Shakespeare’s ghost and solving the Kashmir problem
A metropolitan audience gazed upon a Kashmiri Hamlet. Set in the 1990s when militancy was at its peak in the Valley, the lead character Haider is a Kashmiri Prince of Denmark, a militant sympathiser with an Oedipus complex and a machine gun. Yet apart from the action on screen, an even more fascinating spectacle unfolded off screen. Denizens of urban India watched Vishal Bhardwaj’s film transfixed, giggling at the send-up of Indo-Pak machinations, sighing at the travails of families which struggle to escape the pull of extremism, gasping out loud at the plight of phiran-clad Ophelia. A tremor of real sympathy ran through the packed house that had turned up to see India’s first Read More
