Shalimar the Clown


Morning today ..the 8:15 shuttle to SFO - the last few pages of Rushdie's -'Shalimar the clown' and finally page 398.

Great book this - beautifully gelling a revenge story and the lives of people and history and the present state of Kashmir. Unlike certain other books that take sides...this book beautifully captures it - from the point of view of mere humans - humans beyond caste, beyond religion and beyond the riches n the poor. People have suffered. People have been tortured. People have been killed and people are killing.

We, the human race, are a sad lot. A beautiful land which so very easily could have been amongst the best places to be in the world, is today - nothing but a wasteland. Today, I guess half of them or probably even more do not even know what they are fighting for.
When will this bloodshed end. When will people learnt to respect the value of 'life'.

A work of fiction - this was - but it did its trick. It told what it was actually supposed to tell.

-a