By Shilpi Suneja for TwoCircles.net
A few days before I watched the much hyped Bajrangi Bhaijan the Supreme Court of India upheld its decision to hang Yakub Memon, a key suspect held for the 1993 Mumbai blasts that occurred following the communal riots after Hindu fanatics demolished the Babri Masjid in Ayodhya.
Memon’s hanging was widely regarded as a “miscarriage of justice,” and intellectuals began to wonder if there is really any justice for Muslims in India. Many also wondered about the consequence of this hanging for India (read Hindus). Memon’s hanging forced us (or should have forced us) to collectively wonder about the fate of Hindu-Muslim relations going forward.
At such a dismal time Salman Khan’s Bajrangi Bhaijan, a film about a mute Pakistani girl lost in India finding her way back home through the help of an Indian man attempts an alternate narrative on the India-Pakistan/Hindu-Muslim issue. Granted, we least expect Bollywood of all entities to be a vehicle for change. But this time Bollywood proved us all wrong. More than merely coming at us as a vehicle for change, the film came at us as a giant fishing net to catch our failing faith in humanity and bring it on board its ship of brotherhood.
Perhaps I was an easy catch — I am a woman and I cry easily. But many of my hardened intellectual friends (read men) also unashamedly confessed to having “reached for the rumaal” right from Bajrangi Bhaijan‘s opening scene.
To open with a shot of a Pakistani village community watching TV somewhere in the mountains of Kashmir, cheering their nation’s cricket team, is to grant precedence to Shahida’s story. And boy are we caught hook, line and sinker as we watch this incomparably innocent little girl nearly fall off a cliff. By the time she gets separated from her mother (the train takes her mother back to Pakistan and leaves Shahida somewhere in the no man’s land between the two “enemy nations”) we are at the edge of our seats, nay, nearly kneeling in prayer.
Only after we are entrenched in Shahida’s point of view do we see the Indian side of the story. It is only through Shahida’s scared, tear-stained eyes that we see Salman Khan. Our mega-star has to wait in the wings for his grand entry. But this “entry” goes far beyond the run-off-the-mill grand entries of Bollywood. Because it isn’t the mega-star we are celebrating. We are celebrating his potential only as seen through the eyes of this lost child — we see Salman Khan through Shahida’s eyes. This othering of the self — seeing ourselves reflected in the eyes of the other — is a humble and a productive way of understanding the India-Pakistan situation. Here Salman Khan’s bravado, his might, his muscle, his Chulbul-Pandey suave is only worth its mettle if our little Shahida finds them useful. She is the touchstone of our mega-star’s mega powers. And for Shahida, from under whose train bogie emerge boys dressed up as Hanuman, witnessing Salman’s devotion to a giant statue of a Hindu God produced as much fear as hope. Will this Hanuman fanatic help our dear Shahida, we ask.
That Salman’s character is a devout Bajrang bali bhakt is a stroke of genius, and the film’s unique contribution to the India-Pakistan dialog. Every few years since India’s inception religion earns a bad name in progressive circles. Take the anti-Sikh and anti-Muslim pogroms of 1984 and 2002 for example. Bajrangi Bhaijan sets out to cure the secularists of their blindness toward the way a majority of Indians actually live.
It is important to note that Bajrangi is neither secular nor an atheist. He is also not blindly religious. It is made quite clear that Bajrangi is physically, mentally, even emotionally unable to unquestioningly follow any ritual put before him, whether it is wrestling at his father’s akhara or learning rules at the RSS shakha of which his father is the leader (the entire shakha is reduced to a boy’s club with very bad fashion sense — the boy Bajrangi can barely keep his too big shakha shorts from slipping off). Our hero can’t even pass the tenth grade in ten tries. All this earns our hero the title of “jeero” (zero/zilch) from his father.
