How does one review a film that is rooted on the mass, forced exodus of 4,00,000 Hindus, primarily Pandits, that took place in Kashmir in 1990, during the height of terrorism/militancy in the Valley without inciting or instigating or insinuating?
Such films are tricky. They are meant to hit every raw nerve ... this tragedy of the 90’s...It has a strange post facto feel to it. Like a bad dream. Of people and characters you don’t really know but feel sorry for, as if in a nightmare.
Most of you who will watch it or review it probably were too young to know what this movement of people did to the valley. As a nation I can assure you, it’s a long forgotten memory. Or is it again?
I have friends from Jammu who have narrated horrific instances which the gentle hands of Vidhu Vinod Chopra has managed to keep butter papered in his portrayal ... within a love story.
It’s a painful journey for those who have pitched tents in lands they can not call home. But Chopra just won’t hit that big fat raw nerve - he left the real painful parts out. And I think I know why.
The newcomers #AadilKhan and #Sadia (both valley born Kashmiri Muslims) bring their deep love and resonating innocence with their kind eyes and gentle expressions to the screen. You will hurt for them. Their pain is glorious. Their love almost divine.
The script is simple like all of Chopra’s past forays. He allows my teenage crush #PriyanshuChatterjee to stitch the paradox of the time with his earnestness and believable performance as a doctor struggling to come to terms with the violence and the mindlessness of it.
One understands why the cast and crew are not in this to bring anyone to book in this divination. It’s just a rendering of deep heartfelt sorrow that I felt was being slowly gently sobbed out one frame at a time... the need to say, I want to go home now.
The making of a film on such a deeply disturbing moment in Subcontinental history - especially at a time when it holds such relevance in the current Indian political context must have been a bit of a gamble.
But the team steers clear of controversy. Fact is...This happened. And no one blinked. 4,00,000. Why doesn’t the number jump out at any Indian mainstream forum? Why didn’t the nation want to know? The state of Jammu and Kashmir remains embroiled in one of the worst border conflicts in post partition India... but how did we forget the lives of so many...the rights of so many? The rule of law for so many? Why and when did it become taboo to talk about it???
And most significantly- how come these young displaced millions and children of these IDPs didn’t turn to the gun when such brutality was being perpetrated on them and their families - by both militants and an unsympathetic state machinery ???
... Strangely, they lingered in our midst and made new homes new families - from shabby refugee camps to now houses and shanties homes and hovels all over ... and I doff my hat to that endeavour.
The story disarms you. It may fail
- perhaps deliberately- to show the unrelenting nature of brutality - the magnitude of horror the Kashmiri Pundits faced in the name of mass forced exodus within their own country. Giving the due credit here to this film's equanimous writing, which shines neutral, despite the obvious bloodletting that followed.
The script - I found out later thanks to a very dear friend - was inspired by the works of author/journalist #RahulPandita, whose non-fiction book on ethnic cleansing of Kashmiri Hindus, “Our Moon Has Blood Clots”, remains a critically acclaimed bestseller.
The biggest nugget for me in #Shikara, however, were the 'junior artists,' who are actually 4,000 of the 4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandit refugees who bore the brunt of the exodus first-hand. Their homecoming through this celluloid lens must have been heartbreaking.
It struck home harder when I realised how painful this direction must have been Chopra, himself, a born Kashmiri Hindu, who lost his family property to the crisis.
The strains of the soothing lutes on the Dal haunt you as the setting sun flowers red on the boulevard across the char chinari. It takes you to a bloodied and orphaned valley from the late '80s, right up to a politically active 2018, as age and hopelessness shroud over the original homeland of these two lovers.
The film is poetic and painful, unhurried, achingly so are times, when you wish Chopra would tell the editor to hurry up.
But it’s a story that needs to be told. And though it took the team 12 years to bring it to our screens, one hopes it will rake up atleast a bloodless debate on such residual feelings of loss and longing as India learns to accept what was and what must never be. For any religion. Or minority.
I know. I know I blaspheme by talking in parts. I know there are people dying... I know that Kashmiri Muslims suffer beyond measure...Every single day. I know the underbelly of this beautiful valley is so ugly that such movies cannot be viewed in sorry isolation of what happened to just the Hindus in Kashmir in the 90’s.
I know it’s destiny is stitched together like a forgotten worn out carpet with the most exquisite designs that only time could have woven with sweat blood anger and hate.
But there was harmony once. There was a time when paradise wasn’t lost. Something tells me the director wanted to revisit this time with his camera.
You will remember the song “aye wadi shehzadi” by Irshad Kamil ... it sums up the sorrow in verse rather beautifully.
Inshallah may there be peace. Once more. Amen.
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