MIRA NAIR

A SUITABLE BOY

- Radhika Iyengar

I meet Mira Nair on a cold, rainy day in February in her apartment in London. She greets me with her dark, kohl-lined eyes, and disarming smile. Two days before our meeting, Nair had just finished editing and finalising the first two episodes of A Suitable Boy, one of the most anticipated six-part television series of the year.

An adaptation of the 1993 book written by Vikram Seth. A Suitable Boy will be the first BBC television production with an all non-white cast (with a hunndred and thirteen actors). It’s also the first time that an Indian series will be released on an international platform. Andrew Davies, the master craftsman behind television dramas like War & Peace and Pride and Prejudice, has written the screenplay.

“Vikram has already seen the two episodes and he loves it,” Nair states before sitting down at a table near a large, beautiful window that overlooks a street in Soho. Below, we can see locals wrapped in dull overcoats carrying umbrellas, walking by quickly. It’s a modern world; vastly different from the one the Oscar-nominated filmmaker has been busy creating over the last two years.

A period drama set in the early 1950s in India, A Suitable Boy is a coming-of-age story about a young woman named Lata Mehra, and how she navigates through life as her mother relentlessly presents a series of suitors to her. The story artfully pits the narrative of the personal against the political, as it paints a vivid portrait of India emerging as a young and independent nation on the verge of holding its first democratic elections.