Ramchand Pakistani

It is heartening that Indians can now see Pakistani films after four decades. Mehreen Jabbar's "Ramchand Pakistani" — which opened in Indian metros on August 1 — is only the second movie to cross the border, the first being "Khuda Kay Liye," released a few months ago.

Jabbar's work is historically significant. Associated with television serials in Pakistan, she is one of the very few woman directors there to have helmed a feature for the big screen. What is even more interesting is the kind of support she garnered in India that made exchange of talent possible. The film's lead actress, Nandita Das, music composer Debajyoti Mishra, singer Shubha Mudgal (whose vocals are featured) and editor Aseem Sinha are well known in the Indian industry.

Indeed a great mix in a movie that was inspired by real incidents. Jabbar's father, Javed, who made Pakistan's only English language film in 1976, "Beyond the Last Mountain," has been running an NGO in the Thar desert. A Hindu Dalit once taught in a school that Javed has, and it was this poor man's story that played on the emotion and imagination of the father and daughter. The seeds of "Ramchand Pakistani" were firmly shown with money coming in from Jabbar's mother, the family's friends and finally from a telephone and a biscuit company!

Mehreen Jabbar is certainly a gutsy woman, who dared to have Hindus as her central characters in her movie that has already travelled to festivals at Tribeca, Seattle and New Delhi. The story takes place in 2002, when tension between the two South Asian neighbours was at its peak, and Jabbar dramatises this through a trauma suffered by one low-caste Hindu Dalit family living in Pakistan, just across the border with India. An open border then, it has now been fenced.

Ramchand (Syed Fazal Hussain) is just eight, but a hot tempered lad, who in a fit of anger walks across the border. His father, Shankar (Rashid Farooqui), goes looking for him, but is mistaken for a spy and arrested by Indian soldiers. The father and son land in an Indian jail in Gujarat, and the boy's mother, Champa (Das), is left anguishing over what could have happened to the two. Her guess that they could have been carted away is as good as true, but she finds she can do nothing about it. In a nation where 97 % of the population is Muslim, Champa finds it hard to even lodge a missing report in the local police station.

The film has a very authentic feel about it: the prison scenes were shot in Gujarat, and the musical score and camera work enrich the work set mostly in Pakistan's Thar desert. Performances are top rate with Hussain essaying the fear and confusion of a boy snatched away from his home and mother, and transported to a prison, where petty and die-hard criminals keep him company. Farooqui's is no less a riveting role, given to a sense of despair and doom.