Birds Of The Snow Is Much More Than Just The Story Of A Mother And Daughter From Kashmir

Women writing women stories about the challenges they face and the choices they make are surely my favourite kind of stories. So, when I came across this book, Birds of the Snow, the blurb of which mentioned it to be about a mother-daughter story set in Kashmir, it intrigued me greatly. I had expected this to be a book of love, loss, and finding oneself despite the sufferings and struggles that come up as a result of living in a conflict-riddled region.

The book doesn’t let down in that aspect. The story weaves through, the characters and their lives unfolding slowly, almost like a lazy stream meandering through the rocky region. For most part, the novel follows the life of Sheba (the youngest daughter of Suraya Begum and Chowdhury Najam Khan) and that of her friends and family.

It is not just the story of Sheba’s life that the novel is about or the story of several women around her. Birds of the Snows also tells the story of life in Kashmir and describes in great detail the exquisite natural beauty of the land. The language is vivid and helps recreate the scenes and events as if you were physically present to witness them. The beauty of Kashmir is described with such love and attention that you can create the images in your mind’s eyes and the words that you read.

Although enjoyable for most part, the excessively detailed narration of what I thought were minor and irrelevant scenes and the disjointed diversions that often seemed to appear out of nowhere were a let-down. The transitions between present day and past events are random and too frequent for the reader to be able to keep track. It seems as if the only way to reveal the backstory of any character, especially Sheba, is through miniscule moments that remind the protagonist of something in the past that apparently impacted them or the story greatly. Except that when the reader does discover the events that unfolded, they turn out to be quite insignificant to even include in the story. A better way to switch between the past and the present could have been to do it with every alternate chapter, so it’s easier for the reader to keep a track of the chronology.

While I do feel the book could have done with a tighter edit, it features high on my list of recommendations because of the theme of women empowerment and how it shows up in different forms throughout the novel – whether it be the many marriage proposals that Sheba rejects and her choosing to tend an ailing man instead, or the desire that her friend, Mayuri, feels for another man and how she works to repair her marriage instead. The novel through its different female characters brings out the many facets of being a woman well. For that reason alone, the book is worth picking up.

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