It’s wonderfully good,humane,says Vikram Seth

“Now a homosexual in India does not have to feel that he or she is an unarrested criminal,” says Seth. “Law can go a great way in influencing how people see homosexuals.”

But,he is still not sure whether there would be a gay subplot in his new novel. And that’s Seth’s big surprise: he is writing a sequel to A Suitable Boy. After denying for years that he would consider writing a sequel to that magnificent doorstep of a novel,Seth now says he is indeed writing A Suitable Girl. “I have written bits and pieces of it,” he says. “I was wondering what Lata would be like in these strangely similar but radically different times — she should be in her 80s — and how it would be for her grandson who is looking for a suitable girl whether he wants it or not.” The novel,which will be published by Penguin’s imprint Hamish Hamilton in 2013,will be set in the present day. “It will be in year 2000-something,” he says. And it will go back,over 60 years. “I am still getting to know the characters. I don’t even know whether Lata should be a widow or not,” he says.

While A Suitable Boy wound its way through Kolkata,Delhi and Kanpur,through forgotten tombstones,politics of Brahmpore and zamindar’s sighs,Seth does not want to comment if the sequel will be equally political,but does say,“I don’t force my politics on my characters. But then characters who are not interested in politics will be singularly uninteresting.”