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PORTRAYAL of INDIA of the 1950S in MIRA NAIR's MINISERIES a SUITABLE Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.9.Issue 2. 2021 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June) Email:[email protected]; ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) RESEARCH ARTICLE PORTRAYAL OF INDIA OF THE 1950s IN MIRA NAIR’S MINISERIES A SUITABLE BOY VEENA SINDHU1, Dr. ARCHANA HOODA2 1Assistant Professor of English, Govt. College for Girls, Sector-14, Gurugram (Haryana) Email address- [email protected] 2Associate Professor of English, Govt. College for Girls, Sector-14, Gurugram (Haryana) Email address- [email protected] Abstract Vikram Seth’s 1474 page novel A Suitable Boy written in 1993 was adapted by Andrew Davies into a six episode serial and was directed by Mira Nair. This BBC television drama released on 23 Oct 2020 on Netflix depicts the social, economic, political and cultural upheaval of newly independent India of 1950s. The serial covers the events, the issues and challenges encountered in the time span of one Article Received: 28/05/2021 year from 1950 to 1951 in the post independent era. Though on the surface the Article Accepted: 26/06/2021 Published online:30/06/2021 story appears to be of a mother’s aspiration to find a suitable match for her daughter DOI: 10.33329/rjelal.9.2.322 and the daughter torn between her duty towards her mother and her instinct to follow her heart’s desire, the serial actually holds a mirror to society. The diversity of characters in the serial represents the various facets of being an Indian in the early 1950s. This paper is an attempt to portray a newly independent India of the 1950s in Mira Nair’s miniseries A Suitable Boy. Keywords: Suitable, India, marriage, partition, boy Mira Nair was born in 1957 in Odisha films negotiate disparate ethnic geographies with (formerly called Orissa), India and then moved to the same kind of sly civility she practices in life. Her New York where she has been residing for about four approach is sometimes oblique: she doesn’t make decades. In 1988, she directed Salaam Bombay, a political films, but she does make her films significantly commended account of life in the slums politically. Her gift, to which ‘Monsoon Wedding’ of Mumbai followed by an early Denzel Washington attests, is to make diversity irresistible.’ drama, Mississippi Masala which is about an Indian Mira Nair took upon herself to make the story from Uganda in the American South. Since then, Nair about Lata finding herself through the sea of suitors, has made many feature films, including Monsoon literature, her family and the propriety of nineteen- Wedding in 2001, and has become recognized as one fifties Indian life, and to knit those strands of of the finest interpreters of the Indian-immigrant essentially a personal humanist look at family life, experience. Nair has also adapted classic novels, into a look at a country that was striving to ascertain including Vanity Fair, and several pieces of modern its freedom. That was her concern. She also draws literature, such as Jhumpa Lahiri’s The Namesake our attention towards the fact that the seeds of and Mohsin Hamid’s The Reluctant Fundamentalist. much of the terrible politics of today were also In a Profile of Nair in 2002, John Lahr wrote, ‘Nair’s sowed at independence and Partition. 322 VEENA SINDHU, Dr. ARCHANA HOODA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.9.Issue 2. 2021 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June) Email:[email protected]; ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) The story A Suitable Boy revolves around Mira Nair in a conversation with Isaac the inner mechanism of four families related to each Chotiner on December 7, 2020 for The New Yorker other by marriage and friendship. We have the discussed her career as a filmmaker, the challenges middle class educated Mehras, politically connected of adapting an epic novel, and how rising bigotry in Kapoors and the surfeit, sophisticated Chaterjis, who India, led by the Hindu-nationalist Bharatiya Janata are all Hindus and connected to each other by Party, affected her work on A Suitable Boy. After the marriage. The elder daughter of Rupa Mehra, Savita interview, it was reported that members of the B.J.P. is married to Pran Kapoor, son of Mahesh Kapoor, called for an inquiry of Netflix, the series’ Indian the Revenue Minister. Then there is glamorous but distributor, alleging that the portrayal of a kiss promiscuous Meenakshi Chaterji married to Rupa between a Muslim man and Hindu woman Mehra’s eldest son Arun Mehra, an anglicized Indian deliberately infuriates religious sentiments, which in living in Calcutta. Meenakshi’s brother