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India, Pakistan should make movies, not war

As I watched Bajirao Mastani in a packed cinema on Sunday in Lahore, I was struck by the one constant of my film-viewing experience here. While I was in the process of re-falling in love with the magnificent work of one of my favourite filmmakers, Sanjay Leela Bhansali, there was silence in the theatre, silence except for the intermittent squeaks of a toddler, probably high on packaged milk, and sugared biscuits. Notwithstanding the genre, Indian films, invariably, receive the same response in Pakistan: they feel like our own. From the time of my mother to the generation of my son, notwithstanding the thermostat of governmental relationships, Indian films have been that one constant that is beyond hostilities, mistrust, sabre-rattling, jingoism, paranoia, and lack of communication.
The love for Indian cinema in Pakistan is beyond the strident rhetoric of politicians, games of establishments, sensationalism of media, noise of social media and silence of governments. Beyond the patrolled borders, beyond the barbed wires, beyond the exchange of bullets lies the very strong bond of the sameness of existence, expressed through various forms of cinema. I await the time when Pakistani films would be shown, and responded to in the same manner in India as Indian films are in Pakistan. There is no better way to reach people, touch lives, evoke emotions and elicit responses like a film that has dil, is made dil se, and speaks to dil. Yours, mine, ours, theirs.
The naysayers reiterate their parroted slogans, and hardliners make you believe in the "innate" sense of "enmity" the other side has for you. However, when you are watching the Pakistani serial Humsafar in your living room in Delhi, Mumbai, Calcutta, Chennai, Agra, or Ahmedabad, there are strands in the story that move you, situations that gives you a feeling of déjà vu, emotions that stir memories within you. The Khirad and Ashar of Humsafar could be the friends you had once, the neighbours you never got to know, the college-mates you had delightful years with. As you watch their lives on screen, there is no real consciousness of oh-but-these-people-are-Pakistanis. That is how I, and most of the people who watch Indian films in Pakistan, react to them.
The pain of the impossible love of the Hindu Bajirao and Muslim Mastani is not a distant story of a Maratha peshwa and his forbidden beloved but of any two people who love beyond the accepted. When you see a Kashibai smiling through her tears sensing her husband's love for another woman, you connect to her pain like you would for someone you have known for a long time. There is nothing Pakistani or Indian about two people falling in love against all odds, and there is nothing Muslim or Hindu about hearts being broken, dreams getting shattered, vows remaining stronger than soul-breaking circumstances, and real life standing like the Line of Control between people doomed to love people they are not allowed to.
When Ranveer Singh's character Bajirao's first appearance in Bajirao Mastani elicits loud cheer among the younger members of the audience in a Lahore cinema, it is merely appreciation for an actor they love to watch onscreen. When Deepika Padukone as Mastani speaks, or her silent, expressive eyes write an ode of love on her beloved's being, you swoon for the idea of love. When Priyanka Chopra's Kashibai accepts the inevitability of her screen-husband's love for another woman, you respect a strong woman's grace and composure. When each shot of Bajirao Mastani is like an exquisite painting, each expression of its protagonists an artistic brushstroke, you marvel at the beauty of filmmaking at its best. It is not about who made the film, or where it was made. It is simply a very simple matter of you connecting to it. You the one in audience. Be it you in Lahore or Delhi.
To me a film-buff, there is no better way of reaching people and breaking barriers than the medium of film. And while cinematic extravaganzas like Mad Max: Fury Road, and delightful animation tales like Inside Out remain on my list of 2015-favourites, there is no denying the importance of Indian films in my life. They call it Hindi; it sounds like Urdu to me. They live across the border, but their stories are of people I see around me. Their accents are different, but the pathos of their lives sound, wordlessly, like those of people I know. Their songs of joy become the numbers I hear being played at our weddings. They create real-life situations, or let the story travel into a fantastical world, and I rejoice in that escapism. Their slapstick comedy feels repetitive, yet it elicits childlike laughter from me. Their larger-than-life histrionics feel staged, yet they become a part of the world I exist in. They write verses about love stories that are incomplete; I feel as if the words express the unstated anguish of my soul.
To films that connect people.
Mehr Tarar is a columnist based in Lahore