Kashmir on Fire

Agar Firdaus bar roy-e zamin ast, hamin ast-o hamin ast-o hamin ast. In English: If there is a paradise on earth, it is here, it is here, and it is here. This is a story of Kashmir once a paradise on earth, a subject of poetry and a frequent venue for movie producers. Now amidst internal strife, mostly an outcome of power play by a neighboring sectarian state. A strife resulting from an unholy division of India into India and Pakistan. This is a story of two childhood friends, Krishna a Kashmiri Pandit, a Brahman, and Mustafa a Kashmiri Muslim who are both medical students in Srinagar. Mustafas family is assassinated by a radical group calling themselves mujahideen who are offended by the candid reporting of the strife in Kashmir by Mustafa Sheikhs father a Newspaper reporter for the Kashmir Gazette but Mustafa escapes the assassination as he was in the medical school campus at the time of the assassination. This is the story of Mustafas run from Srinagar to New Delhi and eventually out of India as the mujahideen trace him to various medical institutions where he is completing his medical training. This is a love story of a Muslim boy pursued by the mujahideen and a Hindu fellow medical student, who are deeply in love but separated mostly because the boy is forced to leave India, and journey to Africa and to America. This is a story of enduring love and highest morality, a story of religious tolerance, a story that has a happy ending.