Agar firdaus bar rooe zameen ast,
Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast.
Wani Nazir
You’ve heard the line, right? “If there is a paradise on earth, it is this, it is this, it is this.” Khusro wrote it ages ago, Jehangir swooned over it, and ever since, Kashmir’s been stuck with this celestial tag. Honestly, it’s kind of tragic now—those words echo through the valley, but instead of beauty, they just drip with irony.
Kashmir, the so-called Eden? Yeah, right. These days it’s more barbed wire and curfews than shikaras and shayari. The only thing blooming is heartache. Poets used to chase its charm, now all you see is people mourning what’s been snatched away. Not to get all doom-and-gloom, but you walk through those streets, the loss is right there, raw and heavy.
And in a world where news is basically a game of “Who Can Shout the Loudest” and everyone’s got an agenda, Gowhar Geelani’s Rage and Reason just cuts through the noise. The guy’s got the chops of a hardened reporter and the wounded heart of someone who actually belongs there. He’s not just slinging facts—he’s mapping the emotional.
The book’s laid out in ten chapters, each one hitting like a punch to the gut. Every thread’s soaked in truth, every story feels like it’s bleeding. The writing doesn’t mess around with melodrama or cheap shots. It’s just… true. Geelani’s not here to twist your arm. He wants you to see, not just look.
The preface? Kind of a gut-check. Starts with this revolutionary couplet:
“Jaago, jaago, subah hui,
Fateh ka parcham lehraya.”
He calls it a mother’s lullaby for her restless kid, which, come on, is next-level poetic. That’s the vibe throughout—journalism that’s basically love letters and battle cries rolled into one.
Flip to *Why Tral Bleeds Green*, and Geelani’s laying it all out—bans, attacks, the mess around Article 35-A. He doesn’t sugarcoat, doesn’t rant, just puts it down like, “Here’s what went down, deal with it.” He trusts the reader to figure it out, no hand-holding.
Then there’s *Hell in Paradise*, digging into the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits. Usually, this gets spun or ignored, but Geelani just lays it bare. No heroics, no finger-pointing—just the pain, the human fallout. It’s honest. Hurts to read? Yeah, but that’s the point.
Media Wars? Oof. He doesn’t pull punches. Geelani basically rips the mask off the whole media circus—how stories get silenced, twisted, buried. He even name-drops Chomsky and his “Ten Strategies of Media Manipulation.” It’s sharp, it’s scathing, and honestly, it’s about time someone said it straight.
*Chapter Five* goes in on the Tablighi Jamaat, calling them out for being all talk and no care for the valley’s real wounds. It’s not subtle, it’s not polite. Then July 8—Burhan Wani’s killing—lands like a body blow. Geelani’s not glorifying anything, but he’s not tiptoeing around roots and rage either. It’s messy, it’s human, it’s complicated as hell.
Writing about Kashmir’s truth? It’s a minefield. Every sentence is a risk, every fact is up for grabs. But Geelani? He’s got guts. He writes with the kind of honesty that sticks around in your head long after you close the book. He doesn’t flinch, doesn’t fold under pressure. He remembers, and he makes you remember too.
Rage and Reason isn’t just a book, it’s basically a gathering place for Kashmiris everywhere—home or in exile. It’s got people telling their own stories now, stories that usually get drowned out: torture, graves, disappearances. Not for vengeance, but because dignity matters. Because memory matters.
Honestly, it’s less a book, more a living, breathing archive. Sometimes it’s a prayer, sometimes it’s a scream that’s been bottled up way too.
Geelani doesn’t let Kashmir be reduced to some “problem” on a political map. He drags it back into the light—as a real place, with real wounds and real people desperate to be heard. It’s a messy, beautiful, broken mosaic. Snow and blood, silence and songs, rage and, yeah, reason.
And in the end, those old verses? They still echo, but now they sound different. Maybe not paradise, but definitely a place that refuses to be forgotten.
At the end of it all, Khusro’s old lines echo back—not as some shiny anthem, but almost like a quiet sigh:
“If there is a paradise on earth —
It was this, it was this, it was this.”
But, man, in Geelani’s voice you catch this barely-there glimmer—like hope refusing to die. Maybe if we keep telling the truth, if we keep remembering and refusing to shut up, that lost paradise isn’t totally gone. Maybe you can’t find it on a map anymore, but inside people? In the guts and hearts—maybe there’s a shot.
*Rage and Reason?* That book’s the real deal. No sugarcoating, just raw honesty—tender and brave, too. It’s not only about what happened, but the guts it takes to say it out loud. Part funeral song, part wake-up slap. Reads like a scar and a battlecry all at once.
(Note:Wani Nazir is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of School Education, J&K. He is also the author of “And the Silence Whispered” and “The Chill in the Bones”. He can be reached at nzrwani@gmail.com)
