Duur
Paas
In Dil Chahta Hai (2001) Sameer (Saif Ali Khan) and Pooja (Sonali Kulkarni) enter a cinema to watch a fictional film titled Woh Ladki Hai Kahan. As they make their way through a full house and take their seats, a golden curtain rises, indicating that they are at an older single screen cinema and not a multiplex. The couple exchanges popcorn and some quick glances, before being taken by surprise at the scenes unfolding before it.
Sameer is on screen in a white tuxedo, singing about his search for the ladki of his dreams. His outfit, mustache and surroundings are a clear homage to a bygone era of Bollywood. Soon, he is joined by Pooja. She looks like a Bollywood dream girl of yesteryears.
Back in the audience, Sameer sniffs his popcorn, maybe to check if he has mistakenly taken hallucinogens. But the popcorn is not to blame; he is under the spell of Bollywood (and, of course, love). This film on screen has transported him and Pooja.
Sameer and Pooja’s love story plays out on screen, referencing Hindi cinema of the 1970s, ’80s and ’90s.
Seated in the audience, Pooja finally looks at Sameer and asks: Woh ladki hai kahan?
Sameer takes her hand and declares the obvious: Woh ladki hai yahan.
As the couple stands up, lost in each other’s eyes, instead of booing them for the disruption, the other moviegoers also start to perform choreography that they had seen on screen.
“The beginning,” the title card on the theatre screen reads; its rendering and multicolour gradient reminding one of early Word processor font treatments.
I have been listening to Woh Ladki Hai Kahan a lot lately, as I attempt to revisit Mumbai — a city I have never set foot in.
A city I will likely never be allowed to enter.
A city I know intimately,
from a distance.
This is a city I have experienced on several occasions as a Pakistani who has grown up watching pirated Bollywood films.
Like Sameer and Pooja, I too have been transported while watching films, and on many such expeditions I have landed in Mumbai.
Mumbai/Bombay to me is many things.
But above all it is the B in Bollywood.
The city that loves its superstars.
The city where Om (Shah Rukh Khan in Om Shanti Om, 2007), a struggling actor, stood outside a megastar’s house and fantasized about one day winning a Filmfare Award.
The city where thousands gather outside Shah Rukh Khan’s house everyday to see him wave from a distance, like royalty.
They hold up signs and their phones to see the star — someone they feel they know intimately,
from a distance.
Or do they know him at all?
Is the Mumbai in my head Mumbai at all?
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Is the Mumbai in my head Mumbai at all? |
In the Mumbai in my mind, when one wants to travel by public transport they either call out for an ‘auto’ or a kaali peeli taxi (Premier Padmini taxi).
But these iconic taxis have been disappearing from Mumbai’s roads because of a law banning vehicles older than 20 years from operating as cabs. Soon all such cabs will be off the roads. They will then only exist in people’s memories, and in films such as Taxi No. 9 2 11 (2006).
In my imagined Mumbai, even if all else fails, the ‘locals’ (Mumbai Suburban Railways) are almost* always there for you. While a lot must happen on these trains, experiencing Mumbai through Bollywood’s lens means seeing opportunities for romance and meet-cutes everywhere.
In Saathiya (2002), Aditya (Vivek Oberoi) expresses his love to Suhani (Rani Mukherji) on a local. In Life in a… Metro (2007), Shikha (Shilpa Shetty) takes Akash’s (Shiney Ahuja) advice, and ends up in the general compartment instead of the ladies’ compartment. The crowded local forces Akash to stand very close to her. As the train jolts, someone pushes Akash and he momentarily ends up in Shikha’s arms. Nervous, he immediately yells at the man. Seeing Akash red in the face, Shikha starts to laugh.
* The locals do not operate round the clock. Missing the last local train can nearly derail one’s life, as Nilesh (Abhay Deol) learns in Ek Chalis Ki Last Local (2007).
Shayad har Karachi wala samandar ki taraf bhagta hai,
Main bhi paani ke qareeb hoti hoon to duniya ki sab cheezain asaan lagteen hain
Har tangii, har ruqawat, samandar ki lehron mein khamoosh hojati hai
The lines above are from my short film Faqat Tumhare Shehri, and are based on letters exchanged between me and my friend, Ayesha Omer, who is an artist and media scholar. I was recently reminded of Ayesha’s words while rewatching Wake Up Sid (2009).
