Everything about Vikram Seth totally explained
Vikram Seth (pronounced /vɪkrəm seːʈʰ/), born
June 20,
1952 is an
Indian
poet,
novelist, travel writer,
librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist.
Background
Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta (now
Kolkata) in 1952. His family lived in a number of cities including the
Bata Shoe Company town of
Batanagar (near Kolkata),
Patna and
London.
His father, Prem Seth, was an executive of the
Bata India Limited shoe company who migrated to post-Partition India from
West Punjab in
Pakistan. His mother,
Leila was the first woman judge on the
Delhi High Court as well as the first woman to become
Chief Justice of a state High Court, at
Simla. She studied law in London while pregnant with Seth's younger brother and came first in her Bar examinations conducted only weeks after she delivered her second child.
His younger brother, Shantum, leads
Buddhist meditational tours. His younger sister, Aradhana, is a film-maker married to an Austrian diplomat, and has worked on
Deepa Mehta's movies
Earth and
Fire. (Compare the characters Haresh, Lata, Savita and two of the Chatterji siblings in
A Suitable Boy: Seth has been candid in acknowledging that many of his fictional characters are drawn from life; he's said that only the dog Cuddles in
A Suitable Boy has his real name — "Because he can't sue". Justice Leila Seth has said in her memoir
On Balance that other characters in
A Suitable Boy are composites but Haresh is a portrait of her husband Prem.)
Having lived in London for many years, Seth now maintains residences near
Salisbury,
England, where he's a notable participant in local literary and cultural events, having bought in 1996 and renovated the house of the seventeenth century Anglican divine and metaphysical poet
George Herbert, and in Delhi, where he lives with his parents and keeps his extensive library and papers.
Education
He attended
St Michael's High School in
Patna,
Welham Boys' School and
The Doon School in
Dehra Dun.
At Doon Founder's Day gathering in 1992, he remarked about his "terrible feeling of loneliness and isolation" while studying at the prestigious institution. He said,
Sometimes, at lights out, I wished I'd never wake up to hear the chhota hazri bell. For days after I left I thought of school as a kind of jungle, and looked back on it with a shudder. I was teased and bullied by my classmates and my seniors because of my interest in studies and reading, because of my lack of interest in games, because of my unwillingness to join gangs and groups.
The experience — intensified to outright sexual abuse at the hands of older boys — is given to Tapan, the younger brother of Amit Chatterjee, the character bearing numerous similarities to Seth himself in
A Suitable Boy (Amit takes charge of withdrawing the boy from the school and enrolling him in a day school). The widely-quoted comments themselves, however, and the fact that he made them, perhaps shouldn't be relied upon entirely to characterise either his schooldays or Seth the man; in his speech to the Doon students he also spoke of the advantages the school conferred on him and offered words of encouragement and inspiration. And in an interview with the
Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Margaret Throsby, his slightly younger contemporary at Doon, the anthropologist and novelist
Amitav Ghosh, expressed surprise at the report of how Seth had characterised his school days: in his own recollection Seth had been deservedly lionised by both students and staff, his winning personality and brilliant intellect having been well in evidence even then.
He completed his
A-levels at
Tonbridge School in
Kent,
England, and read
Philosophy, Politics and Economics (PPE) at
Corpus Christi College, Oxford. He undertook doctoral studies at
Stanford University where he's stated that he spent "11 years (from 1975 to 1986) not getting an
economics Ph.D." While formally engaged in postgraduate economics courses at Stanford he also undertook poetics studies — he was
Wallace Stegner Fellow in Creative Writing in 1977-1978 — with the poet
Timothy Steele, whose traditionally structured verse with formal rhyme and metre (together with that of
Robert Frost and
Philip Larkin) inspired Seth to adopt a similar formal discipline in his own poetry. "I wanted to have some contact with the writing program," Seth recalled in 2003 interview. "So I went to this office and asked if there was anyone who could help with poetry. There were two poets there and the one nearest the door was Timothy Steele, who writes with rhyme and metre. If the other fellow had been closer, I'd probably have turned out a poet of free verse." He also enrolled in Mandarin language courses at Stanford that later helped him gain fluency in the language during his stint in China.
