About the Poet and the Poem

Vikram Seth (born 1952) is one of India's best-known writers in English, equally admired as a poet and a novelist. His works include the celebrated novel A Suitable Boy, the verse-novel The Golden Gate, and the poetry collection Mappings (1981). The Tale of Melon City is taken from Mappings and is also included in his Collected Poems.

The poem is a narrative poem — it tells a complete story in verse. It is subtitled "After Idries Shah," which means Seth has retold an old teaching tale drawn from the writer and folklorist Idries Shah. The story is a satire: it describes a King who is repeatedly called "just and placid," yet whose blind, mechanical idea of "justice" leads to one absurd decision after another — until it ends by hanging the King himself and crowning a melon as ruler.

Beneath the comedy, the poem quietly mocks weak, arbitrary rulers, the passing of blame from one person to the next, and a people so fond of "peace and liberty" that they will happily be governed by a fruit as long as they are left alone. The playful rhyming couplets make a sharp point feel light and amusing.