Thought I should share. This came in today's DAWN Images.
http://m.dawn.com/news/1061274/foreign-front-blood-brothers
The Partition was much like a horror film: when Sir Cyril
Radcliff hacked India and Pakistan into existence, blood hung in a mist
over the countryside. And life was elsewhere.
“I was least affected by the Partition,” recalls film-maker MS
Sathyu. “I was a
student in Mysore in South India, living far away from the bloodshed
that followed. Only years later, while living in Mumbai, after I met
people who were forced to leave their homes, did I become aware that it
was nothing short of a holocaust.”
That consciousness inspired Sathyu’s directorial debut, Garam Hawa
(Scorching Winds), widely regarded as among the best films on the
Partition. Based on an unpublished short story by Ismat Chughtai, and
adapted for the screen by late poet Kaifi Azmi and scriptwriter Shama
Zaidi, it was the first Hindi film to be made on the subject, nearly
three decades after the division.
“A lot of film-makers and film financiers came from Punjab and the
Sindh, and they had experienced the trauma firsthand. They just did not
want to remind themselves of what they had suffered,” says Sathyu.
Now, over four decades after it was released in 1973, a digitally
enhanced version is set to make a comeback in theatres across India.
Although the Partition as a topic is now largely confined to school
textbooks, Sathyu, 83, believes it continues to “hold historical and
emotional value, especially for audiences born after India’s
independence.”
Set in Agra in the months following the formation of India and
Pakistan, Garam Hawa tells the story of a shoe manufacturer Salim Mirza
and his family. Despite prejudice and economic pressure, Mirza chooses
to stay on in India, even though close friends and relatives shift to
Pakistan. It’s a decision that gradually tears his family apart. His
daughter Amina’s childhood sweetheart migrates to Pakistan.
Mirza’s business suffers because lenders are hesitant to advance
money to Muslim traders who may leave without repaying debts. The family
loses its ancestral home.
Amina commits suicide after another suitor too goes away to Pakistan. A
heartbroken Mirza, left behind with his wife and son, is filled with
doubt and contemplates migration.
Mirza’s optimist son Sikander, however, refuses to leave his
homeland, preferring to soldier on. The film ends on a heart-wrenching
note of hope, as Mirza follows his son into a morcha, with narrator
Kaifi Azmi’s words ringing deep in the background, “Jo door se toofan ka
karte hain nazaara, unke liye toofan vahaan bhi hai, yahan bhi.
Dhaare mein jo mil jaaoge, ban jaaoge dhara, Ye vaqt ka elaan vahan bhi
hai, yahan bhi.” (Who sees the storm coming from afar knows that what is
there will soon be here ...
Who mingles with the streams knows this is the cry of the time, both there and here …)
In Sikander’s persona, the scriptwriters represented the voice of the
young Indian Muslim. “What the film is trying to show is how people
become victims of events they cannot control,” says Farooque Shakh, who
was 23 when he played the part of Sikander. “The main character is
completely apolitical. He is a decent, upright man trying to live a
regular life, but that does not stop circumstances from pulling him
down.”
Few films have had the enduring impact of Garam Hawa, which focuses
not on the bloodshed, but the violence the Muslim community experienced
from within. The sense of alienation and despair felt by a people
desperate to hold on to a disappearing world is communicated through
real-life experiences which the scriptwriters added to the original
story. The scene where Mirza’s old mother hides in the kitchen and
refuses to leave their ancestral home is based on an incident from the
life of Shaukat Azmi, who plays Salim Mirza’s wife.
Garam Hawa is a standout film not only for daring to take up a
sensitive period in Indian history. It was also the first Hindi film to
look at the Muslim community in a nuanced manner. Prior to this were the
so-called ‘classic’ Muslim socials of the ’50s and ’60s; popular, but
their elaborate shayari and courtly sets had little connect with the
lives led by ordinary Indian Muslims. The myopic portrayals continued
into the ’70s and ’80s, where stock characters like the tawaif with the
heart of gold, and the hero’s best friend were almost always Muslims.
“Invariably in Indian cinema, minority communities are depicted as
caricatures and typeset. They are used as comic relief. This is not just
for Muslims, but even for Christians, Parsis or Marwaris. They are
shown as underworld dons or bootleggers and the portrayals are often
crude,” says Sathyu.
“It’s not just about minorities,” adds veteran scriptwriter Javed
Akhtar. “In recent years Hindi cinema has shied away from any social
issue. We have created a new middle class which just wants to party.
With the affluence that came in the ’90s, the urban middle class in
India has become inward-looking and insular. They are not interested in
seeing things that are not their problem, so middle-class or
working-class issues have gone out of the frame.”
So will Garam Hawa touch a chord with this contemporary audience, the
post-Partition generation, many of whom have little connection with or
interest in events long past?
“When there is a film with human emotions, it will always have a
resonance,”
believes Shaikh. These problems exist throughout the world. So stories
of this kind are pertinent wherever and whenever they are shown.”
The themes Garam Hawa touches on — alienation, exclusion, feeling
isolated in one’s own home — have perhaps never been more relevant in
India than today, where Muslims have complained of facing discrimination
when it comes to renting or buying houses.
And it’s not just Muslims who are targeted. Housing segregation is
now an open practice with advertisements freely proclaiming properties
open for purchase only to Brahmins, non-Muslims or vegetarians. The
practice, while legal, has contributed to a growing ghettoisation and
alienation.
“Growing up I never faced any discrimination, even though my father
was a Pathan and my mother a Hindu,” says Mumbai-based Anusha Khan.
Khan, who is married to a Hindu, says things are different today. “My
daughter keeps my last name as her middle name and she is questioned
about it all the time by her friends. When I was growing up, my father
wrote ‘Humanist’ in the religion column in school forms, and it was
accepted. I do that as well, but I am always asked what that means and
why. I feel the world was a more accepting place then. There are many
more walls today.”
“Today we are vocal about our intolerance,” adds her husband, film
director Victor Acharya. “Bigotry existed earlier too, but it was voiced
behind closed doors. We cannot deny that it is intimidating to live in
India today and be part of a faith that is globally perceived as not
being safe. I am not sure things have changed much since Garam Hawa.”
“I have a Muslim colleague who goes to the mosque every Friday and
observes roza; much like some Hindus fasting every Tuesday. But he is
perceived differently. Today Garam Hawa would probably be about people
like him. They are as well-entrenched as anyone else but come up against
a few barriers,” says Acharya.
Adds Akhtar, “The film is still relevant and I don’t say this
happily, because the whole problem should have been a part of history by
now.”
Religion and geography gang up to ensure history still hits the
headlines. But perhaps one day, thanks to films like Garam Hawa, we will
let bygones be bygones.
