Premangshu Ray
Works of fiction are best when based on reality. The small nuggets from the real world are immediately recognised by the reader, who immediately identifies with the book. The novel becomes far more credible in the mind of the reader.
This is where Ajit Chak scores. Kashmir Storm, set just one year ahead of the present, draws heavily from real life — from the devastation caused by the deluge of 2014 to the Delhi Public School in RK Puram in the national capital, which is mentioned at the beginning of a chapter in the later part of the book.
The plot is based largely on the situation in Uttar Pradesh where dons rule the roost, with the politicians, bureaucrats and police officials not rocking the boat and even enjoying their share of the ill-gotten gains. It is also to quite an extent based on the situation in Kashmir, the only place in India where prostitution
is legal.
Chak creates a thriller by linking these two situations. The book talks about dons running a racket in the trafficking of girls and the sale of human organs, which extends from Kashmir to Uttar Pradesh.
He intersperses his narrative very heavily with socio-economic analysis to set the basis for the fiction. The reader thus gets an insight into the situation prevailing in some parts of the country even as he goes through a work of fiction. However, this also makes the reading a tad bit difficult as it interrupts the thriller.
The book raises some disturbing questions. Most of these are questions that are raised almost every day in some forum or the other, such as why the situation was allowed to get so out of hand that the police and the rest of the administrative machinery is unable to check the rule of the mafia dons. However, to see it depicted graphically, though in a fictional tale, is indeed disturbing.
It also raises the question whether Kashmir would come to be known as a place to which people from all over flock to fulfil their carnal desires.
While talking about Kashmir, the book also talks about how militancy has ravaged the state. The author talks of how Pakistan has fomented militancy to wage a proxy war against the country. It talks about how the state is just a memory for the Kashmiri Pandits, who had to flee their homeland. It also talks of Article 370 and tells you that the laws in Kashmir are different.
Going down to Uttar Pradesh, it talks of the total breakdown of the administrative machinery and how the mafia dons rule in most parts of the state. It talks of the various rackets that operate in this lawless atmosphere and shows how the dons maintain their hold over the hapless people.
As a thriller, the book has enough appeal with its share of intrigue and violence. As the protagonist travels from Delhi to Kashmir and then the badlands of Uttar Pradesh, the book lures the reader into the world of the organised mafia of Kashmir, who become rich riding on the sex trade in the state, and into the badlands of Uttar Pradesh where people find human trafficking and even a trade in human organs that keep filling the coffers of the dons.
Kashmir Storm is as much about the breakdown of the government machinery in Uttar Pradesh as it is about the destruction of the paradise that Kashmir once was.
Author profile
A journalist, Ajit Chak writes for the Daily Post and also for a few websites. He has earlier worked with various publications including National Herald, Times of India and Northern India Patrika. He has also worked with Down To Earth and The Indian Express.
A law graduate with a passion for construction, he has worked in the first half of the 1990s with construction companies in Uttar Pradesh during which time he visited several villages in the state. He is also active in Uttar Pradesh politics as an office-bearer of the Congress.