In the film, Konkana Sen Sharma’s character, coincidentally also named Aisha, comes to Mumbai and joins a magazine called Mumbai Beat. She is asked to write a column about the city, but everything she pens seems insufficient. “Jo bhi likhti lagta kay kuch kam hai,” she eventually writes in her column. “Iss shehr kay barey mein kia keh sukti thi main jo pehle nahin kaha gaia?”
On Aisha’s first night in the city she meets Sid (Ranbir Kapoor). She asks him if he was to take her to one place in Mumbai where would he take her. Cut to: The pair sitting at the beach.
“Samandar humesha special raha hai na Bombay kay liyeh? I guess I can see why,” Aisha observes. “Iss shehr main, jahan har waqt sab kuch badlta rehta hai, bas aik samandar hee to hai jo nahin badlta.”
I first watched Wake Up Sid at a cinema near the sea in Karachi. Years later, the cinema has closed. But, watching the film all those years ago, I couldn’t help but draw parallels between my city and the one on screen.
This was a time when Bollywood films were being shown at cinemas in Pakistan. This meant I no longer needed to watch bad pirated copies of the films. I could be part of an audience — laugh and cry, and be transported to different worlds with them.
Soon Pakistani musicians started gaining more and more popularity across the border, and then actors also started being cast in Bollywood films. It felt like a happily ever after.
But then it all came crashing down.
***
Bollywood and Pakistan have always had a love-hate relationship, but this felt different. Pakistani actors in India were sent packing. The release of the films featuring them was in jeopardy in India. And Pakistan also banned Bollywood films once again.
A bubble had burst. We’d been rudely awoken from a dream.
One of the last Bollywood films to feature Pakistani actors was Karan Johar’s Ae Dil Hai Mushkil (2016). Many believe that some characters in the film, including the heroine, were originally meant to be from Lahore. But keeping in mind the political situation, Johar changed it to Lucknow.
As has been observed in multiple articles, one scene that clearly supports this theory is when Ayan (Ranbir Kapoor) tells Alizeh (Anushka Sharma) that he will need a visa to come to her wedding. Ayan, a British citizen of Indian-origin, would not need a visa to attend Alizeh’s wedding in Lucknow.
This (alleged) rewrite felt like a clear message: stories of love and friendship between Pakistanis and Indians no longer have any space on screen.
I still manage to sneak into Mumbai every now and again. My most recent visit was courtesy Zoya Akhtar’s Gully Boy (2019), that I watched at a multiplex in New York.
Following the Covid-19 pandemic the relationship between audiences and cinema has changed around the world. A larger variety of Bollywood films can now be accessed on streaming platforms in Pakistan too. But while a lot has changed, the ban on screening Bollywood films has remained in place.
One hopes against hope that things will change for the better. Maybe Pakistan will once again embrace Bollywood films. Maybe India will eventually welcome Pakistani actors (and tourists). Maybe this isn’t final.
Shayad picture abhi baaqi ho, meray dost.
— Fahad’s Mumbai
Duur
Paas
— Onaiza’s Lahore
Duur Paas
By Fahad Naveed and Onaiza Drabu
We long for cities with the same aching intensity we have for lost lovers. Cities don’t just occupy a geographic location with physical markers like roads and buildings. Often, they’re moods, emotions, sounds, tastes, colours and smells that settle deep into our psyche.
Like people, cities have distinctive characteristics. They have souls. Once we have lived in, or visited, a particular city, we preserve the memories of its varying shapes. An imagined city, on the other hand, through a particular trick of memory and imagination, becomes even more vivid in our minds than a real one.
In ‘Duur Paas’ (Near Far), Fahad Naveed and Onaiza Drabu exchange their imaginations, yearnings and affiliations with a city across the border, one that is wholly unfamiliar to them in reality: Mumbai for Naveed and Lahore for Drabu. They only know these cities through cinema, music, books and oral histories, and use these clues to construct an intimate memoir of a city that exists in their dreamscapes.
Naveed, who has grown up watching (mostly pirated) Bollywood films, accesses his memory of Mumbai, as seen on screen. He uses glitchy screen grabs and montages to visually represent a city he knows intimately, but has never visited. The accompanying essay reflects on Naveed’s own relationship with Mumbai and Bollywood, and Bollywood’s relationship with Pakistan.
Drabu creates visual fragments of Lahore using a series of overlaid images comprising archival photos from Lahore and others from her memory. Through the accompanying text, she captures the sounds, smells and visuals that have weaved the memories of Lahore in her imagination.
‘Duur Paas’ is a nostalgic tribute to our visceral experiences of spaces and places, one in which questions of authenticity and veracity lose meaning.