The Valley of Kashmir continues to draw writer-trekkers, even as tourists stay away. After Salman Rushdie (Haroun and the Sea of Stories and Shalimar the Clown), two new writers plumb these perilous peaks of paradise. The results are nowhere near as spectacular as the Pir Panjal ranges they dwell upon. Still, both provide flashes, fitful and flickering, of historical hell in a way only fiction can.

Jaspreet Singh's series of people portraits in 17 Tomatoes and Meena Arora Nayak's Endless Rain are both topical life-in-the-time-of-terrorism books. Canada-based Singh's 17 Tomatoes is slimmer and snappier. Of the 14 loosely-linked short stories, only two truly stand out. In "Arjun", a young turbaned train traveller frets over his hide-bound hairdo, "Under Aunty G's eyes he doesn't know what he is... He is ashamed of his body, his turban; his turban is an anomaly, an aberration, a discomfort, a migraine. How can one's guardians own one's own body really?", till events, horrific and hasty, change everything. "Captain Faiz" is a charming tale of two enemy soldiers drawn together by a love for the Kashmiri poet Agha Shahid Ali. Other stories in this mixed bag veer between pointless parables like "Heaven" and "Angle of Heaven", the fitfully compelling tale of a little girl "Nooria" and adolescent love in "Student of Gardens".

Endless Rain is the growing-up story of Ali who turns-like most Muslim protagonists nowadays seem to-terrorist. Figuring why this might happen, especially for a novelist, is not easy. It's not surprising then that instead of a terrorist tale we have a dully detailed family saga with playsafe dollops of intrigue and incest. The story of Ali, his forward-looking parents and sisters stands shakily separate from the history-book-like political commentaries, "Kashmir erupted in outrage... Farooq's betrayal cut so deep that I think at that time even Abbu's faith in the National Congress bled." Nayak does try to connect the two strands-the personal and the political-but it's all very creakily contrived. Can't say much about the rain but it's certainly endless.

Stately Splendour

History comes alive in a photographic homage to Rashtrapati Bhavan

By Dilip Bobb

For decades, it has been a somewhat isolated island of ceremonial pomp and ritual, occasionally, as in the case of former resident Giani Zail Singh, being dragged into unwanted focus and political intrigue. The eleventh Indian incumbent, Dr Abdul Kalam, easily its most enlightened resident, has given Rashtrapati Bhavan a new lustre. Not that it ever needed one. As residences go, even L.N. Mittal's £23-million, 12-bedroom mansion in Kensington Palace Gardens is a comparative hovel. There is no place like it in India, perhaps in the world. Most Indians only get to see its imposing marble exterior or the Mughal Gardens when it briefly opens to the public but anyone who has seen the interiors of Rashtrapati Bhavan cannot but experience a sense of awe at its grandeur, size and majesty. If Edwin Lutyens was the great architect of his times, this was his grandest creation.

It takes three hours to cover on foot its four floors with innumerable rooms, corridors, loggias, galleries, vestibules and the sections reserved for the presidential household of 8,000 people, including their families. It spreads over five acres (the estate covers 300 acres), has 500 yards of covered carriageways, a golf course, tennis and squash courts, swimming pool, fitness centres, five specialised gardens, a printing press and a movie theatre. President Kalam commissioned Satish Mathur, current director, administration and establishment in Rashtrapati Bhavan, to chronicle the edifice through photographs that depict, like no words can, the greatness of vision, the sense of history, and the magnificence of its interiors. As President Kalam admits: "It has filled my body and soul with total bliss." Everybody should be so lucky.