A restrained, thoughtprovoking docu-drama

Film: Lamhaa

Starring: Sanjay Dutt, Bipasha

Basu, Kunal Kapoor, Anupam

Kher

Written and directed by

Rahul Dholakia

Everyone, says someone important in this searing document of our times, is playing politics in the Kashmir Valley. In a milieu of all-pervasive politics, thank the lord for a creative voice that can look into the burning Valley with dispassionate compassion.

Lamhaa is one of those docu-dramas that could have easily toppled into the territory of over-statement and over-simplified politics. And boy, haven’t we seen that happen in very successful political cinema in recent times?!

Rahul Dholakia who earlier made the gently persuasive Parzania on the aftermath of the Gujarat riots, doesn’t lose his storytelling equilibrium even when the situations of crises described by the skilfully-written plot scream for attention. Restraint and honesty go hand-in-hand in Dholakia’s Kashmir, which we’d like to believe, is the real Kashmir, unalloyed, nonmagnified, intense and utterly devoid of artifice.

The camera moves restlessly through the dangerous crowded main roads and tense bylanes of Kashmir where anything can happen. The cinematographer James Fowlds seems to know the Valley of the damned with the transparent scrupulousness of an

Debutant director Abhishek Sharma never loses hold of the satirical mould. The sense of fun is uppermost in the script, though insider who can place himself outside the explosive bustle of a portion of earth that’s rapidly slipped into the stratosphere of anarchy and mayhem.

The high-octane screenplay has no space or time to shed tears for the innocent and the dead. Miraculously liberated of overt sentimentality Lamhaa moves with candour and confidence through a world whose politics has become progressively impossible for the outsider to comprehend. Dholakia’s narrative moves through a labyrinth of pain and violence without trying to make common sense of them.

The narrative imposes no morality on the escalated violence of the Valley. Neither does Dholakia get excessively ‘cinematic’ in his approach to the complex material. Most of the time he lets the characters be. The Valley of simmering discontent comes alive in front of us in a ferocious but toned-down swoop of politics and drama.

The narrative moves swiftly and steadily achievement. The actors are in the mood for some serious fun here. While Ali Zafar sparkles through the characters’ lives. It isn’t always easy to tell who is on the right side, probably because the lines of morality are not just blurred in the Valley, they’ve almost completely disappeared. Jannat is in a limbo.

Lamhaa is a tearless ode to a people who have become so isolated from the mainstream of Indian life that the adorable children openly and abusively talk of India as a separate country

The dialogues (Ashwath Bhatt) spare none, not the politicians and certainly not the other power-brokers who in the film’s words, have turned Kashmir into a lucrative business company.

At the lowest level Lamhaa is thoughtprovoking mirror of mayhem and misapprehensions on a piece of earth that once was paradise. At the highest level it’s an even-pitched docu-drama which doesn’t mince words nor try to act cute about a throbbing crisis. The pitch is controlled even when the circumstances in the plot are global terrorism, this one doesn’t quite make the cut. totally out of control.

As Sanjay Dutt walks into the volatile Valley with leonine strides we feel for a while as though Dholakia wants to insinuate a larger-than-life super-hero into headlinedriven politics. But Dutt soon blends into the savage fabric of a life lived on the edge by people who have nothing to lose any more.

The film is dotted with memorable cameos. Among the fringe players Shernaz Patel as a woman looking for her husband for 18 years leaves a lingering impact. Among the principal cast Kunal Kapoor as a young militant turned conscientious politician determined to gather peace into the Valley and Anupam Kher as a treacherous political leader get it right deadon.

But the real revelation is Bipasha Basu. In a powerful role that Shabana Azmi would no doubt have played twenty years ago, Bipasha sinks herself into her character imparting a dramatic resonance into the role without resorting to stock expressions. The sequence where she gets mauled by militant women is as traumatic to watch as it must have been for Bipasha to shoot.

Lamhaa is not an easy film to watch. It comes to no decisive end. It takes into consideration the entire politics of Kashmir without careening towards excessive drama. This is that rare political drama where every component in the jigsaw of politics and terrorism is put on screen with a sensitivity and precision that repudiate melodramatic excesses.

A word of special praise for Mithoon’s songs. The lyrically lush tunes break into the deafening sound of bomb blasts and roaring guns to remind us that once the best poets of Kashmir wrote poetry on the beauty of the Valley.

The beauty of Lamhaa lies in its constant gaze at that beauty that one still glimpses in the shimmering waters of Dal Lake on a quiet and peaceful day.

Subhash K. Jha

Meow!

Dear Auntyji

I have found love for the second time at 45. My new man is just perfect in every way - he is devoted and loving and well-read and quite affectionate, in every sense of the word. But the problem is that he lives by himself, with a billi rani, whom he fondly refers to as Rajkumari Neelu Wati Tirchi Akhon wali. Now this catand I have no issues with animals generally - but this cat, hops from sink to sofa, from bistar to bahar, leaving a wake of fur and feline scent everywhere. Now, I want to move in with my dear Neel, but what to do about the cat? Do you think it would be wrong of me to wake up one day and find Rajkumari Neelu Wati “missing”? Do you think I could “give” her away to someone without Neel ever finding out, and then I could say that cat simply ran off to find a billa for herself? Tell me Auntyji, what to do? My sense of hygiene is being compromised due to the presence of my feline soutan.

Auntyji says

As my dear, dear brother-fromanother-mother Dr Saleem Waaris Jamal would say, wala howal wala kuat! Have you no shame, you poxfaced old cat? Here you are, finding love for the second time and instead of rejoicing, you are plotting and planning to do away with Neel’s companion of so many years? OK, so I too have an issue with cat fur everywhere, and everyone knows that we are mere slaves to cats, but to consider doing away with Neelu is the most outrageous thing I have heard in the last decade. (Actually, second most outrageous thing: the first being Pushpa bahen suggesting that I get my derriere botoxed 3 years ago). But back to the billi. Let me state it outright. No, you can’t do away with