My Yahoo! Movies column, first published here.
Just before you zip off to watch four
Indian secret service agents storm Karachi in an effort to bring “India’s Most
Wanted Man” back, it might be a good idea to recap the films where Pakistan
provided the setting for all the action. If Bollywood is to be believed, it is
not only a cricket stadium where India and Pakistan lock horns.
Not satisfied with children of warring
families falling in love, Raj Kapoor engineered a love story between children
of warring countries in Henna. When
Rishi Kapoor (playing an Indian) floated into Pakistan after a car crash (and a
memory loss, for good measure), he was immediately adopted by a well-meaning
Pakistani village and a fair maiden, Henna (played by Zeba Bakhtiar in her
debut role). The romantic tale was short almost entirely in that village till
Rishi’s memory returned (on the night of his wedding to Henna, as if the drama
wasn’t enough) and he had to be carted back to India.
While Raj Kapoor – always a votary of love
and peace between the two neighbours – passed away before the film could be
made (and Rajiv Kapoor directed it), it was clearly his message of Indo-Pak love being passed on.
The other doyen of Indian filmmaking –
Yash Chopra – was born in what is now Pakistan and he retains a soft corner for
the country, its people and its culture. In Veer Zaara, he fulfilled his dream of having a cross-border love
story when an Indian Air Force officer (Shah Rukh Khan) fell in love with a
Pakistani woman (Preity Zinta) and followed her into the country. He promptly
fell victim to villainous forces in Pakistan and was thrown into jail for
gazillion years. He would have died a quiet death till a Pakistani human rights
lawyer (Rani Mukherjee) took on his case and brought their love story to a
court of justice.
The Pakistan Army is a large, disciplined,
modern fighting unit till... Till (one deep breath) Sunny Deol took them apart
singlehandedly. Rocky, Rambo and all such specimens of violent masculinity
first wept and then peed in their diapers when they heard what happened in Gadar: Ek Prem Katha.
Sunny Deol went to Pakistan to get back
his wife (taken there forcibly by her family) and he started off on a low-key
note. But when asked to shout a ‘Hindustan Murdabad’ slogan, he lost his
marbles and picked up dumbbells. Actually, he picked up a tubewell and
proceeded to steamroll his way through miles of Pakistani territory. The Army
was only a small hurdle in his path.
Bapi Sidhwa’s award winning novel The Ice
Candy Man became a moving film by Deepa Mehta, who called it 1947 Earth. It told the story of the
Partition through the eyes of a little Parsi girl who saw her ayah (Nandita
Das), her lover (Rahul Khanna) and the ice-candy man (Aamir Khan) become pawns
in a deadly game of politics and religion. Set in Lahore, it was nevertheless
the story of every city and every family who lived during the dark hours of
1947.
Whenever India and Pakistan face off in a
sporting arena, there is talk of it being a war. And when a player dies in the
arena, it could really be the start of a war. That was the premise of a
kickboxing story where an Indian athlete died in the ring, fighting a Pakistani
adversary. His brother gave up his cricketing ambitions and trained to become a
kickboxer so that he could take revenge. The talk of revenge did not go down
kindly with the diplomats who were looking to reduce tensions between the two
countries. In such a scenario, the return match was scheduled to be held in
Pakistan.
The venue wasn’t the Gaddafi stadium but
it was still... Lahore.
Given the somewhat tense nature of our
political ties, our social and cultural ties with Pakistan are very rarely
humourous. Often sentimental but almost never satirical.
Tere
Bin Laden changed all that. Set in Karachi, it was the story of a
down-and-out television reporter (Ali Zafar) who created a fake Laden video to
get into limelight and fulfil his dreams of going to America. Needless to say,
these things are never as simple as they are planned to be and soon we had a
manic group of poultry farmer, travel agent, radio jockey and TV station owner
caught up in an international conspiracy of catching the (then) world’s most
wanted man.
When we watched a movie like this one, we
realised how similar India and Pakistan actually were.
The latest scorcher set in Pakistan is
last week’s release – Bhaag Milkha Bhaag – the story of the Flying Sikh whose
race started during the atrocities of the Partition and continued till he
returned to Pakistan thirteen years later to take a shot at redemption.
Milkha Singh participated in an Indo-Pak
Friendship Meet in 1960 where he competed against the top Pakistani athlete
Abdul Khaliq in a race touted to be a contest between two countries. This
showdown in Lahore gained more prominence in the film than his famous Rome
Olympics race as Milkha raced not only to beat his competitor on the track but also the
ghosts in his mind.
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