It has been a great year for the South Asian novel in English with screen adaptations proliferating our streaming platforms as we endure a ...
It has been a great year for the South Asian novel in English with screen adaptations proliferating our streaming platforms as we endure a relentless spate of lockdowns the world over. Many high-profile and lavishly produced series and films have been made from beloved novels, most recently with A Suitable Boy, Serious Men, Funny Boy and The White Tiger have stirred the most conversation. While these adaptations have been received with great enthusiasm, three out of four have managed to disappoint. One issue is the choice of language.
Those that chose to stick to the original English of the novels have come off sounding false and stilted, while those like Serious Men like its predecessor Sacred Games have succeeded because the adaptations have developed rich, multilingual scripts that have embraced colloquiality in dialogue and are very much at ease with the “Bambaiyya” slang (sometimes referred to as “Tapori-speak”) that is a unique street mix of Marathi, Hindi, Bollywoodisms and an unabashedly creative range of curses and slurs.
But why do the adaptations in English fail when the original novels have so beautifully captured the registers of the many languages spoken in the region in the English text?
South Asian novels in English have a long history...
