In Rushdie's book, Haroun is the son of Rashid Khalifa, a famous story-teller, who loses his powers of story-telling when his wife leaves him for Mr. Sengupta, a town clerk who hates fictional stories. Haroun accompanies his father to the beautiful Dull Lake which closely resembles the Dal Lake in Kashmir. Having taken residence on one of this lake's famous tourist houseboats, called Arabian Nights Plus One, Haroun embarks on a quest to recover his father's lost powers of story telling. A Water Genie takes him to the Ocean of the Streams of Story and invites him to drink of it. Instead of experiencing a beautiful love story, however, he undergoes a n