There are many memorable take aways from Vishal Bharadwaj’s National Award winning film. The lush Himachal landscape is a pleasant break from the urban settings of the latest Indie films. Pankaj Kapoor gets better with age, and shows tremendous range in playing the village shopkeeper “Nandkishore Khatri”. The character is so far removed from the unbending Hindu priest of “Dharm” (also released in 2007), but Kapoor is equally at ease.

However, the film stumbles repeatedly and is unsatisfactory on the whole. The script is based on a children’s book by Ruskin Bond:

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Nandita Das is the most beautiful actor in Indian cinema. Well, may be she’s got some competition now. She gives yet another heart warming performance in this Pakistani film based on true events, highlighting the plight of innocent people caught on the wrong side of the contentious border between India and Pakistan.

An ironical twist is that the family caught in this web is a Hindu dalit family living on the Pakistani side of the fence:

The singular theme of the film is how a child from Pakistan aged eight years learns to cope with the trauma of forced separation from his mother (Nandita Das) while being held prisoner, along with his father in the jail of a country i.e. India, which is hostile to his own, while on the other side of the border, the wife-mother, devastated by their sudden disappearance builds a new chapter of her life, by her solitary struggle for sheer survival.

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