Rakesh Kaul’s book dishes out a kaleidoscopic admixture of fabulation, metafiction, futurism and fantasy. Kashmir, in the author’s consciousness, as it emerges in the tripartite structure of the narrative becomes a syntagm of “all Indic folk stories”: The Body, The Mind and finally, Life. Kaul’s book reflects an epicentric shift from the millennial to the cataclysmic and climatically closes the narrative with a pronounced shift to an optimistic renewal, as in the Biblical Revelation: “After the demonic apocalypse, a new heaven and a new earth will emerge”.
Rakesh Kaul, an IIT gold medallist, migrated to the US in 1972. He was a founding contributor to the first Chair of India Studies at University of California Berkeley, the Center for the Advanced Study of India at University of Pennsylvania and the Mattoo Center for India Studies at The State University of New York.
He is the author of the bestseller The Last Queen of Kashmir. Kaul has had a distinguished business career as CEO and leadership positions of publicly traded companies in the US. He serves as the Vice Chair of the Indo-American Arts Council.
