Perveen Shaukat, patron of the Asia Study Group, the Pakistani cultural think tank that has brought to us 13 movies, from Saarc countries, out of the Himal Travelling Film South Asia series, introduced the first movie with the remark that The Sky Below was 'for the thinking people.'
Consider in this regard the fact that the film screened at Islamabad on Friday is a good CMB from India and comes in the wake of India Pakistan dialogue held in May at Islamabad, and in advance of the next Pakistan-India conference to be held at New Delhi, next July.
Ably directed by Sara Singh, and also technically perfect, as well as intermingled with a number of out of the world rhythmic folk songs, the film opens with the flag lowering ceremony held at the Wagah border, before sun down. There each evening flags of Pakistan and India are ceremoniously taken down, inch by inch, with consummate soldierly skills, a scene unmatched in drill mastered on both sides.
The flag lowering ceremony raises the question that if the two militaries could show exemplary co-operation in a joint military ceremony, surely, the common people should also be entitled to the same camaraderie.
In this way the movie is interlaid with the theory of strongly common culture that bonded the people of Pakistan and India. Tahira Mazhar, mother of famous avante garde author, Tariq Ali, states in the film, at one point, that religion need not be juxtaposed with politics. In one scene our award winning author Subho Gian Chandani relates suffering of Sindhis for who immigrants had created much trouble.
Inevitably, towards the end, the story of the Kashmir conflict is introduced with the remark that whereas there were 300,000 jihadis contrasted with the presence of 700,000 Indian army personnel.
Between them they have killed more than 100,000 innocent Kashmiris since 1989. Although the border there has a strategic quality there is no other place than Kashmir that connotes real historical links between the two people, who are informed with peace messages of savants like Khwaja Ghulam Fareed and Guru Nanak.
The move also has nostalgic throwbacks from a few living people among the 17 million. Dr Mubasshir Hussain, for one, who crossed over to Pakistan, after 1947, regrets that his mother could not go to her ancestral home where her mother is buried, because of the limitation of visa.
An element of cruel joke is narrated by a Pakistani who relates the story of a dog who kept crossing the Wagah order and received affectionate care from Pakistan and Indian border guards whereas living people could not get to the other side of the border, 'created arbitrarily by Cyril Radcliffe, who did not know the lay out of the and but only saw it across the window of an airplane.' It needed a reminder that Indians have done a good job of work by creating such film to influence Pakistanis -and the world at large- to win sympathy for their side of the story.
It is time able Pakistani film directors picked up the megaphone to portray our side of the story with the same conviction as Sara Singh, who has directed as well as written the script of the Indian movie.