A few years back, when I was teaching Jack Finney’s story The Third Level in a section of grade 12, I put a question to the entire class: “If you get a chance to live in another time, which would you choose – past or future?” Ann [not her real name] put up her hand first. “Future,” she said. In Finney’s story, Charley chooses to go back to Galesburg of 1894. He loves those big old frame houses, huge lawns, and tremendous trees with branches roofing the streets. It’s a ‘cool’ place whose evenings were “twice as long.” Life was a relaxed affair. People had time to sit out in the evenings, sipping tea and playing music on their guitars. There would be fireflies all around. Peaceful world. Charley wanted that world. My question to the class was in relation to that description of an old world. “My father speaks about the horrors of his childhood,” Ann said. “There was poverty. Not enough food to eat, no proper clothes to wear, no vehicles to carry you… Who wants to go back there?” An
Book Title: Farooq of Kashmir Authors: Ashwini Bhatnagar & R C Ganjoo Publisher: Fingerprint, New Delhi, 2023 Pages: 330 This book is much more than a biography of Farooq Abdullah. It is a short history of the trouble-torn Kashmir. Though Farooq remains at the centre of the history, his father Sheikh Abdullah is given ample space in the first few chapters. Towards the end of the book, Farooq’s son Omar gets due attention too. Kashmir went through a lot of pain and misery ever since India became independent. Its political leaders as well as their religious counterparts were mostly responsible for all that pain and misery. Add to that the nefarious role played by the neighbouring country of Pakistan. Pakistan has been a thorn in the very heart of Kashmir right from Independence. The political leaders and religious terrorists of that country have left no stone unturned to make Kashmir their own. Understanding Kashmir’s unique condition, independent India had given the st