Vale-diction

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When the flames of turmoil and hatred have consumed the idyllic homeland of your past, the act of remembering can be an act of pain. For Sudha Koul, a native of wounded Kashmir, memory is all that remains—the memory of magical food, dense family love and the knowledge, once shared by the disputed province's Hindus and Muslims alike, that "we were all Kashmiris and we lived in the most wonderful place on earth."

For those who only associate Kashmir with the violence that has claimed tens of thousands of lives, Koul's lovely, elegiac memoir The Tiger Ladies (Beacon Press; 224 pages) shows that the isolated vale in the Himalayas was a heaven before it became a hell. In the simpler pre-partition world of Koul's majestic grandmother and anxious mother, Hindus and Muslims were united by their fiercely unique Kashmiri identity. The greatest threat was a harsh winter and even that, in Koul's lush prose, was to be cherished as a gift.

As a high-caste Hindu in an overwhel-mingly Muslim region, perhaps Koul should have known better. As her blessed childhood unfolds, she catches glimpses of the fire to come—a half-heard chant of "Long live Pakistan," Muslim boys smiling as they burn a tiny effigy of India's Hindu Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru. Koul leaves to raise a family in the U.S. just as Kashmir plunges into crisis. And she can only watch as it blows apart. But this is not meant to be a political treatise; it's a paean to the past. Koul succeeds through sensuous detail in summoning the vanished Kashmir, the one of rainbow days and clear mountains and Hindus living peacefully with Muslims. The one worth preserving in memory.