Shalimar The Clown

I just finished this book - the latest by Salman Rushdie. I honestly have to say it blew me away. It starts off with a murder of a high-profile US political figure, Max Ophuls, and then gooes back in time to a land far away, a village called Panchigam in a then-peaceful Kashmir. There we witness the birth of love between Boonyi Kaul, the only daughter of a Kashmiri Pandit, and Shalimar the Clown, a muslim boy, the son of the Sarpanch of the village. It goes back to Max, who we find out is also a member of the Resistance in France during the Second World War, and manages to escape nummerous perils as a part of that, which turns him into a somewhat celebrated war hero. We fast-forward to the post-war period, we see Max as a highly popular US ambassador, visiting Kashmir and falling in love with Boonyi. He whisks her off to Delhi, away from her husband Shalimar, and so begins the love triangle, that in many ways mirrors the history of India, Pakistan, and Kashmir, and the International involvement in the region.

It was a very heavy story, but a beautiful one at that. I am not as familiar with the region's history as I'd like to be, so I cannot honestly vouch for historical accuracy. But the portrayals are deeply moving, and even if some of it has been elaborated upon, it is definitely a novel worth reading. At the end of it all, violence is violence; brutality is brutality; and no matter what the reason, motive or driving force behind it, nothing quite lessens the pain and the anguish that follow.