Vikram Seth is an Indian poet, novelist, and travel writer known for works like The Golden Gate and A Suitable Boy. He was born in 1952 in Calcutta, India to a judge and businessman. He was educated in India and the UK, graduating from Oxford University. While his first book of poetry was published in 1980, he gained more attention for his travel memoir From Heaven Lake in 1983 and the novel The Golden Gate in 1986, which was written entirely in rhyming stanzas. His later works like A Suitable Boy and An Equal Music also achieved both critical and commercial success. He continues to write poetry and fiction exploring Indian culture and social issues.

1. Poet - VIKRAM SETH

2. VIKRAM SETH
Seth, Vikram
born June 20, 1952, Calcutta, India
Indian poet, novelist, and travel writer known for his verse
novel The Golden Gate (1986) and his epic novel A Suitable Boy
(1993).
The son of a judge and a businessman, Seth was raised in
London and India. He attended exclusive Indian schools and then
graduated from Corpus Christi College, Oxford (B.A., 1975). He
received a master's degree in economics from Stanford University
in 1978 and later studied at Nanking (China) University. In 1987
he returned to India to live with his family in New Delhi.

3. Although Seth's first volume of poetry, Mappings, was
published in 1980, he did not attract critical attention until
the publication of his humorous travelogue From Heaven
Lake (1983), the story of his journey hitchhiking from
Nanking to New Delhi via Tibet. The poetic craft of The
Humble Administrator's Garden (1985) foreshadows the
polish of The Golden Gate, a novel of the popular culture of
California's Silicon Valley, written entirely in metred,
rhyming 14-line stanzas and based on Charles Johnston's
translation of Aleksandr Pushkin's Eugene Onegin. In the
work Seth successfully harnesses contemporary situations
to a demanding 19th-century form; the young professional
characters discuss nuclear weapons, Roman Catholic
teachings on homosexuality, and the perils of overwork.
Seth continued to use controlled poetic form in his 1990
collection All You Who Sleep Tonight, and he also wrote the
10 stories of Beastly Tales from Here and There (1992) in
tetrametre couplets. A collection entitled The Poems, 1981–
1994 was published in 1995. He turned to prose, however, in
A Suitable Boy, which depicts relations between four Indian
families. The book'scompelling narrative and great length
invited critical comparisons to Leo Tolstoy, Marcel Proust,
James Joyce, Honoré de Balzac, and Charles Dickens. His
next novel, An Equal Music (1999), is a love story set in the

4. SUMMARY
A frog croaked all night in a bog, in a loud unpleasant voice.
One night, a nightingale suddenly began to sing.
All the other creatures in the bog cheered and clapped at her
beautiful song.
The next night, the frog introduced himself.
He offered to train the nightingale, so that she could sing even
more beautifully.
Soon the nightingale became famous, and creatures for miles
around came to hear the nightingale sing.
The frog charged an admission fee, and earned a lot of money
from these concerts.
But the frog made the nightingale rehearse too much, and in
the rain.
As a result, her voice lost its beauty, and the other creatures
stopped coming to hear her sing.
Finally, the nightingale burst a vein and died.
So the frog could once more sing at night in his bog, unrivalled.

6. Friends. Come,
let us read the
summary. I hope you all
will
enjoy it very
much.

7. In a bog, which was called Bingle Bog, there lived a frog, who was crazy about his singing and
incessantly sang from the evening to the morning light. All the creatures living in the bog found his
songs to be most unpleasant and they tried to beat and insult him, but the frog was very insensitive
and boastful. The frog kept singing with extreme passion because this was his way of expressing his
heart-felt elation.
One day the creatures of the bog were pleasantly surprised to hear a very melodious and soothing song
sung by a nightingale. The frog was shocked and felt jealous. He wanted to be the undisputed singer of
the bog. The nightingale’s song created a sensation and all the creatures praised it tremendously.
The frog was very cunning and he introduced himself as the owner of the tree, on which the
nightingale sang. He also boasted that he was a music critic, who wrote for ‘Bog Trumpet’. The
nightingale was impressed that a musician like Mozart was taking interest in her. When the frog
offered to train her for a modest fee, the nightingale felt that her dream had come true. The
exploitation of the nightingale began. The frog would organise musical concerts and mint money. He
would make the nightingale practice even in adverse weather. He instructed her to sing passionately
and with full force, since that was what the public wanted. Initially a number of creatures flocked to
listen to her, but later the crowd dwindled because the nightingale’s songs became routine, lusterless
and her voice was tired. The frog would scold and humiliate her for no reason. One day, out of sheer
stress and fatigue, the nightingale’s vein burst and she died.
The frog called the nightingale ‘stupid’, ‘nervous’ and ‘without originality’. His ego was satisfied and he
again became the ‘unrivalled singer’ of the bog.

8.  Territorial and boastful –
I’m the frog who owns
the tree. Technique was
fine, But it lacked
certain force.
 Patronising – Without
proper training …You’ll
remain a beginner.
 Possessive, greedy – “We
must aim for better
billings…..”
 Arrogant and
condescending – “I tried
to teach her… a stupid

9.  Polite, soft, timorous. –
“sorry was that you who
spoke”
 Nervous and shy- “Did you,
did you like my song”
 Timid and polite – “This is
a fairy tale. And you are
Mozart in disguise..”

10. Well…Friend
s! It is time
to go now
SO…..Goodbye
and have a
good day.