The idea of India as a secular nation—one that is greater for its diversity and plurality—is in jeopardy both in A Suitable Boy and in today’s world. The trauma of Partition hangs over the newly birthed independent nation in the series, and even as friendship and romance blooms between Hindus and Muslims, a conflict brews in the fictional university town of Brahmpur over a Hindu temple being built next to a Muslim mosque. In real life, the 1992 demolition of Babri Masjid, ostensibly to avenge the 16th-century destruction of a Hindu temple in the same site, is an ongoing flashpoint in Indian society. Just last month, prime minister Narendra Modi visited Ayodhya to consecrate the temple being built on the site of the mosque’s ruins. “The story was imitating life,” Nair says of A Suitable Boy’s political relevance. “Now—people fight against it… but actually [India’s] strengths, our identity, are deeply plural.”
Nair also pointed to Maan’s lifelong friendship with Firoz Ali Khan (Shubham Saraf), an echo of their fathers’ longstanding friendship, as one of the relational triumphs of the story, and a beacon of cooperation between the Hindu and Muslim communities. “There’s great nobility on both sides that transcends” their differences, she says.
Both the novel and miniseries hint that Maan and Firoz have a relationship that might be more than strictly platonic; the production chose to adhere strictly to the book instead of exploring that taboo relationship further. “Theirs is a love story I did not want to downplay,” says Nair. “[But] they are past the physical involvement that they definitely had.” She describes their familiarity with each other as “old affection.” “It’s as ancient as the hills,” she says of same-sex coupling in traditional Indian society. (After being criminalized in the colonial era, India’s Supreme Court recently paved the way for greater acceptance of homosexuality.)
Seth’s novel challenges tradition in many arenas: In one excruciating scene, Lata has to fend off the sexual advances of an older male relative. But while she is disgusted, she is still painfully bound by tradition; she lacks even the language to share what happened to her with those closest to her. The miniseries leaves these characters—living in the ‘50s, and put to paper in 1993—untouched by the commentary of 2020. Nair credits Maniktala for bringing an air of traditional, demure Indian femininity to the role, a quality she and her casting director, Dilip Shankar, struggled to find in their search for Lata. After seeing nearly 400 performers, they found Maniktala, then working as an advertising copywriter in Gurgaon, a satellite city of Delhi, which has become a tech and finance hub.
Early in the miniseries, Lata expresses a wish to never be married—a wish not granted by her family. The novel ends with her marriage, though I won’t spoil to whom. In some ways, the end of the novel feels like a compromise, or at the very least, a pragmatic solution to a thorny problem; Lata’s ending is not exactly a romantic one.
But Nair did not want to diminish the happiness of her choice, either. “Lata and [her eventual husband] are Vikram’s parents, and I knew them,” she says. “Knowing them, and making A Suitable Boy, it did not feel like a compromise.” Nair didn’t want to end the story with the feeling that Lata had settled, but rather that, in her preternatural self-awareness, she was merely anticipating who she would best pair with in the society she lives in.
It’s an exceptionally Indian love story, where family, society, and duty end up taking a much bigger role in one’s decisions than personal choice. Lata’s coming-of-age mirrors the country’s effort to step into its own identity, making A Suitable Boy not just the story of one woman’s choice but an entire country’s future.
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