I have never read War and Peace, Paradise Lost, or A Suitable Boy and I am ashamed to own up to this. Admittedly, I have made a start on each one – a few times, but I was defeated by something very prosaic: I couldn’t get beyond names that were so unfamiliar to me.
Tolstoy and Vikram Seth peopled their novels with huge casts of characters and I couldn’t keep up with them. The many, difficult, long names, confused me: I wasn’t sure how to pronounce them in my head; I didn’t know if they were male or female; there were so many. I gave up with each book three times!
This is going to change. I have taken A Suitable Boy from the bookcase where it has been for the last 25 years and I am going to read all 1474 pages of it, with its tiny print and lines so close together. I have just watched an Indian production of it on TV and even though the names were strange to my ears and I was confused by which family was which (and there were several) I was enchanted. After two episodes I was hooked. It was all so … different: the religions; the culture; the beautiful clothes; the strange British influence on everything; the colour; the vibrancy. It was compelling.
More compelling was who would Lata marry? Who was the suitable boy? And how would religion and politics in the new nation of India, affect the lives of those families? Vikram Seth showed that despite those differences we are the same. We all want want our nations to be undivided. We want tolerance to prevail. We want our children and grandchildren to be happy. We want our daughters to find a suitable boy.
I thought how wonderful it would be to be the person who facilitated such things and had a moment of epiphany – I should never have trained as a teacher I should have been a matchmaker! They still exist. I heard a radio programme about Shidduchim, or Jewish matchmakers and was fascinated. I fit the requirements: I am very interested in families; I always want people to pair up; I am now the perfect age to do this; I am expected to be nosy and interfering – such a job would suit me down to the ground!