In 1980-82 Seth did extensive field work in China gathering data for his intended doctoral dissertation on Chinese population planning; he was attached to
Nanjing University while in China and became fluent in Mandarin within six months, later translating Chinese as well as Hindi poetry into English. He took advantage of his Chinese language fluency to return home to Delhi overland via Xinjiang and Tibet, resulting in
From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet (1983), a combination travel narrative and personal memoir written at the suggestion of his father.
Personal life
Avocations
A famous
polymath, Seth detailed in an interview (in the year
2005) in the Australian magazine
Good Weekend that he's studied several languages, including
Welsh,
German and, later,
French in addition to the oft-noted
Mandarin,
English (which he describes as "my instrument" in answer to Indians who query his not writing in his native
Hindi),
Urdu (so useful to him during the travels in Sinkiang and Tibet detailed in
From Heaven Lake), which he reads and writes in
Nasta’liq script, and
Hindi, which he reads and writes in the Devanāgarī script. He plays the Indian flute and the cello and sings German lieder, especially
Schubert.
Business acumen
Seth is famously astute as a businessman. His late literary agent Giles Gordon recalled being interviewed by Seth for the position:
Vikram sat at one end of a long table and he began to grill us. It was absolutely incredible. He wanted to know our literary tastes, our views on poetry, our views on plays, which novelists we liked. He prepared an acrostic poem for his address at Gordon's 2005 memorial service:
» Gone though you have, I heard your voice today.
I tried to make out what the words might mean, » Like something seen half-clearly on a screen:
Each savoured reference, each laughing bark, » Sage comment, bad pun, indiscreet remark.
» Gone since you have, grief too in time will go,
Or share space with old joy; it must be so. » Rest then in peace, but spare us some elation.
Death can't put down every conversation. » Over and out, as you once used to say?
Not on your life. You're on this line to stay.
Gay and Bisexual themes
In each of Seth’s novels and in much of his poetry, there have been central or peripheral gay or bisexual themes and characters; in particular one of the central relationships in The Golden Gate and the association between Maan and Firoz in A Suitable Boy. Seth has been discreet but not secretive about his personal life, occasionally citing his early poem “Dubious” without further comment:
» Some men like Jack and some like Jill
I'm glad I like them both but still » I wonder if this freewheeling
Really is an enlightened thing, » Or is its greater scope a sign
Of deviance from some party line? » In the strict ranks of Gay and Straight
What is my status: Stray? Or Great?
Beyond the dedication in An Equal Music, Seth has expressly acknowledged his ten-year relationship with his former partner, Philippe Honoré. Indian-born San Francisco journalist Sandip Roy reports that Seth discussed the issue of his sexuality candidly in a television program with his sister Aradhana. In a book tour radio interview,
Seth has been increasingly forthright in recent years on the issue of gay rights in his native India. In an interview on CNN-IBN aired 21 January 2006, Seth talked about the law in India relating to homosexuality. He called section 377 of the Indian Penal Code barbaric and archaic. He advocated its removal, saying that the British who introduced this have removed it in their own country. He gave three reasons for it being removed: (1) it's silly (as India is following something outdated); (2) it's cruel (as it causes intolerable pain and self-doubt); and (3) it's harmful (as it promotes underground activities which pose a health problem). He wished that young Indians wouldn't have to worry about their sexuality. He suggested that the government was afraid of losing votes and it was fear that drove its indisposition to amend the current draconian criminal sanctions against homosexuality. Continuing with the theme, Seth said in an interview with Sheela Reddy published in Outlook India on 2 October 2006,
I don't particularly like talking about these matters myself. I'm a private person and I don't feel my friends' lives and my own should be part of the public's right to know. But in a case like this where so much is at stake, where the happiness, at a conservative estimate, of 50 million people and their right not to be fearful or lonely and to be with the people whom they love is at issue, and the happiness of their families as well, then it really is incumbent on us to speak out.
