The sudden screech of the brakes of a steam engine of a train ferrying refugees, the audacity of a young man to challenge the long deep groove that Cyril Radcliffe traced along a subcontinent – a line that decided the fate of millions by reducing them to their immediate religious identity – and the realisation that love can endure time and man-made boundaries, are not scenes that one usually sees these days in movies about India and Pakistan.

Imtiaz Ali’s Main Vaapas Aaunga is not special for telling us about the horrors of Partition – a fact well-documented in history books and grainy videos found in archives and subjects of PhD thesis.

Its ingenuity lies in showing us that people living across the border are not much different from us – they speak the same language, share the same cultural history and live the trauma from Partition – despite being slouched under the burden of the obligation to play the role of the hated enemy, the loathsome Pakistani, the villain of Dhurandhar-esque blockbusters.

They look very much like us, bleed very much like us, the gashes across their chests mirror the wounds of a young Sikh man who lets out a guttural cry, as he pledges to come back in search of the Muslim woman he loves, a bond that doesn’t know borders, religion and the concept of Partition.

In the time when mainstream Bollywood movies often blur the line between cinema and propaganda, glorify extra-judicial killings, lament the fact that pellet guns do “limited damage” and gleefully unite in singing the paeans of majoritarian politics, Main Vaapas Aaunga stands........

© The Wire