Her Name is Khan

Once in Dubai,a doctor said my country is calling me back,he resigned and went back to India with his beloved Mercedes.

I heard a very nice dialogue recently in a film that fiction has to make sense,not life. That statement really amazed me because it was such an obvious truth but we never somehow articulated it that way. After being amazed,it actually saddened me a little bit too; to think that why does it has to be this way.

But it is,I guess.

I spent my entire childhood outside India,listening to my father say that he will not die anywhere except his country.

The Babri masjid went down and my father came under tremendous pressure to sell his beloved car as that was,according to his friends,getting us under the scanner. So he did what he had to. He sold it over night. That day his heart broke so badly that I could actually physically hear it. And I knew it was not for the car. It was for the India he had come back to. He felt betrayed,maybe by himself and his own beliefs.

That incident introduced the word complicated to me with great simplicity.

It’s complicated that I don’t get a house in this country due to my surname but its simple that this country is my home.

It’s complicated that my husband is a Hindu but it’s simple that I am married to him.

It’s complicated that we shoot people in fake encounters but it’s also simple that someone is investigating it.

It’s complicated that we brand Muslims as terrorists but it’s simple that we also make presidents out of them.

When I wanted to sell Qubool Hai (for most of you who don’t know what that is,Qubool Hai is a daily soap aired on Zee TV. And much to my delight,it’s doing very well),I took it to various broadcasters and was not getting a buyer.

Though I never showed it to anyone very openly,it was scaring me internally as I could sense an apprehension on most people’s part to put it on air. I could feel that there is an apparent reason to believe that a Muslim show will not be well received,given the country’s climate of polarisation.

I always remembered what my father had told me. He had said that a car doesn’t matter but what matters is your faith. Don’t let anyone take that away from you and you must always believe. And I wanted to believe,but this time I was preparing to hear my own heartbreak aloud.

But thankfully Zee TV bought it. And then I was scared that nobody would watch it and my heart would break eventually.

But Qubool Hai went on to become the No 1 show. And I thought to myself that how easily we give in to our thoughts and how easily we doubt beliefs.

When Qubool Hai became successful,I was not just happy as a director or producer,it actually meant something much greater to me,as a person and as an Indian.

I realised,and I was so happy to realise this,that a 3.4 rating meant almost the whole country is actually watching it.

And I realised that we might be polarised and there might be boundaries and borders around us,but they have definitely not reached our hearts yet. And deep inside us,before we are anything else,we all are still Indians first.

And that’s why this particular Independence Day means a little more to me than the previous ones.

It’s a small thing but it’s also a big thing. You see it’s complicated but it’s also very simple. So Happy Independence Day to all of us.

Jai Hind!