Vale-diction

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 remainsthe 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...