Getting into the Diwali spirit

The Curious Case of Ae Dil Hai Mushkil

Instead of spending Diwali in Delhi getting slowly asphyxiated and deafened by a constant barrage of fireworks, I was lucky enough to enjoy the festival, for the second time, in the east of the state of Uttar Pradesh with my friend Shiv and his family. Once again, I was treated to a sumptuous array of superb vegetarian food during my time there, much of which, being local to the area I was in, I had never tried before. Above all, it was a pleasure spending time in a traditional Indian household and again meeting various members of the extended family, whose exact relationship to Shiv I have, to my shame, still yet to completely work out! Anyway, here are my thoughts on the controversy surrounding this year's Diwali blockbuster: Ae Dil Hai Mushkil. 

  

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The Diwali blockbuster has become as much a fixture of the festive season as fireworks, smog and sweets. This year’s offering was Ae Dil Hai Mushkil or ‘Difficulties of the Heart’ (Hindi film titles tend not to translate well!). Were it not for the fact that the Pakistani actor Fawad Khan – who had already starred in two Bollywood films without fuss – had been cast in the film, it would be yet another anodyne entry into the Bollywood annals of love and heartbreak. But with the two nations engaged in more grand-standing and skirmishing in Kashmir however, such blasphemy proved too much for some right-wing nationalists; threats of attacks on cinemas in Mumbai choosing to screen the film forced Karan Johar, the film’s director, to give way to the mobocracy (which included several political parties) and issue a statement before its release declaring he would no longer employ actors from ‘the neighbouring country’ in any of his future projects. Aware that this might not be enough to placate the chauvinistic vultures picking apart his film, Johar also saluted the Indian Army and condemned terrorism emanating from across the border.

Bewildered, yet keen to see what all the fuss was about, I watched Ae Dil Hai Mushkil in a shabby, packed-out cinema in the city of Gorakhpur, 800km east of Delhi, two days after Diwali. With the help of friends translating at key moments, I just about managed to navigate my way through the fairly simple plot. As is often the case with ‘controversial’ cultural works, the reality in no way justified the frenzy surrounding Johar’s creation (Salman Rushdie’s ‘The Satanic Verses’ perhaps being another case in point).

Aloo chaat, Uttar Pradesh style - fried onions, chopped tomatoes, fried potato, various spices combined to make some of the best street food I've had in India! 

Much like the film itself, Khan’s character was fairly innocuous, a London DJ who temporarily separates the main protagonists (played by Indian, not Pakistani, actors Ranbir Kapoor and Anushka Sharma) by marrying Sharma’s character, before leaving her, setting the whole romantic tension between Kapoor and Sharma off on another drawn-out tangent. While watching the film, I made sure to scrutinise this heinous individual closely for any signs of anti-India behaviour – eating beef while on set, burning the Indian flag as an encore etc. – but, alas, failed. When his character did appear on screen, there was no reaction from the audience. I’m guessing (or perhaps naively hoping) that most watching didn’t really care that a Pakistani was gracing the big screen; they were there to enjoy some classic Bollywood fare and see their favourite stars. Indeed, the wildest cheers of the night were reserved for the entrance of megastar Shah Rukh Khan who, in a typically effervescent 5-minute cameo, dispensed some worldly wisdom on love to Kapoor’s rather hapless character.

It’s both sad and alarming when dull-minded gnomes, clad in the protective garb of patriotism, can so brazenly manipulate popular culture to suit their cowardly, odious agenda, by attacking ‘soft’, apolitical targets such as actors and directors. It seems clear that it's not just on Indian news channels that the maxim ‘He who shouts loudest wins’ seems pertinent - and when there's nothing but deafening silence (not for the first time) from Prime Minister Narendra Modi on such a clear-cut case of bigotry, it's easy for illiberal, nationalist voices to reverberate without check in the void. But if such people want to deny Indian people the simple pleasures of seeing Bollywood stars caper to camp dance music and chase each other across the world in the pursuit of love, just because one of them was born on the wrong side of a line hastily drawn on a map in 1947, then they’re not only dull-minded. They’re plain dull.