At one point in author Paro Anand's latest title, Nomad's Land (Talking Cub), one of the two protagonists, Shanna, a shy teenage Kashmiri Pandit who re-starts her life at a Delhi boarding school after her father is killed by terrorists in the Valley, has a meltdown when a group of her classmates from a North-Eastern tribe tell her about "traditional enmity" with another gang of girls from a different tribe. "Why are we taking on the fight of our ancestors? Why perpetuate enemy lines? Why can't we redraw them?" she yells uncharacteristically, her mind flooded with guilt for also shoving away her Muslim bestfriend in Kashmir as an "enemy". In a year that began with the anti-CAA-NRC protests, and is ending with reports of youngsters being arrested while eating pizza, all in the name of religious conversion, the question of who belongs, who doesn't and who gets to decide this has been looming large.

These are the questions that Shanna and her friend, Pema, a feisty teen from the fictional tribe of Qhushavans, challenge through their friendship and struggles in the book. In the three-part sensitively-written story, Anand has explored the effects of terrorism, displacement, politics and silent hate-mongering, especially on children, by addressing the Kashmiri Pandit exodus of 1980-90s — which is located in a more contemporary setting — and through the Qhushavans, who represent several nomadic tribes that are punished for belonging nowhere and yet everywhere.