Maali Almeida wakes up dead in what seems to be an office for dead people. Straight from scandalous and conflict ridden streets of 1990 Colombo, Maali Almeida has no idea what has killed him. Navigating his own death, he has to find out how he died and in this process he finds out more than he had ever known when he’s alive and he has got seven moons to embark on a journey to contact his lover, his friend and people who can wreck and save Sri Lanka.
Maali is a photojournalist, reckless gambler, and closet gay. He has clicked pictures which include him with other men, animals and pictures of conflict-ridden Sri Lanka — the pictures if revealed to the public could turn the future of Sri Lanka upside down. But he is dead and in the in-between of death and life he has to somehow “whisper” to DD (his gay lover), Joki (his female friend) — only people can he trust to get those photographs out in the public. The timeline follows this parallel between Maali in the death world and his friends and foes in the living world navigating Colombo’s violent streets where men lie and fondle other men. When Maali is reported missing, the entire plot comes together to project a story of silent war storming through Sri Lanka.
The Seven Moons of Maali Almedia is a 2022 Booker Prize winner book written by Shehan Karunatilaka. It’s amazing to find and read how much can be written about so elegantly — family, relationships, homosexuality, war, politics and at the same time be literary so engrossing. Maali Almeida tears through every faction of the society which includes left wing, right wing, army as well as foreign forces which resulted in turmoil in Sri Lanka which to this day continues to find no end.
We see “death” used as a metaphor for sincerity and honesty. Now, the people who are dead are not lying to each other because it doesn’t matter anymore. Maali sees people in the in-between who were something else in their life. In death, they all flock together.
There are too many interpretations to derive out of this book; the more you read into it, the more you are pulled into it. For me, I did superficial analysis and what was very subtle inference was the use of photographs as memory. Quoting Milan Kundera — “The struggle of man against power is the struggle of memory against forgetting” — a part of the plot centers around the aforementioned quote. Maali has clicked pictures which show powerful men plotting to wreck a country whose people have no hand in diplomacy, where people just want to live a peaceful life. We see women burnt alive, children killed while the people who preach peace watch them die from the stands. We see apart from printed photographs, Maali has made sure to hide away negatives as well because memory is supposed to be backed up.
Apart from this, Shehan Karunatilaka has razored through “Champagne Socialists” — in simple words the socialists espouse socialist ideals while enjoying a wealthy and luxurious lifestyle.
“It is easy to be righteous when your Dada left you guilt money from Missouri”
“It’s because we have just right amount of education to understand that the world is cruel…...and just enough corruption and inequality to feel powerless against it.”
About being queer, this book takes you through secrets which you would have known never existed. In the alleys where men kiss each other, in bedrooms where women sleep with each other and in the streets where they have face discrimination and violence.
