Kashmir

Zero Bridge

brittany — Tue, 15 Feb 2011 20:00:00 +0000

Scenes from this film and the emotions they elicited continued to resonate in my mind for hours after I saw it. Zero Bridge is an understated yet profound film that shows us a slice of life in Kashmir, a place most of us know little about.

The story follows Dilawar, a seventeen-year-old Kashmiri boy that lives with his uncle and is struggling to find his way. He is driven by a desire to leave Kashmir and hopefully join his adoptive mother in Delhi. In order to secure the means necessary to escape, he is led to take money for doing other people’s homework and become a pickpocket. During an errand at a shipping company, he meets Bani, a woman who happens to be one of his pickpocket victims. Their connection turns out to be deeper than a coincidental meeting. First time director and writer Tariq Tapa, an American of Kashmiri and Jewish descent grew up spending summers in Indian-administered Kashmir. Through his personal observations and commitment to telling a story about the region that doesn't fall into Bollywood or Hollywood stereotypes, he created Zero Bridge.

The film was shot entirely on location in Kashmir, India’s northern most state, which borders Tibet and Pakistan. In 1947, India and Pakistan gained independence from Britain and soon after the two nations went to war over Kashmir. Although a border called “line of control” has been established between Indian and Pakistani Kashmir, conflict remains an issue in the region. Most recently, unarmed civilians have led uprisings against the Indian army every year since 2006.

Filming in this setting makes for a harsh working environment that blends together with the splendor of Kashmir’s landscape to create an intriguing contrast. One of the strongest moments of displaying this contradiction came after a demoralizing scene between Dilawar and his uncle where the audience doesn’t actually see the characters, but they feel the intensity of an abusive relationship. This scene was followed directly by a moment of a serene sunset over the mountains, effectively helping to ease the tension. The politics of Kashmir never take center stage in the film but seem to linger as a supporting cast member. News stories from newspapers and on the radio permeate the background in many scenes. Although the film is not overtly political, it does give a voice for the region and, I believe, will motivate the audience to learn more about the contested territory.

I came to care about the main characters without consciously realizing it was happening. The subtle nature of the film is felt in the relationship that grows between Dilawar and Bani. My favorite scene in the whole movie features this pair engaging in a game of chess. Not very many words are spoken, but you can feel a strong yet innocent flirtation that many of us aspire to have in our lives from time to time. Their relationship feels like a breath of fresh air amid the challenges that both the characters and the setting are enduring.

A feeling I continued to have throughout the film was one of being trapped, whether by culture, family, or actual borders. There is a powerful juxtaposition in the characters’ desire to literally break away from Kashmir and metaphorically break away from family expectations. Although we don’t all face such restrictive cultural obstacles like arranged marriages, many of us face growing pains while becoming independent adults.

Written by: Andrea Hance, February 15th 2011

Curfewed Night: One Kashmiri Journalist's Frontline Account of Life, Love, and War in His Homeland

mandy — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 08:00:00 +0000

By Basharat Peer

Scribner

Basharat Peer sits calmly on the stage at The Hay Festival Kerala, giving his full attention to a question from a man standing beside me. Peer resembles a slimmed-down, younger James Gandolfini, but it’s impossible to imagine his passionate-but-measured speech exploding in a flurry of curses and pronouncements à la Tony Soprano—the kind of spraying invective, in fact, that he is being subjected to right now. As the questioner continues his diatribe on “the lies we are getting out of Srinagar,” and ultimately has the microphone forcibly taken away from him, Peer keeps his gaze on the man and, with hardly a flicker of anger, frustration, or sadness, diplomatically invites the man to fact-check his book and moves on to the next raised hand. He’s seen worse. After all, he grew up in Kashmir.

Peer was speaking about his book Curfewed Night, an account of his experiences growing up in Kashmir and then returning as a Delhi-educated reporter. His book was not written for Kashmiris; it came into being after Peer noticed that the bookshops of Delhi and New York (his current home) contained books about such troubled nations as Palestine, Sudan, and Bosnia, and while they all felt familiar to him, stories from Kashmir were absent from the shelves. Curfewed Night is Peer’s attempt to represent what he has seen and understood about Kashmir for a foreign audience, making it a book for Kashmiris only by proxy; indeed, to Kashmiris it is mundane, of interest only to see if they know any of the stories first-hand.

Nevertheless, Peer’s account of the everyday makes for compelling, sobering reading. In the beginning, he is a reckless teenager dreaming of Kalashnikovs and cross-border exploits. Aazadi (freedom, used as a byword for independence) is the first word on his and everybody’s lips. These were the times of greatest agitation and violence in Kashmir, shortly after hundreds of pro-independence protesters were gunned down by Indian soldiers in January 1990. After a weighty talk with Grandfather, who tells him, “You don’t live long in a war,” Peer’s family soon ships him off to study in Delhi, where his mind is broadened by university study at the same time as he deals with discrimination from Kashmiri-wary landlords.

