Book Details of The Unseeing Idol of Light
| Book Title | The Unseeing Idol of Light |
| Genre | Novel |
| Author | K.R. Meera |
| Translation from Malayalam to English | Ministhy S. |
| Language | English |
| Publisher | Penguin Books |
| Date of Publication | 2018 |
| Braille Publication | April 2019 |
| Number of Braile Volumes | Four |
| Price | INR 352 |
On The Unseeing Idol of Light
The novel, “The Unseeing Idol of Light” ends with two line:
Two eyes to play a game of blindfold—and to open out into the light.”
The author sums up the vision of Jayaprakash (or Prakash), the protagonist of the novel through these lines. The story is all about blindness and light, disappearance and search.
Prakash puts his pregnant wife Deepti and her father on a train from Cochin to Calicut. She disappears at Parappanangadi without a trace. Prakash, his friend Shyam, and Deepti’s father Madhav Menon spend 10 years searching in morgues and hospitals for Deepti. When Shyam and Madhav Menon find an emaciated and morbid woman in a hospital, they are sure she is Deepti. Prakash, who has lost his vision during the prolonged search for Deepti, does not believe the destitute woman to be his wife. Yet he stops searching Deepti and settles down with his lover Rajani, who wants to marry him.
Prakash’s behaviour is mostly crude and erotic. His love for Rajani during his search for his beloved wife seems revolting to the conventional readers. Prakash exploits both Rajani, an orphan whose natural sympathy goes towards the blind Prakash, and Shyam who spends his time and energy in escorting him to all places looking for Deepti.
Rajani decides to break it off with Prakash and marry Chandramohan. She takes into her new husband’s family Sooraj, a blind boy whom she believes to be Prakash and Deepti’s son. Rajani cannot break with Prakash really, as she decides not to sleep with her husband. But Rajani disappears, too. She appears hanged at the end of the novel before Prakash and Chandramohan, an incident that is too fictitious for a fiction. Deepti disappears, but Rajani discover her in Jyoti. Jhyoti is satisfied and happily married to a seller of idols.
“The Unseeing Idol of Light” is also too packed with symbolism of bats, blindness and light. Prakash’s father hanged himself when he was just eight years old. Rajani commits suicide in the same way. Do these hangings remind the author of bats dangling from trees? Bats are blind during the day. Prakash is obsessed with bats and darkness. The symbolism seems overdone. Still the readers may not forget the novel for a few days.
About K.R. Meera
K.R. Meera was born on 19 February, 1970 in Sasthamkotta, Kollam district in Kerala. She started her career as a journalist in Malayala Manorama, but later resigned to devote her time and mind to fiction in Malayalam. She started writing fiction in 2001 and her first short story collection Ormayude Njarambu was published in 2002.
She won the Kerala Sahitya Akademi Award in 2009 for her short-story, Ave Maria. Her novel Aarachaar (Hangwoman: Everyone Loves a Good Hanging) published in 2012 is widely regarded as one of the best literary works produced in Malayalam language. “The Unseeing Idol of Light” has already received a wide range of reviews by critics. Braille readers may not agree with the author, but they will remember it.
The Unseeing Idol of Light is complete in four Braille volumes and is available at INR 352. You may like R. K. Narayan’s Maldugi Days in Braille. Please visit our Braille Books page for a complete list of our Braille books and necessary information on collecting a copy of this and other Braille books. These books are produced in Braille for the benefit of print-disabled readers under S52 (1) (zb) of the Copyright Act of India, 1957 (amended in 2012). This is purely a non-profit organisation that provides Braille books to institutions at paper cost and to students at token price.
