Plot Summary

A brass statue about three inches long…

Tibetan’s commiting suicide to guard the statue…

Faridi’s obsession about knowing the truth of the very statue that his father once possessed…

Faridi and Hameed arrive at Ramgadh where the statue was found. They run into Julia and Arthur, two british peeps. Faridi and Arthur have a challenge and Faridi’s yellow dingo kills Arthur’s Alsatian.

Yellow Dingo and Alsatian are both dog breeds. Yep, Faridi travels with his dogs. Don’t ask how and why. It is one of his quirks.

It helps him, though, because that’s how he gets on the trail of George Finley – the archeologist. George and his gang are ready to embark upon a journey to uncover the truth of Sumaili qabeela.

Thus begins the journey amidst rocks and mountains and hardships. They encounter several challenges including dealing with various qabeela on the way.

As the troup travels through highs and furthers highs of the mountains to each their destinations the reader happily follows their journey as a little kid who is equally amazed by geography and fantasy.

Review

First thing first, I like a book which moves out of the modern civilization and into the mountains and jungles. This book, therefore, already gets some brownie points.

The story is nothing out of the ordinary, the narration is. Faridi and Hameed undertake a tedious journey through the mountains to uncover a treasure, which turns futile as the treasure is … Well, no spoilers here.

Pahadon Ki Malka is very memorable story for various reasons. There are several things that I like about this story.

The first trip to a fantasy land

The routes, the challenges of the trip and how Faridi helps the troup overcome every single one is just amazing. This was much before all the Zeroland adventures so this feels special.

How Faridi hides his rifle

It is simply genius. Who would have thought, right? He hides the bullets in his tobacco stash.

Faridi’s disguise

He is shown to supremely powerful and shrewed. Scratch that. He is always a genius and he is very strong, ALWAYS. His disguise is such that nobody would ever doubt him. His mouth is filled with puss and he eats tobacco all the time. Perfectionist Faridi!

Hameed’s act of being mute

What I like the best is that Hameed has to act ‘dumb’, and he’s super-hilarious in it. Isn’t he always?

One of the best and most memorable (and romantic, if I might add) scene is when a jungle woman likes Hameed and wants to take him with her. The scene is brilliant – it has fear, humour, uncertainty and eventually an ode to Hameed’s brilliant acting skills.

The only problem?

How it ended. Meh! I mean I like how Faridi and Hameed reveal their identities, but the who treasure thing was a tain tain fish.

That concludes the review for Paharoan Ki Malika – the third and last  story  of the third issue of Jasoosi Duniya.

What do others feels about this one?

Shabana Mukhtar