Kashmir's Timeless Hamlet

Vishal Bhardwaj's film Haider, released ten years ago, remains as relevant now as It was then because It shows nothing Is normal’ in Kashmir

- Tanul Thakur

AROUND the halfway mark in Vishal Bhardwaj's Haider (2014), we enter Faraz Cinema. "Main hun diwaana tere pyaar ka, peecha na chhodunga tera," sings Salman Khan, like a dutiful stalker, on screen. A wide shot shows the Indian Army officers, as viewers, enduring varied stages of boredom-some drinking, some sleeping, some barely awake. Then, a door opens, and convicts line up in front of the screen. An officer signals the projectionist to stop; the interrogation-or the real film-has to start.

This Hamlet adaptation, much like its setting, Kashmir, inverts conventions, mocks normalcy, and distorts identities.

So a theatre, promising freedom from the captivity of mundane life, functions as a prison. The multiplicity of identities here isn't just restricted to inanimate things.

Because in the same theatre, Haider's father, "Doctor" (Narendra Jha), notices an "aasteen ka saanp"-a man whom he considered bhai, Khurram (Kay Kay Menon), morphed into the Army's informer-a brother turned betrayer. In a drama centred on a conflict-torn land, coveted by two countries, it makes poetic and perfect sense that dualities define Haider.

Consider its more literal example: the Army officials stopping and checking the IDs of regular Kashmiris, reminding them that they need permission to enter their own homes. Or making them feel, as a character says later, that "All of Kashmir is a prison". These ID checks, even more than the Faraz Cinema scene, examine and extrapolate identity and duality, as the 'correct' documents make all the difference: between allowed and detained, insider and infiltrator, home and prison.