising certain four letter words and acrimonious references to the size of our genitals from Prof. Choothopahdyay's article. Since nothing was then left to publish, our Senior Editor has very kindly supplied the following.

Vikram Seth, like Jane Austen, takes his subject matter from the Sense vs. Sensibility dilemma facing Female Mate Choice. He gives a sort of Feminist tinge to his project by forbidding his Heroines the right to sacrifice themselves so as to keep an otherwise Unsuitable Boy functional as opposed to turning into a monumental  fuck-up. However, in so doing, he cuts off his project from 'Greatness' because though a Utilitarian 'Heart vs Head' dilemma is Universal, it is not Fundamental and carries no Soteriological or Existential flavor in the manner that the subject matter of truly Great Literature does.
True, Jane Austen doesn't deal with the case of women sacrificing themselves for their Mates- but it is very evident that they sacrifice their own prejudices or proclivities in the interest of Marriage-as-partnership- albeit Sleeping Partnership because women in her age were second class citizens to start off with. Married women had no rights over their own property. She herself, for Socio-Economic reasons was doomed to Spinsterhood. Rudyard Kipling's 'the Janeites', which only makes us cringe because we have not tears enough to cry, offers a collective act of reparation such that our tears wipe away the ink of a hundred years of English Literature and Jane marries her suitor up in Heaven with Sir Walter Scott doing the honors. In other words, there is something outside Austen's texts which makes them Great- there is a vishodhana purgation whereby, at least for Kipling's readers- the Literature to which Austen so signally contributed, or which she incarnated, precisely by a consideration of what both elide, gains the Jordan of our heart-felt tears from which to arise in the bridal vestments of a Gangetic dawn. At least, hopeless and hereditary Babu that I am, such is my Babuish judgement.
For Seth's heroines, Self-sacrifice isn't on the menu. Thus, the arena in which they judiciously exercise Mate Choice is one from which any higher type of Love than can be captured by Revealed Preference is rigorously ruled out. Thus, though 'Universal', this Mate-Choice remains confined to the trivial plane and can give rise to no tragedy save adventitiously or under the rubric of 'there but for the Grace of God.'
Seth's subject matter and style are not deficient- the milieus he describes and the powers of language that he commands militate rather for than against the invocation of the grand literary precursors of amor fati or doomed romance to whom he, in the very same texts, pays tribute. Nor is it the case that by forbidding a particular type of sacrifice- that of a woman for a man- is its theo-ontic Terror and/or Necessity axiomatically excluded from the scope of a text, yet for Seth, this is what transpires.
Why?
Jealousy is so like not cool dude.
True, in the Judaeo-Christian tradition, Sacrifice is linked to Jealousy- Jehovah is a jealous God, Cain is jealous of Abel, Caiaphas is pissed off coz Judas got a bigger dick (what? Ask your Rabbi why don't you?)- and, at the heart of things, Rene Girard tells us, is the drama of mimetic desire- envy and the necessity of a scapegoat, a pharmakos, a korban, to inoculate Society against internecine Violence.
But, Seth isn't Jewish, he isn't Christian. His is an Indo-Islamic culture to which has been grafted on a Victorian belief in Progress. His 'A suitable boy' may be dismissed as wishful thinking in that he shows India in 1951 as being the same as in 1991. All that is needed is a bit of 'know-how' and bilateral good will for all the  problems bequeathed by History to simply disappear. The fact is Kabir or Amit or even Haresh won't lose anything very substantial if Lata turns them down. Their 'transfer earnings' are zero. Lata possesses no Economic Rent. Thus Choice is benign simply. There are no Essences- Strategic or otherwise- there is no hysteresis- Historicist or otherwise- and since nothing matters very much, fine, let there be free Choice because after all only Matter exists, nothing immaterial supervenes, the very notion of Sacrifice is otiose.
I haven't read 'A suitable girl'- I've no doubt it will be readable enough and present some points of interest or virtuoso passages which more than justify the price of the book. However, what it will lack is a sense of the Fundamental, as opposed to merely Universal, Horizon of Human Life, which is Death, which is Sacrifice, which, in so far as it is chosen, is the after-Life of Love nobody chooses and of which we can only despairing say, Yea, at the limit, such becomes the Choice of God.

extract from 'Samlee's daughter'- a vist to the kotha

Samlee's daughter Book  2

(This book can be viewed on Google books)

--------------------------11/IX--------------------------

For the kotha visit, Arif had chosen to disguise himself as a Talibani Afghan.

The elderly courtesans were greatly taken with him.

