Titanic events have ripped (this country) apart year after year, each time rearranging it along slightly different seams and I have been touched by none of it: "Prime Ministers assassinated, peasant-guerillas waging war in emerald jungles, fields cracking under the iron heel of a drought, nuclear bombs cratering the wide desert floor, lethal gases blasting from pipes and into 10,000 lungs, mobs crashing against mobs and always coming away bloody."
With those powerful opening lines of an outstanding debut novel, the reader enters the strange and beautiful mind of its talented creator, US-based Madhuri Vijay. Set mostly in the tiny hamlet of Kishtwar, where Vijay spent a considerable amount of time living and teaching, the book follows its 30-year-old protagonist, Shalini, whose search for the family of her late mother’s friend, Bashir Ahmed, takes her from the comfort of her home in Bengaluru to the turbulent Kashmir valley.
In the quest, Shalini meets a cast of tender characters, who become almost like family to her. As a young girl, Shalini recalls the stories Bashir Ahmed had told her about Kishtwar—“of chudails that could snare you and leopards no man could kill”. On visiting the place and seeing it for herself, she adds further dangers that she gets to discover about the land—“militants and soldiers, bears and broken legs, nighttime intruders whose goals were unknown”.
With vivid descriptions of episodes that pull at one’s heartstrings, the book truly brings Kashmir alive, complete with “its hardness and its beauty”. Through the protagonist, one experiences the plight, chaos and gloom that has become part and parcel in the daily existence of average Kashmiris. Periodic incidents of brutal clashes between the locals and the army make it clear how differently Kashmiris and the rest of India perceive the armed forces.
In one chapter, Shalini encounters a soldier who tells her to be careful of the ‘militants’. In the very next scene, she learns about the missing son of the family who she is staying with—believed to have been abducted by the military. It leaves her—and the reader—feeling torn about who, indeed, is the victim, and who the assailant. On witnessing this ‘us’ and ‘them’ sentiment that is so prevalent in Kashmir, the entire issue almost seems like a misunderstanding.
On reading the book, one is struck by how little of Kashmir’s issues are highlighted in the mainstream national media, and how our lives are so far removed from its happenings even though we supposedly live in the same country. It is for these reasons that we are once again reminded why Kashmiris consider India as separate from themselves.
There is a sense of mystery that shrouds most of the book, and the reader gradually uncovers secrets and fragments of the truth along the way. The chapters alternate seamlessly between past and present until all the connecting dots join together and form a coherent whole. Vijay’s writing has an almost addictive quality to it, which leaves the reader constantly wondering what will happen next. At 432 pages, the book is a tad bulky, but it grips the reader swiftly along and is unputdownable at best.