As suicide notes go, the 297-page long novel by Anees Salim is generously sized. The Blind Lady’s Descendants explores the unfortunate life and self-inflicted demise of its young protagonist Amar. It was Leo Tolstoy who observed that “all happy families are alike; each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.” And Salim’s novel traces not one but two generations of uniquely unhappy young men, beginning with the particulars of Amar’s life and family circumstances.
It turns out that Amar is a veritable echo to his deceased maternal uncle Javi in both appearance and self-centric melancholia. Growing up in similar circumstances to Javi in the eponymously named Bungalow in a small coastal town in India, Amar begins to mature into a pre-existing mould; he fills out to resemble Javi, embraces atheism in the face of his family’s traditionalism, locks himself into his bedroom and obsesses over situations that he does little to ameliorate until the time seems ripe for a particular type of ritualistic hara kiri. Their connection, in fact, seems almost other worldly.
“Sitting in Sandip’s coconut plantation, had I not imagined Javi standing very close to where Dr Ibrahim had found him? Had I not felt that Javi once stood there, perched on the cliff’s edge ready to throw himself off it? There was something working between us, some supernatural force drawing us close, squeezing us against each other until we became one, our entities intertwined. I sensed a fear beginning to float inside me, and I would not put it past myself to stare at my reflection one day and see him there, smiling gratefully at me for being the mould for his soul, giving him a second chance to walk those paths he had stopped wandering the day I was born.”
Not the most likeable fictional character one may encounter, Amar is a passive-obsessive who is wry and ironical narration gives the novel the kind of voice that trumps the almost-deadening monotony of his life. The dramatis personae of this largely one-scene story (set chiefly in the Bungalow) are one-dimensional but have important roles to play in Amar’s life.
“Jasira, the eternal heartbreaker, is the first-born of Hamsa and Asma, the two people whose names rhymed more or less, but whose lives never did.” Then there is, “Akmal,” who “was nearly a miscarriage and was born as the second child of the two people who should have shaken hands and parted ways before they bought Sophiya, me and that bottle-sized girl into the world.”
The blind lady who gives the book its title is a maternal grandmother whose literal blindness is a powerful metaphor of the figurative blindness her descendants share as they provoke each other into deeper misery.
The small town staples are authentic and in place: there’s a local mosque where a boy turning to mischief can be identified by his family name. The family-friend cum neighbourhood doctor gives them special treatment and takes no payment. Much is made of the train service that cuts through the town, although the train tunnel takes on special macabre symbolism in the book. There are the sunburnt, ditzy tourists and the few touristic spots that are related through Amar’s brief flirtation with being a tour guide. The Bungalow itself is a perfect accompaniment to the family’s crumbling relationships and status as it falls to rack and ruin.
Salim reveals the minutiae of day-to-day life in a Muslim household and the impact of the demolition of the Babri masjid. The 1990s in general in small-town India are evocatively described. Amar’s brother Akmal who is driven first to religion and then to fundamentalism is an amateur mechanic who puts together radio pieces; the arrival of a refrigerator or black and white TV is occasion to celebrate. Rajiv Gandhi alternates with Mickey Mouse in national programming. “Zing thing, Gold Spot,” advertising makes its way into people’s homes.
The Blind Lady’s Descendants is a darkly comic work with a bitter afterbite. The reader must reconcile to a pleasantly told unpleasant story where even the suggestion of a happy ending would be laughable.
Karishma Attari is a book critic and freelance writer living in Mumbai. She is working on her coming-of-age novel, I See You.
