Filmmaker Neeraj Pandey thinks it’s silly of me to see any connect betweenhis contentious film, A Wednesday, and the recent terror attacks onBombay. Yet I can’t ignore the eeriness in retrospect. It was as though theanger, hatred and outrage articulated by people in the aftermath of 26/11, theirslogans of "enough is enough", were preempted on screen as the frustrationsof the "stupid common man" by a rousing Naseeruddin Shah. "The anger wasalways there. People were asking questions then just as they are now," saysPandey, who claims to have picked the idea of the film from what he saw andobserved around himself. Only now the open display of public rage andhelplessness has brought the real and reel together in a scary, unimaginableway--a case of reality inspiring cinema, and celluloid, in turn, anticipatingreality.
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A counter-point to A Wednesday is Nishikant Kamat’s Mumbai Meri Jaan,an empathetic, affecting, moving tale of the tragedies of five Mumbaikars in theaftermath of the train bomb blasts. Its simplistic but uplifting resolution--Sai Baba's prasad bridging the Hindu- Muslim divide --suddenly seems obsoletewhen the entire nation seems to be demanding action rather than a show of spiritand resilience. The message of the essential humanity of people redeeming acity, of liberalism, pacifism, generosity and good-heartedness, seems lost inthe midst of madness and melee--both in the reel and the real world.
Call it a twist of fate but 2008 has had several films dealing with thereality and aftereffects of terrorism—Mumbai Meri Jaan, A Wednesday,Aamir, Hijack, Black and White, Tahaan...
Not that we didn’t have such films in the past. Mani Ratnam gave terrorism anEastman colour, picture perfect, romantic sheen in Roja (1992) and DilSe (1998). John Mathew Mathan’s Sarfarosh (1999) played out like anedgy thriller that was categorical in placing the blame on the other side of theborder, pointing a finger at Pakistan for aiding terrorists.
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In Anil Sharma’s TheHero (2003) terrorism unfolded like a spy thriller with Sunny Deol trying tosave India from the Pak nuke. The film played on the animus against Pakistan.ISI harbours terrorists, Pakistan engages in such trivial pursuits like makingthe Islamic bomb--that was the wisdom gained from watching the film. In recenttimes Kunal Kohli’s Fanaa (2006) presented terrorism with huge lashingsof romance and melodrama and anticipated the increasing sophistication andglobalisation of terrorist operations that we read of in the news pages. Awayfrom the mainstream Santosh Sivan’s The Terrorist (1999) portrayed theconflicts and dilemmas of a young suicide bomber and Anurag Kashyap’s BlackFriday focused on Bombay’s underworld-aided bomb blasts of 1993 tracingtheir roots back to politics of hatred.
The mainstream Hindi terror films of 2008 are seemingly more acute and sharp;whether they are truly so is the subject for another debate. But these films docome with a bigger sense of immediacy, perhaps because the frequency of terrorattacks in the country too has increased manifold. "Every three months thereis a big blast, terror has become part of reality, it has crept into our livesso we have grown more sensitive towards it," says Raj Kumar Gupta, director ofAamir.
To put it crudely, terrorism has arrived in Bollywood much the same way as itdid in the West after 9/11. "Our responses to the issue are getting clearer.We are writing differently, talking differently, looking differently," saysPandey.
In the last couple of decades terrorism has also arrived in the heart of urbanIndia—in Mumbai, Delhi, Bangalore--than remaining confined out there—inKashmir or Punjab. Its victims are people like us, on a night out for dinner ora day out for shopping. No wonder the films are also tackling the issue from anurban, middle class point of view. "It is affecting people like us sittingright here in the cities," says Gupta.
Interestingly, the terrorist hasn’t merely become the great new villain inBollywood plots. Khalid Muhammad’s Fiza (2000), Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s MissionKashmir (2000) and Gulzar’s Maachis (1996) tried tosympathetically, albeit simplistically, examine the psyche, emotions andproblems of those who take the violent course, how they are mislead, misinformedand indoctrinated. In the same vein we have had Subhash Ghai’s well-meaningbut uneven and confused Black and White that shows two sides of theMuslim coin: the warm, genteel intellectuals as against the fanatics--thejihadis and fidayeens. The message is simple: killing a terrorist is not enough,you have to dig far deeper to try and understand why a terrorist gets born."Certain communities are pushed to a corner. They express their anguishthrough such means; they are provoked into acts of terror. Nobody is a terroristby nature. They’re brainwashed into becoming one. Education is the only wayout," says Ghai.
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Raj Kumar Gupta’s Aamir too showed the polarization within theMuslim community, showing the moderate as well as the radical forces playagainst each other. The liberal Aamir refuses to fall prey to theextremists, sacrificing his life to save the nation. "It showed both thevoices, the irrational as well as that of sanity," says Gupta. "Violence cannever be justified but there have been attempts to see the human side of terror,to understand the wounded psyche," says Gupta.
But Bollywood is still shying away from tackling the politics of terror, themany wheels within the wheels, perhaps willingly so. "It’s a complex issue.It’s difficult to distinguish black from white, right from wrong, it’s adifficult area to get into," confesses Gupta. According to him the dynamics ofterrorism are changing by the day with "Hindu" terror gaining focus nowafter Malegaon as against "Islamic" terror. Says he: "I wonder if and howwe would represent that." Worth wondering for sure.
