REFUGEES FROM PARADISE By Anuradha Majumdar Penguin Price: Rs 295 Pages: 284

Monje amaar choley gaylo Herculeeser bysekele (O my heart, it went off riding, on that little Hercules bicycle)," sings a Baul singer at the Kenduli village fair in Anuradha Majumdar's Refugees from Paradise.

This new novel from the Auroville-based choreographer and writer is a whimsical package that brings together a set of elements both unlikely and engaging: a wounded World War II pilot falling out of the sky in the Assam forests; a wise old Baul legend named Krishnagopal; a strange assortment of lodgers in a house called Casa Mira in London; a cat named Bartholow Mew who "suffers from an exalted illusion of pedigree"; and an all-knowing orange feline named Milton. And although I love cats, and a novel about cats can't go wrong as far as I am concerned, there are other reasons to celebrate this little enterprise. It makes us smile and it makes us think.

A sweet little romance develops between the two main characters, television journalist Anjali and actor and aspiring filmmaker Jonathan. But that is only one of the threads woven into this many-coloured tale; and the fabric that emerges hints at a grand design. As Milton sums up in his epilogue, "Some say it's time for poets to decide the world. I'm not so sure. Things are still too slow for that. People still dream backwards for history. But everything rests in front. Religions, nations, armies: all these are things that slow down the world. A poet reveals what history conceals. That is why we still have a future."

Wise and yet refreshingly unpretentious, Refugees from Paradise is just the thing to leave you feeling very, very good.

AUTHORSPEAK | PARVEZ DEWAN
The Kashmir Pundit

He would lay claim to the disputed land in public and audaciously call it Parvez Dewan's Kashmir. Sitting in Delhi, his hometown, the resident commissioner of Jammu and Kashmir feels like the latest on the list of exiles from the Valley. His head cocked, his eyes not quite meeting yours, the restive Dewan says, "It wasn't the fabled meadows. It was the people who pulled me to the place. Kashmiris are the most patient people on earth. Believe me, there are no brats in Kashmir." When his young Kashmiri friends told him, "Parvez bhai, tell us what you know of the place", he decided to write. Parvez Dewan's Kashmir (Manas) is a guided tour for them. There will be two more volumes-on Jammu and Ladakh.

Dewan, who translated the Hanuman Chalisa and The Names of Allah into English, has always delighted in blurring boundaries. His libretto of the Ramayan as a rock opera was performed on Channel Four and he brought out Jesus Christ Superstar with Urdu lyrics. And he is thrilled that his name doesn't give away his religious identity, "It can be a Hindu name or a Muslim one." Strange that he should become the memoirist of a land where identities-national, religious-have become the issue.

Kashmir cast its customary spell when Dewan went there as a civil servant. On his first posting in Basohli in 1989, he revived its school of miniature painting. He has done it all: from translating the pain and the rustle of chinar leaves in Habba Khatun's poetry to following up a shepherd's letter and discovering an ancient cave of Shivlingas near Amarnath. Above all, there were the sinuous links that bound the Hindu and the Muslim together. After 15 years of research, when he trekked through the myths and misery of the land, and a Kashmir dossier, Dewan's metamorphosis is complete: he speaks Urdu like a Kashmiri and even the Jama Masjid butcher, after listening to his specifications on the meat cuts, believes he is one.

"The Kashmiris need love and trust, not just funds," says the state's modern-day gazetteer. "Even Bollywood forgot Kashmiris as it filmed Kashmir. There were the occasional shikharawallahs but the hero and the heroine were invariably tourists." The Valley that slipped from heaven on earth to hell finds its lost stories at last, thanks to a stranger who became a familiar.

— By Charmy Harikrishnan