After his parents miraculously survive a landmine explosion, he feels the pull of home grow stronger and decides to return; there, he finds that former militants—the people he wanted so desperately to join—are now nearly destitute and bear the physical and psychological scars of torture. “[The soldiers] cannot even imagine what torture is like,” repeats one man who spent time in Papa-2, Kashmir’s most infamous torture camp. No civilian has been left untainted by violence and loss. It isn’t all sadness and dark—intimate details, such as village in-jokes and the raucous Bollywood songs that have infiltrated traditional Kashmiri Muslim weddings, pepper the narrative—but these lighter moments serve to set the scars and violence deep into a very real, human face.

Through it all, Peer’s presence in the narrative is a constant. It is, after all, his story, though it is hard to consider it as such because he is particularly humble narrator. His evolution as the book unfolds is fascinating, beginning as he does as a gung-ho youth and progressing steadily to deep hurt and even powerlessness, demoralised by the weight of knowing so many troubling stories. He offers no solution; Curfewed Night isn’t a pro-aazadi polemic, or the report and recommendations of a government inquiry. It is Peer’s attempt to present the facts of what he has seen, heard and experienced, including but not limited to his own emotional response, and leaves all the room possible for the reader to form their own opinion.

Back on stage, the interviewer wants Peer to make a stand one way or another. Surely the youth of Kashmir are being left behind by the rest of India, who wear denim jeans and tweet from their mobile phones, she says. He smiles, says that “jeans and mobile phones are overrated,” and holds resolutely to a lack of conviction in any one solution or dialogue. Still, even if there isn’t yet a solution, there is hope, he says. Peer isn’t interested in grand pronouncements or easy answers. His contribution to the Kashmir question is a book as straightforward as it is powerful, and provides hope that those who read it will thereafter think not of rebellious uprising and anti-India sentiment when they hear the word Kashmir, but of the millions whose lives have been forever altered by bloodshed and conflict.

Cross-posted from The NRI

Written by: Haszard Morris, January 3rd 2011

Yi As Akh Padshah Bai (There Was a Queen)

admin — Fri, 29 May 2009 17:09:00 +0000

Directed by Kavita Pai, Hansa Thapliyal

Other Media Communications

Yi As Akh Padshah Bai (There Was a Queen) is a documentary that tells the story of women in Kashmir, the northwestern region of the India currently controlled by Pakistan, India, and China. The directors dub it "the world's most picturesque conflict zone". India and Pakistan have fought three wars over Kashmir, and conflict has been a constant in the region since the 1990's when Kashmiri separatists began clashing with both Pakistani and Indian forces. Shot between 2005 and 2007 by an all-female crew, the film opens with two people telling stories of their children going missing without warning. Grief and missing children are themes that recur throughout the film.

The documentarians travel between cities and villages, and speak to Kashmiri women about their experience with the conflict. They ask the women what they think will bring about peace. Despite differences in geography and age, the women's experiences are remarkably consistent. Many tell stories about husbands, brothers, and sons being taken from them by armed men in the middle of the day, or being arrested under false pretenses and tortured until they confess to being a separatist. After false confessions have been extracted, the men are released, only to be picked up months later and interrogated again.

Other times, men vanish from their homes, leaving in the middle of the night to join one of the fighting factions. All the women are subjected to violence, either beatings from police or the gunfire and bombings that explode throughout the day. Most of the women can't imagine what would need to be done to bring about peace, and Hajra, a woman with four missing children, remarks, "Anyway, if your heart is rotted, what does it matter if peace will come?" For Hajra, and for many mothers like her, a ceasefire won't bring an end to her mourning.

While Yi As Akh Padshah Bai is concerned with the survivors of the conflict, it also deals with those who are missing and the gaps and silences. People and stories vanish without an explanation, and there is no clear narrative. The difficulty for someone unfamiliar with the Kashmiri conflict or the region is in trying to make sense of what's unspoken. Because Kashmir has a blend of cultures and languages, even the directors—who are themselves Indian, though not entirely fluent in all the local languages—miss pieces of the women's narratives.

Despite the difficulties in translating culture and language, what shines plainly through the film are the Kashmiri women's rage and grief at their powerlessness. The women have no legal recourse to seek restitution for their missing sons and husbands, who are the primary breadwinners for their families. Yi As Akh Padshah Bai is a film that is shocking, heartbreaking, and more than a little confusing.

Written by: Catherine Nicotera, May 29th 2009