Vikram Seth (pronounced sayt), born June 20, 1952 is an Indian poet, novelist, travel writer, librettist, children's writer, biographer and memoirist. An unusually forthcoming writer whose published material is replete with un- or thinly-disguised details as to the personal lives of himself and his intimates related in a highly engaging narrative voice, Seth has said that he is somewhat perplexed that his readers often in consequence presume to an unwelcome degree of personal familiarity with him.

Background

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Vikram Seth was born in Calcutta (now Kolkata); his family lived in a number of cities including the Bata Shoe Company town of Batanagar, near Calcutta, Patna and London, though never Calcutta proper during his childhood, he himself spending extended periods away at boarding school from the age of five. His father, Prem, 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 had 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. That child, Vikram Seth's younger brother, Shantum, leads Buddhist meditational tours; his younger sister, Aradhana, is a film-maker married to an Austrian diplomat, who worked on Deepa Mehta's Earth and Fire. (Compare the characters Haresh and Savita and two of the Chatterjee siblings in A Suitable Boy: Seth has been unusually candid in acknowledging that many of his fictional personnel are drawn from life; he has said that only the dog Cuddles in A Suitable Boy has his real name — "Because he can't sue"; his mother 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 Premo.)

Education

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He attended The Doon School, often called the "Eton of India," in Dehradun, and told a Doon Founder's Day gathering in 1992 of his "terrible feeling of loneliness and isolation" while studying at the prestigious institution. Seth said, "Sometimes, at lights out, I wished I would 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).

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Mini review: Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" - Intricate. Very long, many characters. Kind of confusing in spots. Ultimately worth the time.
milkcratejess (Jessica Coles) Tue, 29 Dec 2009 22:03:19 -0000
Mini review: Vikram Seth's "A Suitable Boy" - Intricate. Very long, many characters. Kind of confusing in spots. Ultimately worth the time.
I'm #reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth - http://bit.ly/5a6E0J
vb2000 (Vineet Bahal) Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:55:48 -0000
I'm #reading An Equal Music by Vikram Seth - http://bit.ly/5a6E0J
RT @kamla: @PialiRoy About Bata. They introduced the "Hawaii" sandals in India. Think Vikram Seth's dad was with Bata if I recollect cor ...
PialiRoy (Piali Roy) Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:23:05 -0000
RT @kamla: @PialiRoy About Bata. They introduced the "Hawaii" sandals in India. Think Vikram Seth's dad was with Bata if I recollect cor ...
@PialiRoy About Bata. They introduced the "Hawaii" sandals in India. Think Vikram Seth's dad was with Bata if I recollect correctly.
kamla (Kamla Bhatt) Tue, 29 Dec 2009 05:21:22 -0000
@PialiRoy About Bata. They introduced the "Hawaii" sandals in India. Think Vikram Seth's dad was with Bata if I recollect correctly.
Kojo to talk about "real" Indian food on WAMU at 1pm today. Who will be interviewed. Sudhir Seth? KN Vinod? Vikram Sunderam?
xcanuck (xcanuck) Mon, 28 Dec 2009 18:06:39 -0000
Kojo to talk about "real" Indian food on WAMU at 1pm today. Who will be interviewed. Sudhir Seth? KN Vinod? Vikram Sunderam?
Tá na minha Amazon wishlist um tempão: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. O problema é q tem + de mil páginas. Mas sooner or later tenho q ler
crisbsmith (Cris S.) Mon, 28 Dec 2009 17:33:47 -0000
Tá na minha Amazon wishlist um tempão: A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth. O problema é q tem + de mil páginas. Mas sooner or later tenho q ler

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