Veeresh Malik April 16, 2005

Tags: indo-pak , film , review , peace

A film by Ajay Raina

href="#SYNOPSIS">SYNOPSIS
FILMMAKER: Ajay Raina
FILM REVIEW
INTERVIEW


SYNOPSIS

In the times of yet another thaw in the relationship between India & Pakistan, an Indian ’Lover Of Cricket’ manages to go across to the other side of the ’Line of Control’ (LOC) ... to journey through the heartland of Pakistan.

Much in the style of Al Biruni (973-ca. 1050), a scholar and scientist, who visited this part of India more than a 1000 years ago to encounter an alien culture which he had called ’Al Hind’ , this is an account of the filmmaker’s travels through that part of ’Al Hind', which is now a foreign country and a most bitter foe.

The journey to Pakistan is a journey of return of various kinds - to nostalgia, hate, metaphor and reality. A song of hope, love, longing and betrayal. A lament about how the ’idea’ of Pakistan has tormented only the ’minorities’ in the Two Nations, which once were one. Starting from India’s capital Delhi, it takes a detour via Kashmir, Gujarat and Indian Punjab. It travels back and forth between memory and history to explore the ’idea’ of Pakistan, the story of it’s making, what it has become and how it affects Indians and Pakistanis, who in spite of the divide, remain connected to each other through Hate and through Love.

Quoting from Al Biruni’s preface to his book about India, this film is "nothing but a simple historic record of facts... the theories of the Pakistanis as they are ...and in connection with them, similar theories of Indians in order to show the relationship existing between them..."


BIO NOTE OF THE FILMMAKER:

Ajay Raina, Alumni of Film Institute, Pune, a Kashmiri, has been making documentary films for the last 12 years. His last film about his journey back home to Kashmir, "Tell them, the tree they had planted has now grown." won The Golden Conch Award, The RAPA award and the IDPA silver trophy in 2002. It has had numerous public screenings and has been screened at various festivals in India and abroad.


REVIEW by Veeresh Malik

For all I know, taking a video camera into Pakistan is not banned, nor does shooting tourist home movies get you into any sort of trouble or fame there. But then, the end product from those amateur efforts can hardly qualify towards holding any form of serious interest.

WAPSI, on the other hand, grips you throughout its very precisely edited one-hour duration. The actual handheld shots in Pakistan, about 70% of the movie, delivers live footage of aspects of Pakistani life not seen too often. More than that, some of the critical parts have been shot without the subjects being aware. The absence of women on the streets, the fear in the shifting eyes of the minorities caught on candid camera in Pakistan and the existence of a vibrant sufi movement, these, and more, are as evocative as the obvious pride in their flag, the brilliant countryside and the honky-town night streets of Lahore.

But the revealing points have to be the rather evolved history lessons prefered by the guides and authorities at the Museums and tourist spots. And the clips from typical popular Pakistani movies where the stereo-typed blatant Hindu villian is blamed for everything is a revelation to me. Cut right away to the status of Hindus in Kashmir and you wonder - what sort of people are these Islamist fundamentals who emerge from Pakistan? Were these the ones that Jinnah, and now Musharaf, wished on the world?

The big message that WAPSI brought out for me as a dispassionate observer who watched this movie repeatedly with friends and relatives including many who are from the communities known as minorities where they live (Indian Muslims, Indian Parsees, Indian Christians, Pakistani Christians, Kashmiri Hindus and Pakistani Hindus) was this:- What comes out very calmly in Ajay Raina’s movie is the various ways minorities have been treated by their Governments in India and Pakistan since 1947. And the progress or lack thereof that both countries have made therein, related to this important aspect. Chilling shots of Hindus in the Kashmir Valley are very relevant, for example,to the way the Indian Government has failed with its minorities..

In other words, if you as a country, as a Government, use fundamentalism as a tool to subjugate minorities then it is your own majority people who will remain backward while the minorities get ahead or leave the country or the weakest ones get left behind. If you do not recognise and assimilate fairly the minorities then it is your majority community that settles down into tunnel vision and regressive syndromes. This rather telling synopsis of statements made during a free-and-frank, sizzling, discussion (captured in this film) made on the streets of Lahore by Pakistanis and Indians is so very apt in summing up the issue.

The simple fact that temples, gurudwaras and churches are regularly knocked down or left to rot in Pakistan without much demur because the system and the majority is Muslim while a single nationally and internationally reviled Babri Masjid incident in India required and provoked a national movement in India to precipitate matters is brought out up front by comparing the status of mosques in Indian Punjab with that of temples in Pakistani Punjab. In bright living colour.

At the same time, the simple and open love that the man on the street Pakistani has for his Indian visitors and guests is captured intact, with the warmth coming through genuinely. My favourite part of the movie has to do with one Indian in Lahore telling the camera things to the effect that if you ask any Pakistani for vegetarian food then they will take you home and cook it for you and make you stay at their place too. This is something I experienced in Pakistan, too, the basic open and unqualified love from the man on the street.

However, their own truths about riots against minorities are discussed openly and frankly without fear of being documented by Pakistani and Indian Muslims while the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs look around shiftily and pretend there is nothing of the sort. The confidence with which Indian Muslims discuss their problems in India versus the hesitation in the voice and face of the Pakistani Hindus and Sikhs has to be seen to be understood.

