Some of the inmates finally escape when a fire breaks out, stumbling into a world which has also gone blind: “We’re going back to being primitive hordes. People are forced to go hungry, several get killed, women are raped and chaos reigns, giving us a glimpse of how a crisis can break down both the individual and society. Those who have power - blind thugs - terrorise the powerless.

Soon there is a dearth of everything from food and water to discipline and order. Slowly, the asylum fills up with people, some crying, others trying to console. The ophthalmologist’s wife has not yet turned blind, but she pretends to have lost her eyesight just to be with her husband. They round up the ophthalmologist and all the people who have gone blind and put them in indefinite quarantine in a mental hospital. The Health Ministry works feverishly to thwart the social implications and political consequences. When he tries to reach out to someone in the Health Ministry, his call is rudely cut off, prompting him to mutter: “This is the stuff we’re made of, half indifference and half malice.” But he feels it is his duty to inform the health authorities and warn them of the possibility of this highly contagious blindness becoming a national catastrophe. The ophthalmologist waits anxiously for “the light of day” knowing very well that he will not see it.

Soon, it becomes a contagion, providing an eerie resonance to the horror sweeping the world today in the form of a virus and other hurts, past and present, like war, hunger, deprivation. The ophthalmologist he consults also gets afflicted before he can read up on the strange white blindness. Portuguese writer José Saramago’s 1995 novel,īlindness, translated into English by Giovanni Pontiero, begins in this dramatic fashion, with a driver suddenly going blind while waiting at the traffic lights. (Stay up to date on new book releases, reviews, and more with The Hindu On Books newsletter. But blindness is black, retorts one fellow. “Nothing, it’s as if I were caught in a mist or had fallen into a milky sea,” he replies.

“Seen merely at a glance, the man’s eyes seem healthy, the iris looks bright, luminous, the sclera white, as compact as porcelain.” Through the car windows, people ask what he can see. People crowding around his stalled car cannot believe it. The driver frantically tries to explain what is holding him up - “I am blind”. At a traffic signal in an unnamed city, as the green light comes on, a car is unable to move.

Blindness jose saramago book