Village and the City

ISBN -13: 979-8272617835
Imprint: Independently published (Kindle Direct Publishing)
275 pages
Genre: Fiction
Published: 2025


 Khalid Afroz grows up in a quiet Pulwama village, drinking from mountain streams, chasing cricket balls across wild fields, and watching neighbours barter pencils, milk, cheese to make ends meet. As he comes of age, he marries, raises children, and earns his place in the Department of Agriculture Production and Farmer Welfare. An urban utopia then occupies his mind, and a restlessness grows. What does one do when the soil that raised you feels too small, yet too sacred to abandon?
His family’s business shift from rice paddies to apple orchards further deepens the divide—his younger brother Pervez clings fiercely to farming and prestige, while Khalid gazes toward horizons beyond and moves to Srinagar. Can ambition be pursued without betraying tradition?
Through the intimate struggles of one family, Village and the City becomes a larger meditation on belonging and departure, memory and modernity, home and exile. Will Khalid reconcile the orchard, the village and the city—or is he destined to live between them, forever divided?