Nativity Reclaimed (A Novel)

Ashok K Kaul's maiden attempt with the fiction formalised through this novel, Nativity Reclaimed , which is centered on the reflective discovery by its natives, who underwent through metamorphosis after the unprecedented developments in the closing decades of previous century. The demystification process started with the demise of the cold war, when time and space were compressed with transcendence of borders. The younger generation mystified with confessional fervour went across the border in search of 'Azadi' that in turn gave them ruin, death and displacements of their own people. While in the valley, it was a fragmenting process, outside exposure with market mechanism, confessional religion and multicultural experiences produced disillusionments and native's longingfor peace. Based on the emergent developments of 1990s, when armed insurgency took over Kashmir, the novel presents an absorbing story about a Mujahid, about a displaced Pandit family and about young children studying in the international universities away from home. Their roles and situations began differently, yet their experiences about confessionalism and market economism bring them together to realise their common pain and peril. Once they were able to diagnose the common peril, it's in story how they could discover its remedies in assemblage of cultural capital that had eluded them since the outbreak of militancy in Kashmir. It was their nativity, where plurality is naturally evolved but subdued by confessional impositions from the distant referent and mad market economism. It is this discovery of native universal, which is an exploration of real untold narratives in a fiction to comprehend theground realities of Kashmir.