A Short Prayer

Anees Salim emerged on the Indian English literary scene with his masterfully crafted debut novel The Vicks Mango Tree. His second book Vanity Bagh fetched him The Hindu Prize for Best Fiction 2013.  And now, The Blind Lady's Descendants, his fourth novel, is here to tell you a story of hope, aspiration, struggle, pains, pleasures and daily drudgeries of human life.  Set in the 1990s, it is a narrative of a dysfunctional family residing in a crumbling Bungalow in an unnamed city by the sea.

The novelist has woven the funny but grim tale of the descendants of a blind lady in the form of a long suicide note. Here, the protagonist Amar Hamsa is born and brought up in a crumbling bungalow. Like all common families, the residents of the Bungalow are grappling with familial complexities. Amar Hamsa is the youngest son of his parents Hamsa and Asma. But, his parents had 'nothing in common except the parentage of the four' (siblings) and 'who should have never met and least of all married.'

The Blind Lady's Descendants by Anees Salim Published by Tranquebar Press, 2014 Pages-297, Price: Rs 599.00 ISBN: 978-93-84030-79

The protagonist chronicles the story of an unhappy family suffering from the lethal blows of time. The mother of the protagonist 'would drive tiny nails into the front door to ward off bad luck. Bad luck then must have come in through the back door'. The predicament of the residents of the bungalow is placed in the critical backdrop of the assassination of Rajiv Gandhi and the demolition of Babri Masjid.

The reader comes across the very title and experiences its relevance when Nancy, one of the minor characters exclaims, 'The Blind lady's Descendants'. It is 'like a short prayer and a flashlight washed over like a muted thunderbolt'. At this precise moment 'the seeds of this memoir (novel) are sown'. And so the author is successful in putting forth 'a running commentary of our commonplace lives'. In a jaded and challenging time, the workings of a middle class Muslim mind are also recorded in totality.

The novel is a creative retelling of existential dilemma of human lives. The author completes the circle of human existence when the protagonist pensively observes, “When darkness creeps into our lives, light comes unrestrained tour premises.” Anees overtly portrays the myriad surface of realities so humour and pathos walk side by side in the book. His characters maintain equipoise and the humour remains recurrent in most of the characters.

The author has attempted to revive now-a-rare genre of epistolary novels in India and elsewhere. The entire story-line is drawn in a long suicide note manner. The epistles exchanged among characters graphically elaborate their notions about characters, society, nation, and religion. In one of the letters to her parents Razia writes:
…Christianity and Islam are one thing with different names. Our Prophet Isa is their Jesus. Our Prophet Musa is their Moses. Our Prophet Ibrahim is their Abraham. Our Gibreel is their Gabriel.

The author sketches the vivid image of change in Individual mindset as well the society around. The protagonist experiences the change of narrow gauge railway track to broad gauge. 'The bulky, black steam engine had gone. The new one was slimmer the color of earthworms' that 'filled the town with a louder rattle and new kind of blare.' Besides, the observation of the maturing protagonist is always reflective, witty and, at times, ludicrous. The episode of frightening Dr Ibrahim and his son in the tunnel and the sexual fantasies of the protagonist about his Aunt, Suhuda, and Sandy, the rubber doll gifted by his friend, are some amusing instances that engage the readers till the last pages of novel. The way author mixes pathos and humour to produce magical piece of writings is commendable.

The novel is perfect in all respect except the occasional lapses of type-setting. For example, the spacing of certain words have not been carefully observed and 'not the' is written as 'notthe' (161), 'thehalf-built (164), 'and tunnels' as 'andtunnels',  'without prescription' as 'withoutprescription'. (260) However, such pitfalls do nothing to wane the charm of reading the book as the book is far above its limitations.

Finally, the book The Blind Lady's Descendants will surely be liked by the readers who have a penchant for reading something fresh, simple but with deep meaning. The book deepens the perceptions of readers and also widens the frontiers of imagination.   

The writer teaches English in a PG College at Shahjahanpur (UP) India. His poetry collection Proprietary Pains was published by Poets Printry, South Africa.