Weaving of Arachne

 Reading A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth was one of the best decisions I ever took. A Suitable Boy, a humungous novel of approximately 1500 pages can confidently be claimed as one of the longest novels in English, if not the longest. As the blurb of the book says, at its core it is a love story, it portrays the young protagonist’s journey of finding love and its meaning. But, it will be a gross understatement to label it as merely a love story because the scope of this immense novel extends beyond all such conventional labelling. It explores every spectrum of life, or to be precise Indian life, encompassing within its ambit politics, law, religion, academia, Nawabi culture, geography, etc. I doubt whether there is any aspect of everyday life that doesn’t find mention in this book. The novel leisurely unfolds before the readers a panoramic view of India, including the marvellous and praiseworthy as well as the abdominal and ugly.  The novel is set in the 1950s; it covers the years 195