Juxtapose this with the brightly lit Food Street, Gawalmandi, CooCoos, and Motorway shots. And nothing beats the surge in a Punjabi heartbeat as the golden fields of The Punjab come into focus on a brilliant shot while crossing the Ravi.

Yes, it pre-supposes an interest in the subject. No, it does not pontificate. And maybe it puts forth, tentatively, some directions for a solution. But most of all it leaves a sadness as the poetry brushes gently past the remnants of non-Muslim Lahore.

Shot on location in India and Pakistan with a variety of hand-held cameras and camerapersons, WAPSI holds your attention whether you agree with it or not. There are many sequences in this film where the subjects are unaware of their being recorded. However, there is seldom denying the truths that come on the canvas of the screen, and the slick editing as well as fast transitions back and forth in time and location make this documentary into a fast-paced revelation.



INTERVIEW:


We asked Ajay a few questions . . .

Question:- Hi Ajay, and straight off the bat, what do you really think about cricket, especially within the India-Pakistan scenario?

Ajay:- I do not think much of cricket. But in light of the India Pakistan scenario it is a war by other means and I would much prefer it that way than see lives being lost on the battlefields of Kashmir. When the cricket ties were reinitiated and visas became freer, cricket for me became the excuse to go to Pakistan. In fact, I did not see much cricket there as I was more interested in traveling around and shooting. Also, I was not allowed to shoot inside the stadium, except on the last days of the Test Matches,

Question:- So when you reached Pakistan, did you have any sort of idea of what your film was going to be like?

Ajay:- Initially, the idea was to accompany a band of Indian cricket fans into Pakistan and follow their movements / interactions / thoughts and actions. But I did not get the visa for the one day series as I had sought official permission to make a documentary about the Indian cricket fans in Pakistan. When I finally did get my visa, it was only for me and my cameraman. It was a cricket visa. It was certainly not for shooting. The one day series was already over and I did not know what the film would be about. And since we could not shoot more openly, so our subjects also became restricted to a few doables. It is by accident therefore, that the film is about my journey and my encounters with Indians and Pakistanis. I shot this film as a tourist would shoot a home video. And that’s the flavour I retained in my editing. I realy did not know what I was looking for (mostly) and I did not know what I would find.

Question:- Most every analysis on India and Pakistan tends to go on and on about the similarities between the two countries. Fine, that may or may not be true for contiguous land masses, it is probably not true for parts of the two countries which are far away from each other. Tamil roots of Baluchi language, or vice-versa, notwithstanding. So what were the big differences you found in how the people of these two countries have evolved over the past 57 years?

Ajay:- I traveled only in the Punjab region of Pakistan. This part of Pakistani Punjab may be similar to Indian Punjab in the way people talk and get overcome emotionally. But beyond that I actually did not see much similarity .... notwithstanding the deep desire on the parts of Punjabis on both sides to feel similar. To a non-Punjabi, Lahore and Multan and Rawalpindi are different from, say, Amritsar and Jullundur (I shot in these places as well). You hardly see any turbans, any Gurmukhi, you hardly hear Gurbani, or temple bells in Pakistan Punjab. The Punjabi they speak is Urdufied Punjabi. The Azaans we hear in Pakistan (multiple stereophonic effect of different kinds of calls by different sects from adjacent mosques at almost the same time) is way different from the kind or types of Azaans you hear in Kashmir or Delhi or Lucknow or even Muslim areas of Indian Punjab and Haryana. The biggest difference I found between the two Punjabs is - while one has become Islamified / Urdufied / Male-ified and tending towards looking much like Old Delhi - almost all traces from its pre-Partition past have vanished. (There is a sequence from my film in which I have edited Lahore and Old Delhi shots together, to show they look the same) The Punjabi culture we much speak of in Lahore, Multan and Rawalpindi has more or less become subsumed by the influence of the mosque.

In Indian Punjab, except at The Golden Temple, I did not see much influence of religion on any aspect of life of Indian Punjabis. (I have travelled a lot in Indian Punjab - seen most Sufi shrines there too) However, there is one small town in Indian Punjab, Malerkotla, which looks more like a small Pakistani town I came across on my way to Nankana Sahib. In Malerkotla they speak better Urdu than any other Punjabi town in other parts of Indian Punjab.

The only women you see in the film (upper class ladies apart) are from a Muslim family in Delhi and a Sikh family at Nankana Sahib. I think that speaks much about how, in the last 57 years, the two countries have become different.

Question:- And finally, what next with WAPSI?

Ajay:- Show the film around, as much as possible, to as many people as possible in all the cities and towns and villages of India and Pakistan. If my budget permits, I plan to do an Urdu version of tthe film so that it is more accessible to people all over.

When I finally finished the film, I realised that it had almost turned out in a way as a sequel to an earlier film I had made about my journey back home to Kashmir. I would prefer to show both films together, so that the larger point I want to make takes prominence. On its own.

That film is also about exodus of non-Muslims and ends up insisting on resolving the as yet unresolved trauma of Partition, so that Kashmir and all other problems between India and Pakistan can be solved.

Thank you.