Once Upon A Time: A Kashmiri Novel by Bansi Nirdosh

For the sake of Dastageer saeb, let me go. My father must be thinking about me. His eyes must have tired looking at the door. For his sake, let me see him only once. I’ll return. I won’t go anywhere. Not even to my village.”

Setin Bandipora and Srinagar during theDogra regime, the novel, Once Upon a Time, narrating the tale of brotherhood, love, peace in villages and the deception, fraud and porn culture in some regions of Srinagar simultaneously, is the story of a young peasant girl,Nageena,who visits Srinagar furtively to see her father. Her fatheris under treatment in Mission Hospital. After being disallowed to meet him, she spends a night in a nearby shrine and meets a man who takes her his home,thatfinally turns out to be a prostitution house. She, however, tries oftentimes to escape, butfails. She is sold. Lastly, she conceives a child and marries the man she was sold to.