(1888PressRelease)
September 14, 2008 - Warrier's latest book "The Homecoming" from Penguin is just not the story of one family in Kashmir but also of the many families there whose lives have been destroyed by decades of violence and uncertainty. With a sense of well being, despite the troubles, the violence and the bitterly cold weather, Carpet Merchant Javed Sharif the central character of the book returns home to Srinagar from Bangalore to celebrate his father's eighty fourth birthday.
With the birthday party in full swing, the Police team led by his close friend Inspector Ghulam Rasool raid his house and arrest him along with his son Irfan under POTA. His dreams of settling down in Kashmir are shattered. The father son emotional encounter in the lockup indeed moves the heart of the reader. The other characters in the story include Muhammad the politician brother of Javed who becomes a minister, the corrupt police, cunning lawyers, his elder son Fawzi and daughter Razia who do the you too Brutuson Javed. Truly speaking, every character in the story represents one dimension of the Kashmir problem and only a Shashi Warrier could have made this haunting political tale profoundly personal.
In this book the author who is a master story teller, does an anatomy and surgery of the Kashmir problem in his own inimitable style. He has dedicated the book to all those displaced by the insurgency in Kashmir and the shelling across the Line of Control (LOC). The world might have woken up to the realities of terrorism only recently after 9/11 but for the past several decades, Kashmir has not slept peacefully even for a single night.
One of the reviews for The Homecoming states that Warrier visited Kashmir as a journalist while the fact remains that he visited Kashmir as a private citizen. Referring to Shashi as Dan Brown clone in India today is nothing but clownish as Warrier's thrillers are older than Dan Brown. For that matter last two books of Shashi are not thrillers and none of his books has been a spy thriller. Calling The Homecoming as a thriller is like calling a chilled can of Pepsi or Coke as a cup of hot coffee.
From 1976 to 1981, Shashi was a student of Birla Institute of Technology and Science- BITS Pilani Rajasthan which is one among the top ranking universities in India today and obtained his Masters degree in Economics. After careers in consulting, journalism and Software, full time writing became a mission with passion for Shashi in the mid 90s. He has conducted sessions on creative writing at BITS Pilani and has always been closely connected with his alma mater.
This proud to be a BITSian Shashi Warrier is bound to climb many more peaks in the years to come.
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