A Tale Of Roots, Its Ruin & Renewal

In this deeply touching novel by Namita Ghokhle, mid-age protagonist Iti Arya retreats from Gurgaon life to her childhood's Never Never Land in Kumaon where, in her old home and its people, she experiences traces of love and its fragile delicacy

- SANJEEV CHOPRA

Call it happenstance: I picked up this latest offering from one of India's finest fiction writers Namita Gokhale in late August, and—as in the novel—in real life, a red alert has been declared in the hill districts of Uttarakhand. Schools have been closed by a government order, the rivers are in spate, the mountains are hurling rocks on to newly built highways, and the Char Dham Yatra has been suspended in the Garhwal region of the state.

Never Never Land is an expression of the utopian territory where children retain their childlike innocence forever. It is the story of Iti Arya, the first-person narrator in her mid-fifties, her grandmother Badi Amma a.k.a Leela/Lily in her nineties, her centenarian employer Rosinka, and her Gen-Z grandniece Nina who has been told that she is actually Badi Amma's granddaughter.