THE NIGHT OF BROKEN GLASS BY FEROZ RATHER.

'War is as real as death. And I shall not pretend, Mohsin, I am done with keeping my face and acting as though is hunky dory, I am terrified of death'

'The Night of Broken Glass' by Feroz Rather.

TW : Death, mental abuse, excessive violence.

My heart is pounding fast while writing about this book, it feels as though I've lived my entire life in ignorance and indifference. Reading this book made my blood boil, heart wrench, and some intense emotions that I couldn't decipher. I haven't read a lot of books on insurgency periods, Few months back I was reading 'Written in Tears' a collection of short stories on Assam insurgency. It was frustrating, frustrating because of the realization that we are impuissant, we cannot protect those feeble souls from dying in genocide, from getting labeled as miscreants.

'The Night of Broken Glass' has ripped me apart. The story is weaved in the horrors of Kashmir insurgency, there are several characters in this novel, they enter the plot ominously, the characters shuttle in the different stories, talk about the act of barbarity in their region, how they are hiding from the human monstrosities. 

The plot revolves around the police men who're granted with absolute emergency power and the common people living their lives in the fear of death. The fear mongering stories of the people in surgery period and how they turn into miscreants are blood chilling. Inspector Masoodi and Major S have the control over the people, they hold the unlimited governmental power. If a person seems to disobey the orders of militants, the agonizing punishments and inhumane penalizing are imposed on them.

The kids die, the youth turn into miscreants, the adults' anguish makes them unhinged.

The imagery in the stories are profound. There are several stories and characters that are linear and interconnected, the readers would never be able to forget any character in the haunting stories because of the evocative character sketch and horrifying portrayal of the circumstances. Every story is impactful, talks about class conflicts, genocide and ethnic cleansing. The political mobilization and dwindling humanity in the stories are haunting, the writing style is compulsive because of the evocative imagery and horrifying memories. There's one chapter talks about the psychological deterioration of a character because of the disturbing incident he has encountered in his childhood and how it is still indelible in his mind. Feroz Rather has narrated the agony of the people in the nightmarish setting.