In the land of the lovers : a Punjab qissa /
Sakoon Singh
- India Rupa Publications 2020
- 222 p.
It evoked a feeling in her—of silence and freedom, of riding a bicycle on a dirt track cutting through fields In the absence of her parents, Nanaki, a fiercely sensitive young woman, is brought up by her grandparents in a quaint Chandigarh neighbourhood. She grows up to be an artist and a professor in an art college. As Nanaki goes through the motions of an idyllic childhood and a difficult teenage love, her experiences play out against a haunting backdrop of Partition and her Beeji’s turbulent personal history. Nanaki is brought face-to-face with the dark underbelly of contemporary Punjab when she takes up the cause of a consummate embroidery artist against a corrupt system while also being privy to two women's heartbreaking stories in her immediate vicinity. Through it all, it is her Sufi bearings that sustain her. Meanwhile, over many motorcycle jaunts to the tiny hill-town of Kasauli, Nanaki finds love in Himmat, an architect with his own share of personal tragedy and a scarred childhood. Meditative, rooted in a location yet filtered through nostalgia, In the Land of the Lovers is a masterfully woven fable with interlocking tales that explore struggle, loss, longing and love with brilliant insight and luminous prose.