He resisted their blandishments on high religious grounds saying- “Against Love forearmed by Allah’s grace/ A mujahid am I of Afghan race!” This, however, but served to stoke their ardour and they coaxed him to break his vow against amorous dalliance by flattering his racial pride with couplets like- “Hai! Nimrod’s heart & Joseph’s face!/ Sure the darling’s Yusufzais!” or “Of maiden hearts, of conquest greedy/ Sure the darling’s Afridi!” Arif, however, though struggling somewhat to reattach his red beard & keep up his comic Pathan accent, sternly parried their advances saying “To swallow my oath were a crime most heinous/ (Though koh-i-noor^[1] emerged from an Afghan’s anus!)” Which remark so delighted the Besura Begums that they took up the chant crying- ‘And British Crown still is famous/ for koh-i-noor emerged from an Afghan’s anus!’

Meanwhile, Bhim Singh and the chevda-chomper had set to work rooting around in the upper rooms uttering, by the former’s own account, such immortal couplets as (the more Spiritual than Mir Taqi Mir) ‘For God is the Song and Soul the musician/ Kindly assume the doggy position!’ or (the more Socialistic than Faiz Ahmed Faiz) ‘For plight of proletariat is most worrying/ Work it bitch coz I is hurrying!’

Not that those sly work-shy whores didn’t try to put them off with ‘Culture’- reciting ghazals & passing them the sham’ma. However, our heroes promptly blew it out saying things like-

Parvaana ko bhi hai us larhiya se laŗhaai

Bhujaa de sham’ma jo teri saaya angraai!

(So shocked by your shadow’s lascivious stretching & swaying

Tho’ but here to confer, I can’t hear what you are saying

That it thus bids up your price is an absolute scandal!

Think the moths, I surmise, & blow out the candle.)

Or more succinctly-

Kya mushkil mujhe Manini manana?

Yo bitch! Peel my banana!

Meanwhile, Arif and Iyer were busy getting drunk. Keen to keep up the pretense that Arif was Afghan, the elderly courtesans quoted such gems from Khushaal Khan Khattak as-

The dire Moghul’s beck, the drear Muezzin’s call

My little rebeck- come silence them all!

Wine’s  Sea  become gall -save me in your wreck!

What’s a rosary after all?- but a one string rebeck.

&

Nor heart, Spring, knew, nor tears, Neap, know

Reeds- reap a few. Rebeck- sing a-flow

Till our ashes May it- her lightning’s return

Should Green sap stay it- grown Old we burn!

The lines in italics being Arif’s ripostes.

His own (mercifully short) ghazal was as follows-

                                             Jab zalim na hai hum zabaan

                                                                           Apni sunaoon kya ghazal?

                                             Hoon mutarjim-e-afghaan

                                                                           Ki ye khayaal mubtazal!

                                             Kiya shor-o-shaghab kyoun Shaitaan?

                                                                           Shayri ka khabar-e-ajal
                                             Khud hai wo rauzokhaan

                                                                           Har Ishq ka roz-e-azal!

                              (Since the tyrant & I have no common tongue 

                                                                           This- the singular song I’ve sung

                              Even could I translate aright

                                                                           Is to all a cliché trite

                              For captious critics, at Love’s daybreak,

                                                                           The canting Devil invited

                              To tut tut & tipple at Poetry’s wake

                                                                           This elegy the corpse recited!)

Iyer, meanwhile, had been introduced to the mirasins as Sir V.S. Naipaul- which, not unnaturally, led them to have high expectations of him. Even when, remembering Naipaul’s reputation in such places, Iyer very tearfully pleaded to be taken for Vikram Seth- which ought to have kept him safe- the women continued to eye him hopefully. He, for his part, being used to the brusque efficiency of London barmaids, greatly deplored the delays in refilling his glass occasioned by the courtesans’ reciting of poetry. Hence, being passed the sham’ma, he made his views known as follows-

Abh ki shayri hai Saqi ka naya shagal

Hum sharabi sunayen kya ghazal?

Shakeel hai Saqi par ban na faz’l

To saqil shayri mein na ho baz’l!

Ki unpé Laal bhaboo’ka shab-e-azal

Laulaak hai Pari ka aihl-e-daghal!

Ki pyaasa hai Saqi hai shayri chugh’l

Kuch tanaafur hui, na hui ghazal!

(Since the Saqi has taken it into her head to write

What verse can this drunkard now recite?

Fair is the Saqi but were nobler far

To stint her verses not us at the bar!

When primordial Night blushed to scorn

Thy Judas kiss, Wine was born

Of the Saqi’s thirst, her poetry tells

We heard some jargon but no ghazals!)

---

^[1]    Koh-i-noor (mountain of light) a famous diamond. Shah Shuja, an Aghan king, swallowed it so as to keep it from falling into the hands of the Sikhs. However, the soldiers kept watch on him until he passed the diamond in his stool. It is now one of the British Crown Jewels.