First things first, it is hard to believe that this is Subhash Ghai. Quite literally, Black and White (hereafter B&W) is the very antithesis of anything that Ghai has ever stood for. Grand commercial successes, ornate melodrama, opulent set design, stylized imagery and costumes—he is Bollywood’s modern day showman! B&W is, in one word, minimalist. Not in scope or reference. For the film, for perhaps another first in mainstream Hindi film lore, examines the trans-territorial nature of Islamic extremism. The narrative moves from the bombed-out badlands of Afghanistan to the narrow bylanes of Old Delhi. The reflection of minimalism becomes apparent in the latent landscape of the film. The major part of the story is set in Delhi’s historic Chandni Chowk overlooked by the majestic Red Fort, the object of the terrorist’s gameplan. The thronging crowds at the Red Fort commemorating India’s independence must be blown apart in one diabolical suicide mission—the protagonist/antagonist, Numair Qazi, an Afghan posing as a victim of the Gujarat pogrom is the man on a mission, a mission to give up life for the ONE above. It is after all, Allah’s wish that he blew himself up to attain jannat. Once in India, he meets Prof Rajan Mathur, a Hindu teacher of Urdu at the Zakir Hussain College, reminiscent of the strange case of Prof SAR Gilani, the man accused of sheltering terrorists and aiding the suicide attack on the Parliament. Prof Mathur mouths verses of the Holy Quran with a never-seen-before flair, a rather piquant anomaly for the young man on a mission. As the narrative moves ahead, his mentor in India – a well-known businessman who had promised Numair an entry pass to the Red Fort, shoots himself dead when faced with arrest, a crucial turning point in the film. It is after this incident that Numair discovers that he will have to make drastic changes in the original plan to make his mission a success. Thus, Prof Mathur is the only other person who can get him into the VIP enclosure; Prof Mathur is a good man, a well-respected man. The only hitch – Prof Mathur’s firebrand wife, Roma who feels Numair is more suspicious than trustworthy. The terrorists hatch a plan to convince Roma that this young man is a victim of communal hatred, a soul who has lost his childhood in the raging fires of Gujarat. Stealthily, the terrorist gains entry into the Mathur household, into the impregnable fortress of Indian syncretism. Ghai plans his narrative well. He places the Afghan extremist in the sprawling mansion of an elderly poet-patriarch, played so brilliantly by the inredible Habib Tanvir. No one suspects him, not even the chirpy newspaper baron’s daughter who lives next door and loses her heart to the silent, brooding young man. The film dwells deftly on a couple of sequences that are quite strikingly woven together to create an overall impact. One such sequence is the one in where the stodgy government official offers Numair prasad from a temple. The man’s intention is clear. He plays on the notions of morality and blasphemy in the annals of conservative Islam. Numair is an Islamic radical. Earlier in the film, he kills a man, a Muslim, in cold blood after he announces that he drank himself to a stupor and could not wake up in the morning and states that he does not believe that anyone who doesn’t follow Islam needs to survive in this world. So, the officer looks expectantly for the man to flinch, lift up his hand and strike him down, kick him from under the chair. Numair does none of these. He puts the sweet in his mouth and gulps it down disdainfully, all for the sake of the final hurrah, his ultimate prize—the path, you see, has been chosen by his maker. He must die so that he can live in the afterlife. Numair gets his entry pass, his ticket to salvation. The other sequence that needs a mention here is when Prof Mathur’s little daughter plays Saare Jahan se Accha on her synthesizer for Numair, who has by now been accepted as a member of the Mathur family. The scene is study in understanding the conceptual tendencies of trans-territorial Islamic fundamentalism. Numair is an Afghan, he is on a deadly mission to India and here is listening to this little girl playing an ode to the very edifice that he has come to breach. The creases on the man’s brow tell it all. Does he succeed in his mission? No, he doesn’t. Roma, the woman who called him brother is killed by members of his group. Prof Mathur forbids his daughter from wailing as he fears a Hindu backlash will ruin the peace of Chandni Chowk—a secular haven. In one heart-rending sweep, Ghai delivers a power-packed scene. Independence Day; Numair does gain entry into the VIP enclosure, is about to blow himself up but does not. His eyes well up, they killed the woman who called him brother, they let her die…he cannot take it anymore. The police too – having cracked the plot – is closing in. Numair escapes. With a lost dream, with an image of India that still lives on the hope that Hindus and Muslims are one nation. Does he survive? Yes he does. Prof Mathur saves him, standing like a shield between the bullet and the man he gave shelter to. The Indian state accuses him of treason. The film ends with the terrorist’s email absolving the good professor of all guilt, declaring him a great son of India.
The film works because of the way it ends. Ghai resists the urge to close the narrative in a form of a bloody encounter where yet another suspected terrorist is killed. The man survives to realize that perhaps the larger ethos of India is much too strong for the footsoldiers of global jehad to break down. However, at the cost of sounding nit-picky, I lament the fact that the film, in many ways, falls into the trap of stereotyping the Muslim. The villains of the set-piece are all Muslim barring the good-hearted poet and the guitar-totting aspiring musician. The terrorists are technical wiz-kids; the protagonist/antagonist prefers the jehadi’s interpretation of the Quran over the professor’s peace-message. The man is ruthless, unscrupulous and takes lives without batting an eyelid. One does not doubt Ghai’s intensions but frankly these rather stark images sometimes leave a bitter taste in the mouth. The narrative moves at a good pace. Some critics panned the film by saying that it is slow. It is not. This is Ghai’s best work till date. After Yaadein and Kisna and a long hibernation, the man returns with a powerful critique of contemporary world politics. Even though he does get caught in the exigencies of stereotyping and imagination, the film is well intentioned. He succeeds in extracting good performances from the leads actors. Newcomer Anurag Sinha is, in a word, minimalist, the solitary, quiet recluse with a searing screen presence—Ghai’s perfect terrorist, viscous and uncompromising. Another possible addition to the string of ‘performing actors’ who have made their presence felt in an incestuous industry. Veteran Anil Kapoor is exceptional. One wonders where Sonam Kapoor came from. She certainly does not seem to be this man’s daughter.
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