Kashmiri film harud

HARUD: Multiple themes in one narrative A Kashmiri film-maker’s perspective of Valley’s endless autumn

Harud (autumn), a film by debutante Kashmiri director Aamir Bashir was screened here at a hotel on Monday evening for a select audience. The film is set in contemporary Kashmir, in the period when mobile phones made inroads into Jammu and Kashmir, and with that as a backdrop it focuses on the life of a youth Rafiq whose brother, a photographer, disappears in custody and how the family tries in vain to grapple with the bitter reality, the atmosphere of insecurity and violence and complete militarisation.

The film, as actor turned director Aamir Bashir maintained before the screening, is only one of the thousands of narratives in Kashmir’s history of conflict. It is not a documentary but a fiction, a fiction very close to reality, knitting in several of the multiple themes into one narrative, offering as it does a very realistic glimpse into phenomenon like disappearances, grenade attacks, youth enamoured by the gun and willing to cross the border, the humiliation at the hands of security forces, the enormously sized bunkers and gun totting uniformed personnel always forming a part of the landscape with the autumn’s fallen Chinar leaves. The culture of barbed wire that the entire Valley has been gripped with is very beautifully and aptly portrayed without being overbearing.

The awesome aspect of the film is that it brings you a sense of Kashmir not only through story telling and characters but also the art of photography with an attempt to not just capture scenes from contemporary Kashmir but enlivening them through natural sounds and lights. Shankar Raman, who is also the co-producer and co-screen play-writer along with Aamir Bashir, has done a splendid job, especially in view of the fact that Shankar is neither very well versed with Kashmiri culture and had never visited the Valley in the period that is being dealt with. Whether it is sound of the rattling buses, the jack boots of the military men, the sounds of birds, the rippling waters or the screeching bicycle, every visual has its own story to reveal and sounds that are so intrinsically Kashmiri in essence.

How did both Shankar and Aamir get drawn into the film? Aamir was inspired some six year ago with this idea and it took him four years to simply put out a script in place, upon which both of them began work thereafter. The film, with a shoe string budget, was shot over a period of one month in the autumn of 2009. It was an arduous journey simply shooting the film with a paltry budget and very less logistical support in a place like Kashmir where huge cameras and crews often invite lot of suspicion and skepticism from both officials and civilians.

Despite all the odds, the end result has been purely aesthetic, though painful through its very subtle portrayal of people caught in a very hopeless situation of conflict amid some lives that move on with hope. It is about the despair of a family, having lost their son in custody, about a young boy’s aimless life till he stumbles upon his missing brother’s camera and finds a new reason to move on. It is about the hopelessness of a father, a man in police himself, unable to protect himself, his family or others from the onslaught of violence. The story is mainly told through these two alternating perceptions of the father-son duo, beautifully portrayed by well acclaimed Iranian actor Raza Neji and local artist Shahnawaz Bhat, who made his debut appearance before the camera. Bhat is fresh and his expressive eyes haunt you long after you’ve seen the film. The other cast of the film includes Shamim Basaharat, Salma Ashai and Mudassir Khan.

The film is slow paced but one that is engaging, for its aesthetic appeal and its story line, and one that makes you want to both know what follows next and also enjoy and take in every moment of the film. All this involvement without the jarring melodrama and added props of music et al.

“The film is a work of fiction. I have tried to go beyond what you see in the news: beyond the politics, to look at the human cost of the conflict,” says Aamir. And that is just one of the strong points. A must watch for serious cine-goers whenever it hits the theatres.