KASHMIR CALLING

Kashmir Calling is a delightful collection of essays on a variety of topics – literary, cultural, religious – related to Kashmir. It includes short stories, folktales, lyrics, devotional poems, with an exclusive article on Nehru's long love affair with Kashmir, the land of beauty and songs. A number of interesting stories from Kashmiri Somadeva's KATHA SARIT SAGARA (ocean of the stream of stories), world's largest collection of tales in Sanskrit are part of the volume.

There are well researched essays on Central Asian and other external influences on Kashmir — religion, language, cuisine, dress, ornaments and way of living. The interaction between love lyrics in Kashmiri language and Urdu to show cementing of cultural syncretism has been dealt with in detail, with beautiful selections from a large number of famous poets in both languages. The stories selected are somewhat uncommon such as: a low caste man marrying a princess - a woman of virtue fooling four husbands at the same time; a slave staking his life to ensure continuous flow of water for cascades of the Nishat, the world's largest terrace garden of the time; and a thief being rewarded instead of being punished for his crime. There is a chapter on the less-visited Ladakh – Kargil area highlighting its ethnic mix, cuisine and co-existence between Buddhism and Islam.

To add to reading pleasure is a folio of beautiful colour photographs included in the book.

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Mohan Krishen Dhar is a prolific writer in both, English and Hindi, India's national language spoken by the largest segment of its people. He achieved excellence in journalism and is known as one of India's best-informed journalists who wrote for leading newspapers of the world in a unique style, informing, as well as, entertaining the readers.

He was the New Delhi Bureau Chief of the country's largest circulated English daily, THE HINDUSTAN TIMES and later, it's Diplomatic Editor, specialising in foreign affairs and Indian diplomacy. He is widely travelled, having visited a host of countries including the USA, China, Russia, Far East and South East Asia. He also wrote for the LONDON TIMES, THE NEW YORK TIMES, Le MONDE, ASAHI SHIMBUN and STRAITS TIMES.

Born in Kashmir, Dhar soaked in the beauty of the “Paradise on Earth”, embellished with endless snow-capped Himalayan mountain ranges, glacial lakes, bubbling streams teeming with trout and other fish, sylvan meadows and meandering rivers. It's simple and gifted people weave the world-famous expensive Pashmina shawls, hand-craft papier mache and walnut wood artifacts and supply world's cricketers with willow-wood bats.

The author made a deep study of Kashmir's cultural and literary heritage, the songs, dances, festivals of its people and their ancient tales, legends and much more. Decades of work yielded a rich harvest of Hindi books in lucid, attention-grabbing prose, which became best sellers and won him several literary awards. He portrayed varied subjects with beauty and vividness of language.