This Our Paradise

A Novel

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Srinagar, 1986. A Kashmiri Pandit family has just moved into their new home. The patriarch Papaji is a clerk in a food cooperative and his wife Byenji is a homemaker. The narrator is their eight-year-old grandson who spends his days playing cricket and climbing the tang kul in the garden. Everything is rosy till 1989. But then, propelled by ISI and the Jamaat, a secessionist movement rises and changes everything.

Lolab valley, 1968. After years of prayers, a boy named Shahid is born to Zun and her husband. He grows up in a society where corruption and unemployment are rife. The trajectory of his life changes when he meets Syed Sahab — an Islamic theologian and rabble-rouser, who wants to overthrow the Indian state.

The stories of both families intertwine tragically. In both cases, the boys are at the mercy of forces much larger than them. Both lose their Kashmir, in different ways.