Oh so fascinating,the falling snow. Review on Snow - Orhan Pamuk

It's quite admirable and sometimes very strange how only a poet can find so much inspiration in something so normal and natural as the incessant snow fall where he could just observe it endlessly, almost oblivious to all that is happening around him.Only He can get lost in the beauty and tranquility of this sprinkles sent from the heavens to a point that he discovers so many dimensions of a tiny litte snowflake.

Ka is one such poet who is a stranger to the remote city of Kars (Turkey) in a "winter of turbulence"where he is constantly accompanied by his many anxieties and the one true soothing element , "the snow" all through his week long stay there.

Born and brought up in the relatively luxurious environs of Istanbul and then having fled Turkey for political reasons, Ka has come back to his motherland after more than a decade in Germany. But Kars(his eventual destination) is a lot different from the Turkey of the memories of his childhood and early youth.This once happy and peaceful town which now looks shrouded in abject poverty(traces of Khalid Hosseini) has become a hotbed of political activities and the arena of constant crossfire between the supposedly secular state and thereligiously inclined Young Islamist populace.At the heart of it all is the raging debate of "whether young girls should wear head scarves or not"?A debate which has only been able  to complicate things further and has proven fatal for some girls who in a state of confusion and disillusionment have committed suicide.It is in the pretext of searching for reasons for these tragic acts that Ka reaches Kars.

Starting out in true journalistic style Ka moves around the whole city meeting and interviewing as many people as possible and gets a fair idea of "who thinks what".But this puts him under the scanning suspicious eyes of a lot of influential people.After all he is from Europe and he is a self proclaimed atheist, a combination that encourages the wrath of both sides of the conflict.Ka meets a variety of people the most notable being the young Islamist Necip(who wants to write a sci-fi novel in the future), who he grows rather fond of and Blue, the charismatic leader of the whole religious movement(who lives in utmost secrecy).The conversations he has with them plant seeds of self doubt in him towards his own spiritual inclinations.In the first meeting, Blue tells him

"If you want to save your skin, I would advise you to increase your faith in God at the earliest opportunity.

it won't be long, I fear, before a moderate belief in God will be insufficient to save the skin of an old atheist. "

But Ka finds hope in this seemingly desolate place when he meets Ipek(his college time crush).The moment he sees her, he is besotted by her beauty and after that finds new ways to be in her company.Ipek with his father(who is inclined towards communism) and sister Kadife take care of the hotel where Ka stays.Thus starts a love affair which Ka dreams of ending in him and Ipek happily settled(a feeling that has always evaded him in his 40 year old life) in his exiled abode in Frankfurt away from all the killings and cacophony of "God forsaken" Kars.Only if it were that simple.Kadife is actually linked with Blue , the islamic leader(not a Mullah, though) both personally and in ideas.Hence in efforts to make his dream come true, Ka gets involved in the quicksand of Kars politics and keeps on going deeper and deeper into it some times intentionally and some times not so much.

All through this endeavour he, being a poet , writes eighteen poems which are inspired by everything from the ever dominant snow to Ipek(the lady of his dreams) to Blue(a man he starts to admire and becomes jealous of) or even to a black dog he repeatedly sees on the streets.The narrator, Orhan(not to be confused with the name of the author), retraces Ka's journeys years after his mysterious murder in a lonely street of Frankfurt in his effort to bring alive these poems and gather enough material to write a book about them.

Orhan Pamuk, best known for his nobel winning My Name Is Red, has actually tried to address the various trials and tribulations of a nation at the crossroads of culture and modern thinking.His charcters are all grey, at one instant you admire them and at the next, you are baffled by their actions.His much flawed main protagonist , Ka is one everybody can identify with and hence is the most believable of them all.The story, although an intense read , moves at a rather slower than usual pace most of the times.The biggest distraction towards the end is the narrator's various perspectives, which I believe the author could have done without.Apart from that "Snow" truly is an outstanding and thought-provoking novel where the author's crystal-clear understanding of people's beliefs and insecurities has adequately come to the fore.