Two to Tango

Countless events of cultural crossover in the past six months are evidence that the din of daily saber-rattling is giving way to the softer sounds of peace. And this is only the start. Several eager artists, musicians and actors will blur the borders further in the months to follow.

In an industry that calls itself Lollywood, watching Indian Friday releases a night earlier has long since been a norm. Fans like actor Muammar Rana routinely spent Rs 500 for his favourite stars Amitabh Bachchan and Mithun Chakravarthy. Today, Star TV’s saas-bahu brigade rules living rooms in Pakistan, while film stars bask in the semblance to their Indian counterparts. Shan, a megastar, poses for photo-ops in Shah Rukh Khan-like achkans, action star Rambo has modelled himself on Akshay Kumar and heart-throb Rana runs his fingers through his hair each time he is called Sanjay Dutt.

No wonder then, that Rana didn’t think twice before signing up for a cameo in Shashi Ranjan’s Dobara. Any Pakistani actor would give an arm and leg to act with stars like Raveena Tandon, Jackie Shroff and Mahima Chaudhry. Shooting in Mumbai this month, the actor flew in with his father Shaufqat Rana, former Pakistani cricketer.

While Rana Junior is kicked about his “pivotal” role, his father recalls how Manoj Kumar offered him a part in Kranti when he came to the city in 1978, to watch the India-West Indies series. ‘‘I was less interested in cricket, and more in meeting Dilip Kumar. I had seen all his films,’’ says Shaufqat Rana, 55, who hosted the legendary actor a few months ago in Islamabad. This time round, the two did meet the celebrated actor. Besides entertaining calls from Karan Johar, Subhash Ghai and David Dhawan—the film-makers wanted to know if they could meet Rana.

Though Bollywood is a great ice-breaker (actor Urmila Matondkar, during her visit to Karachi for a music video, called herself “the first of the many raindrops of peace from India’’ even as more cultural diplomacy played itself out in the city in the form of the ‘3rd Kara Film Festival’), there are other events set to breach the divide.

For Mani Ratnam’s forthcoming Yuva, Pakistani sufi singer Javed Bashir has recorded a qawwali with AR Rahman, while actor-producer Pooja Bhatt’s Paap has music by Pakistani musician Rahat Ali Khan and Junoon. While Bhatt premiered Paap at the Kara fest, Bashir performed for Punjabi channel etc’s Baisakhi Blast concert in Mumbai last fortnight . Another show with etc is being planned in Pakistan.

The dynamics of adulation that Indian cinema enjoys from Pakistanis intrigues America-born Mehru Nisa. A one-film Pakistani actor, Nisa, who’s in Mumbai shooting for an independent American venture titled Hum Tum Aur Mom, observes that in the US over 60 per cent of people watching Indian films are Pakistanis.

The Bollywood influence rules even indigenous Pakistani ventures. The two big-budget films there (both cost Rs 6 crore) have been Aatif Chaudhary (the ‘‘Vaastav of Pakistan’’ starring Rana) and Javed Sheikh’s Yeh Dil Aapka Hua, according to Rana and Nisa. Yeh Dil… was partly shot in Switzerland, with songs by Indian lyricist Nida Fazli and sung by Sonu Nigam, Alka Yagnik and Kavita Krishnamurthy. Fazli is also writing songs for Sheikh’s next film, Khule Aasman Ke Neeche, to be recorded in Mumbai next month.

But Bashir insists that it’s music “and musicians like Abida Parveen, Reshma, Jagjit Singh and Sonu Nigam, who have helped bring Indo-Pak relations back on the rail”.

Lead singer of Indi-pop band Silk Route Mohit Chauhan also confirms speaking to ‘‘some prominent cultural connoisseurs there’’. ‘‘We’ve never been to Pakistan, but people have told us that we have a huge following there,’’ says Chauhan, who has played with Junoon in India. ‘‘It would be nice to perform with them there,’’ he adds.

Ahmed of Junoon, however, is busy serenading Qila Mubarak for now. After the shooting, he plans to shop for Patiala salwars. “Either side of the border thinks things are better on the other side,” says Tejal Shah, a Mumbai-based photographer who took a train to Pakistan during the cricket surge and stayed on to lecture at colleges of visual art. During her two months there, Shah had friends asking her to get them mulmul on her next visit. ‘‘And I was buying fabric for people back in India,’’ laughs Shah, who is planning a Mumbai-Karachi photography show with architect-photographer Leena Ahmed from Karachi and Mumbai-based Natasha Mendonza later this year.

‘‘Artistically, we want to focus beyond being Pakistanis and Indians. The show is about how photography deals with cultural spaces, so an Indo-Pak theme is bound to come through, though that isn’t the intention,’’ she says.

The theme of the recently held exhibition at Apeejay Gallery in Delhi, titled ‘Along the X-Axis: Video Art’, was also not Indo-Pak, though seven artists from Pakistan collaborated with Nalini Malani, Navjot Altaf and Baiju Parthan from India.

One of the artists from across the border was Huma Mulji, whose brainchild Aar Paar has banded the artist community from either side since 2000. The idea is to encourage an alternative audience in alternative spaces. ‘‘We discovered that there were a lot of similarities between our art, and that we had common interests. It’s a myth that Pakistanis are really that different culturally,’’ says Shilpa Gupta, Mulji’s counterpart in India. Interestingly, the third leg of Aar Paar is a self-funded video roadshow, to be held after the General Elections in India. Quddus Mirza, who will be participating for the third time though he hasn’t decided on his film yet, feels that while ‘‘the concerns on both the sides are similar, the vocabulary is different’’. The films will be screened at public venues like Carter Road and the Bandra promenade in Mumbai.

Dr Rafiq Zakaria, the author of One India, credits this wave of cultural episodes to a ‘‘never-before kind of affable atmosphere’’. His emotionless argument, however, is that both the need and nostalgia are more on the other side of the border, with cricket and films being the most important variables in the changing matrix of Indian and Pakistani ties.

But, even as Ranjan looks at television and film co-productions, and actor and music aficionado from Lahore, Usman Peerzaada, tries to finalise a joint film production with theatre personalities here and take musicians over for concerts (he’s associated with the Sufi Soul Music Festival), Indians too want a slice of life across the border. ‘‘Even after the cricket fever, we are receiving hundreds of personal requests. We could take 20 plane loads every week if there were no visa problems,’’ says Farrukh Hasan of Pakistani International Airlines, unofficial representative of Pakistan in Mumbai.

Yet cricket remains the original super glue. At least for Saumya Sen of Delhi-based non-governmental organisation Leapfrog. Sen is on a 15-day trip to Pakistan with 26 street children. ‘‘They will interact with their counterparts through theatre workshops, jam sessions and, of course, cricket,’’ says Sen, adding, ‘‘The idea is to create awareness about child labour, homeless children and the problems of children living on the street.’’ And of course, there’s the shared legacy of surroundings and situations to partake from.

(With inputs from Manveen Grewal in Chandigarh; Simi Sakhuja in Mumbai
and Prarthana Gahlot in New Delhi)