Book Review: Curfewed Night
Stories! There are no good stories in Kashmir. There are only difficult, ambiguous, and unresolved stories.
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Adjectives are words that express attributes of something. Example: Brilliant. Example: Painful. We usually do not come across situations where we can use both these adjectives together to qualify the same noun or pronoun. Curfewed Night is an exception.
Basharat Peer was in his teenage when separatist movement exploded in Kashmir, 1989. In an increasingly hostile environment, as countless idealistic young men crossed the Line of Control to learn combating, Peer was sent away from Kashmir by his family, to Aligarh, where he was supposed to be safe. Peer became a journalist in Delhi. But, the violent and helpless Kashmir was not very far away. Peer returned to his homeland in search of stories that had always haunted him. We the readers, in return got a Curfewed Night.
Curfewed Night is a narrative that presents the image of Peer’s Kashmir: a Kashmir that has sharp departure from the usual perception of the Paradise on Earth. The narrative spans across decades encompassing the growth of militancy and separatist sentiment in Kashmir, and the retaliation by the state: through the eyes of a young Kashmiri sympathetic to the local sentiments. Excellent prose expresses the pain and pathos of the common man who has to face the turmoil: survived or succumbed. Vivid description of loss and lamentations disheartens the reader forcing him to pause in this otherwise page turning account of human grief. Peer is successful in presenting the face of sorrow, of people who are usually neglected by the lens’s focus - the shoppers and the shopkeeper, the teacher and his students, the mother and her disappeared son. However, the author is silent about the casualties suffered by the other side. He avoids the subject and the reader is tempted to get a single sided view of the situation.
To summarize, this book should not be considered as an analysis of socio political causes and effects of the most unfortunate conflict of our times. This book is not even a definitive guide to the solution of Kashmir issue. Instead, it is a deeply moving personal account of damaged lives and lost homes. Here, in Curfewed Night: memoir of one man has turned into the tragic history of a generation. Brilliant. Painful. Recommended reading. You can buy this book at amazon or at flipkart in case you live in India.
I had received the review copy from Random House India. Thank you R for giving me this opportunity.
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