The Kashmir Files: Straight from the heart

Five lakh Pundits (scholars) were forced out of their homes one cold winter night. They were to convert to Islam, leave the place (without their women) or be massacred in unfathomable ways. The chants of ‘Ralive, Tsalive, Galive’ and ‘Allahu Akbar’ and ‘Azadi’ continue to ring in your ears long after you’ve left the theatre.

Bone-chilling and blood-curdling, The Kashmir Files exposes the brutalities of a holocaust that was kept away from India for more than three decades. Within me, it triggered rage, and it also triggered helplessness about that fact that these incidents happened when I was celebrating my second birthday.  On one hand there was my mother, trying to admit me into a decent school, bribing me with Frooti and chips, and 2000 km away, another mother who was forced to eat rice soaked in her own husband’s blood. A mother disrobed in front of the entire community (ironically, her baby boy ‘Krishna’ plays with rice in the house) and sawed into half while she was still alive.

And just when you begin to think that the worst is over, a full-blown genocide erupts – of 24 Hindus (including a baby) being shot at point-blank range. The sound of bullets makes you shudder and leaves you feeling numb; you wouldn’t know how to gain composure thereafter. But watch the film anyway.

There’s enough that has been spoken about the film already, and I will not delve deeper into politics. I must confess that I’m not someone who can quote thinkers and is well-versed with secular politics, but the film affected me, shook me irreversibly. As a student of an ancient discipline. As a Hindu. As an Indian.

In the bloody folds of the 170-minute film are some of the most heart-wrenching scenes that are highlight the beautiful bond between a grandparent and his grandchild. Anupam Kher, who is so central to the film, plays the character of Pushkar Nath Pandit. You cannot help but fall in love with this legendary actor, maybe because he hasn’t acted, but just been himself – A Kashmiri Hindu healing from the wounds of the past. At the very beginning, we see him as Shiva, with his face painted blue and forehead smeared with Tripunda, preparing for the Mahashivratri celebration.

It’s his vulnerabilities that make you want to hold him, cry with him, look after him. We see Kher as the father-in-law begging his daughter-in-law to not eat the blood-soaked rice. We see him sacrifice his vision so his grandson can go to a good school. We see the saliva dripping from his mouth as he pulls out a biscuit from a steel container and licks it. A grandfather sacrificing his dinner just so his grandson can eat his share.

He loses his eyesight, but he doesn’t give up hope for the removal of article 370. However, it’s not till we see those million expressions and emotions a few moments before he breathes his last that we are completely broken. Because that is his final chance of being reunited with his home and his long-lost friends –  in the form of ashes.

A majority of us have been fortunate to still have our parents around. And we’ll have the support of our spouses, children and a certain maturity to handle our grief when they pass away. A grandparent’s death, however, is something that you’ll never be prepared for. I remember the time when my grandfather had come back from the hospital, and there was so much happiness in my innocent eyes, eyes that didn’t know that the reason they sent him back because the cancer had eaten him up completely. I cannot erase the speed at which I ran behind the ambulance, begging him to come back. I remember braiding my grandmother’s fine hair in the hospital, my songs – a balm to her heart that was giving up. I can still close my eyes and feel the touch of her wrinkled fingers. Sometimes in my dreams.

Our parents do so much for us, but our grandparents are the ones who do it all silently. Without making any noise about their sacrifices. And then they go, just like that.

The Kashmir Files is a wake-up call, but it also makes me feel privileged in so many ways. Today, we and our loved ones are safe at home because of our nation and its armed forces. We could’ve been in Kashmir on that night, too. But we weren’t.

A brutally intense, evidence-based film, Kashmir Files comes with bloodshed, but it also comes with strong answers that’ll leave you speechless and map the country differently – geographically, culturally and emotionally.