Amit, a poet, India is a felony. Netflix has given no public is a suitor of Lata Mehra. The fourth family is the statement, and Nair declined to address the Khan family. Nawab Sahib of Baitar’s friendship with complaint. Mahesh Kapoor transcends all religious barriers. His Nair’s most gratifying elucidation comes in son Feroz Ali Khan too is a close friend of Kapoor’s her micro-to-macro juxtaposition of how the politics lost, unmoored son Maan. Their friendship is tested of Indian matchmaking and lovemaking play out when in a fit of rage, jealousy and misunderstanding against that of a nation struggling to get to its feet. Maan stabs Feroz. Ultimately the friendship prevails Through Maan and Lata’s analogous journeys and when Maan gets acquitted in the end due to the common learnings, she professes the idea that love testimony of Feroz. and ambition need to go hand in hand for a country The Mehras live in Brahmpur which is a recently divided on communal lines and given the typical Indian town with temples and mosques, but freedom to choose its path ahead. the trauma of partition seems to hang over the town Nair said that she was drawn to the political leaving resentment and mistrust in its wake creating backdrop of a post-independence India as it long living division between the two communities. prepared for its first national election as a Tension breaks out when the Hindus and Muslims democracy, and how Lata’s character especially take out processions on the occasion of Dusherra personified the modernity and optimism of the time. and Muharram, which coincide in the lunar calendar. ‘That idealism and socialism is a huge inspiration for A minor altercation turns into a blood bath leaving me. My parents came out of that,’ she said. Her everyone blood thirsty. In another incident a conflict father, Amrit Nair, was a civil servant in the Indian brews and Hindu Muslim riots break out due to a state of Orissa during the same time and shared the Hindu temple being built near a Muslim mosque. same dream of building a new country. ‘It’s Thus the racial tension in the area makes it a tinder important to remember where we came from box ready to ignite at slightest provocation. Right because we could so easily be made to forget,’ she from the first episode, the rise of Hindu nationalism said, appending that while the series holds up a following the formation of Pakistan is underscored. mirror to the current society, it also pushes back The building of a temple next to a mosque by the against disruptive expectations. For example, it local authorities, backed by the national ruling party, demonstrates the strength of Hindu and Muslim was burningly pertinent at that time, in 1993 when relationships even with the political complexities. the book released, and is so in the present day. (Nair herself comes from a Hindu family, while her Maan and his best friend Firoz’s (Shubham Saraf) husband is Muslim.) This includes the friendship relationship is made use of as a layered symbol to between Maan and Firoz, his relationship with the growing Hindu-Muslim dynamics in the country, Saaeda as well as the interfaith romance between as the two friends go from enigmatically queer to Lata and one of her suitors, a Muslim man named blinded by wrath and prejudice. Kabir Durrani. 323 VEENA SINDHU, Dr. ARCHANA HOODA Research Journal of English Language and Literature (RJELAL) A Peer Reviewed (Refereed) International Journal Vol.9.Issue 2. 2021 Impact Factor 6.8992 (ICI) http://www.rjelal.com; (April-June) Email:[email protected]; ISSN:2395-2636 (P); 2321-3108(O) Mira stated she paid great attention to find Pradesh. A misunderstood visionary he intends to a balance in the historical details and cultural get Zamindari abolition bill passed and the nuances, from elite families doing the Foxtrot and opposition he faces is well reflected. Nawab Sahib of dancing impeccably in a Kolkata club to the Hindu Baitar who represents the decaying feudal world of and Urdu classical music in the performances by India is likely to be most hit with the passing of the Saeeda, a courtesan and Maan’s lover. Nair said she bill, but this does not affect his personal relationship strove to capture the essence of India in the 50s with Mahesh Kapoor. Just as the politicians of the through the locations, scouting for real-life places in present whip up communal passion for narrow the city of Lucknow to find bungalows like the ones political ends, we see Waris using the communal she herself grew up in, complete with red oxide divide between Hindus and Muslims to his floors, arches and sprawling gardens. The textile too advantage to win elections and defeat Mahesh seen in the serial reflects the era.
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