Book Review
Title: The Blind Lady’s
Descendants
Author: Anees Salim
Publisher: Penguin India
2015
Pages: 301
Price: Rs 399
A metaphorical blindness
is part of most people’s lives. We fail
to see many things and hence live partial lives. We make our lives as well as those of others
miserable with our blindness. Anees
Salim’s novel which won the Raymond & Crossword award for fiction in 2014
explores the role played by blindness in the lives of a few individuals most of
whom belong to the family of Hamsa and Asma.
The couple are not on talking terms for “eighteen years,” according to
the mother. When Amar, the youngest son
and narrator of the novel, points out that he is only sixteen, Asma reduces it
to fifteen and then to ten years when Amar refers to the child that was born a
few years after him though it did not survive.
Dark humour spills out of
every page of the book. For example:
How reckless Akmal was!
Sleeping with his mouth wide open right under a bunch of ripe
jambus. Suppose a wind ruffled the tree,
a jambu from the bunch dropped straight into his mouth and choked him before he
could sit up and say his final prayer?
Then Jasira’s marriage would have to be put off, by at least six months
from the moment Akmal dropped dead.
The family has seen many a
tragic event already. After all, bad
luck is an invisible offspring of the Hamsa-Asma couple. One of the many tragedies is the suicide of the narrator’s uncle, Javi, the day the narrator was born. Amar, the
narrator, turns out to be a natural descendant of Javi sharing many
characteristics with him including a trace of insanity.
The novel is the
autobiography of Amar who has reached the age of 26, at which his predecessor
committed suicide. Amar is a half Muslim
since he ran away when only half of his foreskin was sheared. As he grows up he loses faith altogether and
declares himself an atheist.
The novel is about the
usual conflicts faced by people: identity crisis, meaninglessness, fractured
relationships, religious fundamentalism, etc. The blind lady of the title is
Asma’s mother who is physically blind.
But most other characters in the novel are metaphorically blind: unable
to see beneath the surfaces of existence.
The novelist succeeds in narrating the tale with ease and grace. The dark humour is the ideal buffer for all
the absurdity that underlies the lives of the characters, the absurdity of life
itself.
Related post: The Blindness of Superficiality
Great post!
ReplyDeleteUseful information worthy of thanks ,
http://ixgram.com
True. We are the descendants of the blind lady!
ReplyDelete(How light hearted you look in the profile picture! Put on your thinking cap!!!! :) )
Clown's cap, that's what life has given me :)))))))
Deletenice post
ReplyDeleteReview intrigues one to try this book...!
ReplyDelete