What’s more he is unable to even make overtures in matters of the heart! Even as he has ample proof of having secured the girl’s heart, he fails to make his move. It is she (Kareena Kapoor) who claims him in front of her family and that of another suitor. To put it simply: our hero Pavan Kumar Chaturvedi is unassuming until the end, pure of heart and more than simply being zero, he is analytical and self-reflective, patient and not unquestioning of the rules and norms put before him. That he is a Hanuman bhakt who can go to a dargah and listen to the prophet’s praise only to reunite a Muslim child with her mother is the true heartbeat of the Indian nation. This is our true offering to the world— not simply religious tolerance which can imply a “don’t ask don’t tell” / “live and let live” policy with its lack of dialog and curiosity about each other — but syncretism that involves plenty of curiosity, lots of dialog and argumentation and all the frustrations that come with it.
It is in dialog with Shahida that Bajrangi realizes just how much humanity he is capable of. What a clever use of her speechlessness, for if she could speak we would know her immediately and the story would be over before it began! In these carefully crafted scenes Bajrangi discovers Shahida’s true identity/belonging. He learns that this flower petal of a girl (who risks her own life to rescue little lambs) prefers animal flesh over watery daal! That she raises her open palms at a dargah rather than joining her palms at a temple, and jumps for joy at Team Pakistan’s victory. These same scenes also chart the spiritual/moral growth of our beloved Bajrangi Bhaijan. He goes from being a devout vegetarian to singing a ditty to chicken dishes just to cheer up a glum Shahida!
Such is the power of the encounter between the self and the other. And especially when the other in the story takes the form of a child. At first I was apprehensive of this assignation — the self is a well-built man but the other is little mute girl. But I was very quickly disabused of this notion when I realized little Shahida far from simply representing our neighbor, represented humanity itself, or human beauty or innocence or love or human kindness, whichever phrase you use to understand the thing of truth and beauty we need to guard/preserve/promote. When Shahida can represent all these higher things then why limit ourselves to seeing her as just a Pakistani?
Another vital gain in having Shahida be a child is that this infuses a child’s innocence on all other adults and adult relationships around her. Shahida represents the childlike curiosity with which the self ought to examine the other. In the presence of a child even a hardened reporter’s heart can melt, giving rise to the beautiful moment when Bajrangi (who has finally crossed into the Pakistani border visa-less, even passport-less!) teases the friendly, bumbling reporter Chand Nawab with: “Haven’t you seen the Mahabharat?” And Chand Nawab, so guilelessly responds with: “Is it a film? (Insert a perfectly timed Nawazuddin Siddiqui pause) Is it a new film?” How apt that we see our greatest literature go unrecognized just a few miles across the border! How liberating to have us humbled so that we can open our minds and hearts to dialog with our neighbors.
By the end of the film my theory was confirmed: Shahida is Pavan and Pavan is Shahida. The same innocence shines in their eyes, the same heart beats in their body. If at all the two were separate, their fusion is complete in the last shot of the film as the song “I am heart, you are the heartbeat,” plays in the background and Shahida is finally home. Indian and Pakistani denizens storm the military gates that divide our nations, and miracle of all miracles, Shahida utters her first words. Her words are ironically (another reach-for-rumal moment) “Jai Shri Raam!” What fondness, what love can the other feel for us! Indeed, there is no greater tribute, and indeed all the blows Salman Khan has suffered on his body are redeemed by these, Shahida’s guttural almost primal-sounding words! These are the first syllables uttered by the paak, pure Shahida.
Her words are her offering, a verbal recognition of the self by the other. These words are not what we have in common with Pakistan. Nowhere in Pakistan would you hear a shout of Jai Shri Raam. But still, see how how easily these words were translatable, repeatable, teachable. They carried no violence, no political agendas. As such they became a mirror reflecting Shahida and Pavan’s mutual pain and joy, of meeting one another and separating, of losing and finding home.
If at any point my mind, my body despised Raam or the words Jai Shri Raam (I lived through the 1992 Babri Masjid demolition as a child and heard these words used as a battlecry), then Shahida rid these words of their negative associations. My nation’s greeting on the lips of a Pakistani girl returned me my Raam.
(Shilpi Suneja is a writer living in Boston. She is finishing a novel about the long shadow of the Punjab Partition.)