The Kashmir Files: The Truth Is So True; It Almost Feels Like A Lie!

Vivek Ranjan Agnihotri has managed to do what others failed to do in the last 32 years. Read ‘The Kashmir Files’ movie review by a Kashmiri Pandit.

BY OSHINE KOUL

The Vivek Agnihotri directorial, The Kashmir Files is based on the real-life exodus and genocide of Kashmir Pandits that took place 32 years back. The plot revolves around a JNU student Darshan Kumaar, who remembers nothing about his childhood. Anupam Kher takes the gut-wrenching film on his shoulders and delivers it, successfully.

Many filmmakers have tried to tell us the story of the Kashmiri Pandits exodus, but none of them have been as accurate and close as Vivek Agnihotri. Unlike Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s – who’s himself a Kashmiri, Shikara, Agnihotri holds no qualms in showing the brutal but honest gut-wrenching tale. The 2-hr-50-min long film opens with kids playing in the freezing cold of Jan 1990. While the commentary about Sachin Tendulkar’s cricket continues to play on the radio, a couple of Kashmiri Muslim boys hit a Hindu young boy named Shiva (Prithviraj Sarnaik), asking him to shout ‘Pakistan Zindabad’. Seeing him getting beaten up, his good friend Abdul holds his hand and asks him to run from there and hide. But soon after, we see a huge rally of Kashmiri Muslim youths setting Pandits’ houses on fire while asking them to Raliv, Galiv yaa Chaliv means either convert into Islam, die or leave Kashmir.

Later we see a couple of terrorists entering Anupam Kher’s home. Seeing them knock at the door, Sharda Pandit (Bhasha Sumbli) asks her husband to hide in a rice drum. But before that, their neighbours had already told them where he was hiding. Despite her thousands of attempts to stop them, these terrorists enter the store and opened fire at the drum. And it was the next scene that saw my tears roll down my cheeks. To save her father-in-law, Pushker Nath Pandit (Anupam Kher), and her sons from them, she’s forced to eat rice soaked in her husband’s blood.

Fast forward, Sharda’s youngest son Krishna (Darshan Kumaar) is all grown up and he’s a confused JNU student who’s brainwashed by his professor Radhika Menon (Pallavi Joshi). But to fulfil his grandfather Pushker Nath’s last wish, Krishna travels to the valley to keep the former’s ashes at his own home in Kashmir along with his other good friends an IAS officer Brahma Dutt (Mithun Chakraborty), Dr. Mahesh Kumar (Prakash Belawadi), DGP Hari Narain (Puneet Issar) and Journalist Vishnu Ram (Atul Srivastava). This is when Krishna comes to know about the truth and decides to tell everyone about it, in his own way.

I was born in Kashmir but migrated when I was a baby. While our generation has only heard stories, our parents have literally gone through those scary times. To be very honest, the only generation that has suffered is our parents. Most of our generation’s parents got married during such circumstances. Some of the old folks of our community still live in hope that one day they will return to their homeland, while others have passed away thinking about the same. Our parents were just married and had their eyes filled with thousand dreams of a bright future. But even before they could think about it, they witnessed something that changed their lives forever and for the worse.

So who better to watch and judge the story than the victim themselves? I decided to take my mother along and see if she would approve of the film. Guess what? Right from the first few scenes till the end of the film, one thing my mother kept saying was, “Bilkul aisa hi hua tha. Bilkul sach bataya hai. (Exactly the same happened, they have shown the truth.) With 15 minutes into the film, my mother said, “Wait and watch, as this is nothing that you have seen.”

Before the interval, Pushker Nath along with Sharda, Krishna and Shiva, and other Kashmiri Pandits are seen leaving in a truck to Jammu in the early morning without taking any belongings. We later see a lot of dead pandits crucified to the trees and it will make your hearts sink.

Moving forward, these Kashmiri Pandits are seen living in tents at a place called Purkhoo Camp, but guess what an irony could be? I and my family have lived in this migrant camp my entire childhood. Tents were later made in quarters, walls of which were made of plywood. Many of them died within a few days as some were bitten by scorpions and snakes and others couldn’t bear the scorching heat of Jammu.

Even after 32 years of exodus, still, no one has forgotten their motherland and have an undying hope of returning to their homeland.

Coming back, in the climax, the terrorist leader Bitta (Chinmay Mandlekar), stripped off Sharda’s clothes in front of other Kashmiris and later punishes her by slitting her into two pieces using a cutting machine. Mind you all these scenes are not fictional, these are just 10% of what actually happened during the exodus. While watching this, my mother was quick to recall that one of my father’s brothers was also cut into two pieces with a saw right in front of their eyes.

I wish I could tell you more, but I think all the words in the world aren’t enough to describe the pain. The filmmakers recreating the 2003 Nadimarg massacre scene of killing 24 Kashmiri Pandits will make you leave the theater sobbing and with a heavy heart.