Seth credits his then-partner, the French violinist Philippe Honoré, as inspiring him with the idea for An Equal Music in an acrostic sonnet on Honoré's name which is the epigraph to An Equal Music:
» Perhaps this could have stayed unstated.
Had our words turned to other things » In the grey park, the rain abated,
Life would have quickened other strings. » I list your gifts in this creation:
Pen, paper, ink and inspiration, » Peace to the heart with touch or word,
Ease to the soul with note and chord.
» How did that walk, those winter hours,
Occasion this? No lightning came; » Nor did I sense, when touched by flame,
Our story lit with borrowed powers - » Rather, by what our spirits burned,
Embered in words, to us returned.
Seth together with Philippe Honoré marketed a double CD of the music mentioned in An Equal Music, performed by Honoré.
His most recent book, Two Lives, is a non-fiction family memoir written at the suggestion of his mother, and published in October, 2005. It focuses on the lives of his great uncle (Shanti Behari Seth) and German-Jewish great aunt (Henny Caro) who met in Berlin in the early 1930s while Shanti was a student there and with whom Seth stayed extensively on going to England at age 17 for school at Tonbridge and then to attend Oxford. As with From Heaven Lake, Two Lives contains much autobiography and this is a considerable part of its appeal.
Range
Seth's range is demonstrated by the historical accuracy of A Suitable Boy, with the nuanced cultivated-Indian English of the narrative voice and the entirely in-character voices of the principals of the story; the correspondingly accurate depiction of northern California yuppies of the 1980s in The Golden Gate; and his portrait of the world of western classical musicians in An Equal Music. He has continued to produce volumes of poetry at intervals alongside his publications in a range of other forms, including translations from Chinese poets. Despite his erudition in a wide range of disciplines, both his prose and poetry are characterised by their accessibility and he's said that he works to ensure this.
In most of Seth's writing (apart from An Equal Music, narrated in the first person by its central character), there's a strong, engaging narrative persona — sometimes, as in From Heaven Lake, obviously Seth himself; at other times, in his novels and poems, intermittently so. He has complained about some of his readers assuming on book tours a degree of intimacy with him that they've not earned.
A film of A Suitable Boy is slated to go into production in 2007, an earlier attempt at a television serialisation having been abandoned.
Published works
Novels
Poetry
Mappings (1980)
The Humble Administrator's Garden (1985)
All You Who Sleep Tonight (1990)
Beastly Tales (1991)
Three Chinese Poets (1992)
Children's book
Beastly Tales (1991)
Libretto
Arion and the Dolphin (1994) for the English National Opera
Non-fiction
From Heaven Lake, (1983)
Two Lives, (2005)
Prizes and awards
1983 Thomas Cook Travel Book Award From Heaven Lake: Travels Through Sinkiang and Tibet
1985 Commonwealth Poetry Prize (Asia) The Humble Administrator's Garden
1993 Irish Times International Fiction Prize (shortlist) A Suitable Boy
1994 Commonwealth Writers Prize (Overall Winner, Best Book) A Suitable Boy
1994 WH Smith Literary Award A Suitable Boy
2001 EMMA (BT Ethnic and Multicultural Media Award) for Best Book/Novel An Equal Music
2005 Pravasi Bharatiya Samman
2007 Padma Shri award.Further Information
Get more info on 'Vikram Seth'.
|
External Link Exchanges
Do you know how hard it is to get a link from a large encyclopaedia? Well we're different and will prove it. To get a link from us just add the following HTML to your site on a relevant page:
<a href="http://vikram_seth.totallyexplained.com">Vikram Seth Totally Explained</a>
Then simply click through this link from your web page. Our crawlers will verify your link, extract the title of your web page and instantly add a link back to it. If you like you can remove the words Totally Explained and embed the link in article text.
As long as your link remains in place, we'll keep our link to you right here. Please play fair - our crawlers are watching. Your site must be closely related to this one's topic. Any kind of spamming, dubious practises or removing the link will result in your link from us being dropped and, potentially, your whole site being banned. |
