Ashok Ogra
ashokogra@gmail.com
I don’t usually review fiction. I confine myself to reviewing non-fiction books, and only occasionally do I turn to short stories. But the debut novel of the award-winning journalist Rahul Pandita OUR FRIENDS IN GOOD HOUSES is an exception.
It drew me in from the first page, and before I knew it, I was deeply moved enough to make this attempt at reviewing a novel. Rahul’s book is a gentle yet powerful story about memory, companionship and belonging, and, most importantly, what it means to have a home.
Through the protagonist Neel, a boy who grows up in Kashmir and later relocates to Delhi and joins journalism, the author shows what it means to be an exile and lose one’ssense of belonging.
The story begins in a world filled with warmth and innocence. Neel’s friendship with Annie, from another community and from the USA, feels natural and unforced.Their brief relationship offers him a gentle, sensuous intimacy that hints at the possibility of permanence though the reality proves the opposite.
Rahul is at his best when recreating Kashmir- its calm mornings, fresh apples, rustling newspapers, and laughter inside homes. Neel’s childhood feels familiar and comforting: school, friends, and caring parents.
But slowly, things begin to change. The writer lets unease slip in quietly. Neighbours who once laughed together stop meeting eyes. Adults lower their voices. Fear arrives silently, and by the time people notice, it has already settled in. When violence and hatred finally reach Neel’s family – echoing Kashmir of the turbulent 1990s – it feels less like a shock and more like something expected and inevitable.
It is indeed creditable how Rahul avoids melodrama. He does not show killings or bloodshed. Instead, fear shows itself through small, simple moments – a trembling voice, a locked door, an empty chair. The family’s decision to leave is heartbreaking because it feels both forced and unfinished. “To stay was to risk everything; to leave was to lose everything.”
Once Neel’s family leaves the valley, the tone of the book changes. The story slows down, heavy with memory. It turns inward, showing the life of exiles – families living in small rented rooms, surrounded by half-open boxes that are never fully unpacked because the hope of return never dies.
Among the novel’s most poignant moments is the quiet fading of Neel’s mother: “Around 10.15 that night, she crosses over while he is holding her. They had been expecting it. But when it happens, the pain in Neel’s heart reminded him nothing could have prepared him for it. He cannot bear to look at father’s face who is in the room and sits by himself. Even when Neel is not looking at him, he can a see a million lines of grief being carved on his face.”
As a journalist, Neel travels through India’s conflict-ridden regions- Kashmir, the Northeast, and the Adivasi belt of central India. He meets armed guerrillas, activists, and ordinary villagers. Some relationships are brief, some merely glancing, yet each encounter adds to his growing understanding of exploitationand displacement.
His journey from curiosity to immersion in the violence-ridden central India begins when his mentor-figure Gurnaam urges him to witness India’s revolutionary underbelly in the regions dominated by the Adivasis firsthand. He would talk to guerrillas, such as Gurupriya and her sister named M, trying to understand their motives, their reasons for engaging in armed struggle against the establishment. “It was difficult to get into their heads. They were not articulate; they would take their time opening up. There was also the barrier of language. Since they did not have grand notions of themselves, they downplayed events or chose silence.”
Neel starts to suffer from ‘Stockholm Syndrome’- a psychological condition in which a person develops emotional attachment or sympathy toward those who control or threaten them. Neel starts to identify with Gurupriya and even shelters her, fully aware that doing so could lead to his arrest.”But Neel looks at her; the consequences do not seem to matter. He feels deep affection for this girl.”
While interacting with local communities, Neel comes to realise that tribals are “people of the forests,” suggesting their deep and traditional bond with the forest landscape. For these communities, the forest is not merely a place of residence but the very basis of their livelihood, culture, and identity.
Rahul also highlights how tragedy can be absorbed into routine with disturbing ease. In a housing society’s messaging group, a post reports a man falling from the thirtieth floor; the next message reads, “Flat available for sale.” Such brief interludes quietly expose how quickly empathy is overtaken by everyday concerns.
The heaviness of reporting from conflict zones is briefly lifted when Neel seeks companionship and love-longings that never fully come to fruition. He describes Aaru as a piece of his heart, and imagines with Aarani a relationship where both, like kindred souls, might “become one organ in a living whole” (Hegel).
Neel reflects: “…there is love. It does not matter if it is not for him, as long as it pervades some aspect of the world around him.”
Against this backdrop, the author shows Neel undertaking two parallel journeys: one into the conflict-ridden outer world, and another into the unsettled chambers of his own heart. At its core, his journey is a search for belonging and the fragile hope that somewhere, a home might yet be found.
The violence he encounters as a journalist takes a profound toll on him. To make sense of the chaos, he turns to the German mystic Jakob Böhme and his concept of the ‘UNGRUND’-a state without any firm ground or certainty. In confronting this void, Neel begins to feel that even life and death themselves hold very little meaning.
Yet he remains haunted by an inner paralysis- that everything loved is ultimately destined to be lost.
The title OUR FRIENDS IN GOOD HOUSES gains deeper meaning as the story progresses. On the surface, it may refer to those who continued to live in Kashmir and now occupy the homes left behind by others. But it also stands as a commentary on society-on how some people can live comfortably even when that comfort is built upon someone else’s loss.
Readers of Rahul’s earlier works will find his tone familiar. In ‘Our Moon Has Blood Clots’, his memoir on the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits, one often listens to plain, and unadorned prose that lets pain speak for itself. Similarly, his ‘Hello Bastar’ has the precision of a reporter and the diligence of a researcher.
However, this novel carries the same emotion but in gentler form – as if memory has settled into reflection. While some characters appear only briefly, and its layered shifts in time and place may challenge readers. The language too is dense and demands attentive reading. Yet beneath its quiet tone lies a powerful story, showing how tragedy often unfolds not in noise, but in silence.
The noted author and journalist Manu Joseph has described the novel ‘addictive’ while Sumana Roy finds it a meditation on impermanence.
An imprint of the reputed HarperCollins Publishers, the book is not confined to the forced migration of Kashmiri Pandits alone. It speaks to a deeper, universal question: What is home?The excellently designed book cover visually captures the novel’s central tension: the struggle to find a home against the backdrop of conflict and impermanence.
The book’s three-part structure-Non-Ground; Entropy; Non-Ground Ground-signals its central inquiry: Is home merely a physical structure, or, as many tribal traditions suggest, an openness to sky, earth, and shared belonging with nature?
The narrative points to home as an inner space of acceptance rather than a point on a map. Love and companionship reside in the heart, not in territory. Ultimately, the novel suggests that home may not always coincide with the physical house, “not in the noise and blood and lust outside, but in some sanctuary within.”
One wonders if the novel leans a little towards an idealised inner world and does not fully explore how hard it can be to rebuild that inner space once it has been broken by loss or exile. It is because of this depth of meaning, this is a book to be read more for its insights rather than its events, for its reflections than for its story.
(The author works for reputed Apeejay Education, New Delhi)
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