New Delhi, June 5 -- "Someone from outside Kashmir-if they have to live here even for a little while, they'd go insane," says Madeeha, a girl from Baramulla, in the story titled, Blue Salwar Kameez in Mehak Jamal's debut book, Loal Kashmir.

Poets have often called love an insanity, a disease that destroys the one who experiences it, steals their tranquility and sleep; its only reward being the sights, sounds and smell of the beloved. Loal Kashmir takes you into this world of love and insanity told through 16 non-fiction stories, exploring the human cost of conflict and the resilience of lovers in the troubled land we call Kashmir.

Loal, as Jamal writes in her introduction "is the Kashmiri word for love and affection". In popular imagina...