Adapting vikram seth's a suitable boy isn't everyone's cup of tea

An immensely popular book, _A Suitable Boy_ was an instant best-seller and also enjoyed critical acclaim. Although it was snubbed when it came to the Booker Prize shortlist, a development

that promoted publisher Anthony Cheetham to call the Booker judges “a bunch of wankers.” The book has been an indelible part of the readers’ conscious mind for almost three decades. It’s

also one of the reasons why there is a great deal of intrigue surrounding Nair’s screen adaptation. The series has opened to sumptuous reviews in the United Kingdom, but it’s baffling why

the makers would be okay with condensing the sweeping epic into a handful of episodes. When it first came out, adapting _A Suitable Boy_ for the screen was the kind of thing few would

attempt. Both have been adapted multiple times but it’s near impossible to capture the spirit of such works, especially the symbolic tone of the era, and _A Suitable Boy_ fell in the same

category. Condensing _A Suitable Boy_ would do injustice to the mood and feel and in an era where it would be relatively easier to do a more faithful adaption, Nair and screenwriter Andrew

Davies, oddly enough, decided to distil the “novel into six hours.” Beginning in the late 1980s, Chinese literary adaptions changed the way the world looked at its cinema. Although many

people were aware of Zhang Yimou’s highly acclaimed films _Red Sorghum_, _Raise the Red Lantern_, and _To Live,_ few knew that they were based on books. The popularity of the films made

audiences beyond the physical boundaries of China discover Mo Yan’s _Red Sorghum Clan,_ Su Tong’s _Wives and Concubines_ and _To Live_ by Yu Hua. In the mid-1990s, Dev Benegal’s film version

of Upamanyu Chatterjee’s _English, August_ (1994) came close to doing something similar for Indian writers. A few years later, when Pamela Rooks adapted Khushwant Singh’s _Train to Pakistan

_(1998) many felt that an exploration of the literary origins of these films would become a reality. But as luck would have it, this did not happen. The arrival of the OTT platform has come

as a blessing for novels and books because unlike cinema, it’s easier to pitch authentic (read true to length) literary adaptations. However, there is also a chance that this rejuvenation

could get sidelined, thanks to a generous helping of presentism accompanying the interpretations. One can choose to emphasise those parallels or not, and she very much chose to. This

phenomenon is not uncommon in today’s television adaptations where creators of series based on the 1962 and 1985 dystopian novels by Philip K. Dick and Margaret Atwood, _The Man in the High

Castle_ and _The Handmaid’s Tale_ respectively, have on many occasions said their interpretations are an allegory of the post-President Donald Trump's United States. The adaptation of

one of modern India’s most famous literary works could finally nudge Vikram Seth to complete the long-awaited sequel. Ironically, Seth’s _A Suitable Girl_ is supposedly based in more

contemporary times.