Rupture /

Shant, Rattan Lal,

Rupture / Rattan Lal Shant, Javaid Iqbal Bhat. - 1. - 144p.

""Separation"(translated also as 'Rupture' in the original Kashmiri book) is one long love letter to a partially lost relationship. The text resonates with a longing for bonds that were severed, the bonds that had somehow survived in the past. However, with militancy, which hit Kashmir in 1990s, these bonds between Hindus and Muslims were violently shattered to the disadvantage of both. The stories in this collection attempt to reflect and expand on those connections, which permeate collective memories. The characters in the stories are alive to the possibilities of rift and tension in the bonds but they long to maintain them nevertheless. The severance of the bonds also recharacterises these stories as gentle prose elegies to a lost homeland. Nostalgia drives the exiled people to recreate homes and religious icons in far away arid lands in Jammu, But the pain remains. The issue of lost identity, lost home and everyday ties between the two communities are immanent in this collection. Some of the characters, especially the elderly are unable to comprehend the sudden loss of fatherland and the breach in a smooth life. They watch helplessly how lives of young men are derailed. They try to recreate and relive their past. Effects of the sudden separation are visible at various levels between friends, relations, and members of the same societies of the so called "migrants". The hope is that this separation is not permanent but a temporary strain in the eternal human bond. The displaced people bide time till they hope to be called back"--

9780192865083

2022934899

800 SHA