Exploring the horizons of a tale of an idealistic living of both the leads, Nimra Ahmed this time takes us on a ride to Karakoram, aka Rakaposhi residing in the northern areas of Pakistan, along with her aged old approach of giving in all the tad bits of details of almost every little scenario and then maintaining a touch of suspense in her another magnificent work of fiction, karakoram ka Taj Mahal, which, for all the astounding reasons is based on a true story!
The novel starts with Parishe (pari) another beauty queen, owning the looks of pari (fairy) as portrayed in the novel with her hair all tied up back in a nice, neat ponytail, supposedly, being angry at a kid as he whistled at her while she was on her way to her cousin’s house (Nisha) who is also her only best friend, at the moment. Initially she’s portrayed as an idealist, whose, dreams got crushed by her own family members, relatively at quite a younger age right after her mother left the dimensions of this worldly world. Though, she sidelined all her dreams, she still has this desire to crest the mountains, or, to be more exact be delighted by the scenic beauty of it and meetup with her dream prince she has been dreaming of her entire life, but she being another innocent soul agrees on marrying her aunt’s son, Saif just for the sake of her father and also struggles on becoming a doctor just so that she might make her father and in-laws happy.
Moving forward as the story progress she’s given permission by her father to just have a visit of northern areas of Pakistan along with her cousin Nisha and a tour guide ( since my geography has always been quite a disaster and I have always been struggling in memorizing the names of places, I won’t be naming them here!) That said, while they both were wandering on the streets of Mall road of Murrey they crossed paths with Uffaq Arsalan ( the hero) another idealist in the novel, whom parishe couldn’t take her eyes off from the minute she sighted him, (Yes, he happens to be that handsome!) Who was just to crest Rakaposhi.
The story takes a turn as they spend some time together, since, coincidentally they went off to visit those northern areas together with the same tour guide. And then with loads of tears and drama Pari ends up melting her father’s heart that led him to allow her summit Rakaposhi along with the people who were on their way to summit it, which took the story to the whole new dimension.
Overall, the entire story revolves around dreams being shattered and still not giving up, sorrow, happiness, laughter and then the scenic beauty of the northern areas of Pakistan. The characters, dialogues and all the minute details keeps you glued to the book and the nights spent in Karakoram are written in such an impeccable manner that it gets nerve wrecking until you get to the end especially the part when Irsa (their mutual friend) dies and then later when another avalanche hits Uffaq!
The best part for me was when Pari does everything she could to save Uffaq, however, the part when they were rescued took my breath away as it got really devastating to see him not being rescued after all the obstacles, stress and physical torture they both went through. It not only took my breath away, but also tore me apart on the inside, considering the fact that it was based on a true story and that all the characters were real, things got even more scary for me!
Honestly, this one is absolutely a must read and after getting towards the end your heart won’t hold back in screaming, “ Nimra Ahmed you really owe me my tears girl!” Nevertheless, it’s definitely a masterpiece!
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Mariam sheikh!