Trailer Review: Shikara : When Love Is All That’s Left

 Vidhu Vinod Chopra returns as  director ,  this  time to tell his own story. Like him,  thousands of Kashmiri Pandits were overnight  rendered  homeless when on 19 January  1990, sectarian violence erupted  in the Kashmir valley, reducing Hindus  in Kashmir to the status  of refugees in their homeland.

Shikara is  the  story of one Kashmiri Pandit  couple, played by raw somewhat  unpolished newcomers Sadia and  Adil  Khan  fighting  hatred with love as the Valley burns. It’s a beautiful thought that Gabriel Garcia Marquez could have  approved of. Except for the fact that Shikara is  far more modest  in its ambitions than the epic literature  of Marquez or even the  vision that went into Vidhu Chopra’s Mission Kashmir.

 But  it’s  not  the epic  vision, but the  emotional  core  of  a political disaster that  interests Chopra this time. Neither  the actors nor  the technicians  on  board  seem to be  here to create history. This is a  film that seems to chronicle the truth  about a truly tragic chapter  of Kashmir’s history when  a large section  of  the  local population had to leave their homes and property and flee the once-paradisaical  State.

Shikara seems  to capture the sheer  pathos  of  a couple  who is homeless in  its own home. The young couple do not exude an extraordinary charm and charisma. They  look  like  an ordinary  couple  caught in an extraordinary situation.This is  perhaps intentional.Who would believe Varun Dhawan and Alia Bhatt as  refugees in their own  country?

As  the  release date,7 February approaches Shikara will generate increasing  debate on  how emotionally physically and financially wounded were  the displaced Kashmiri Pandit.Vinod Chopra  has his own stories to tell about being a refugee. Here is one  of them. It doesn’t convey the epic vision  of Vishal Bhardwaj’s   Haider  . But  the trailer  of Shikara moves  you.