Veteran film moghul Saawan Kumaar Tak freezes frames on the frosty Indo-Pak vibes in a glossy make-believe romance, Dil Pardesi Ho Gayaa. Dil Pardesi..., shot on location in Manali, Mumbai and near the Pakistan border, rests solely on the young shoulders of first-time actors, Kapil Jhaveri and Saloni Aswani, a powerful script (by Tak) and the fact that India and Pakistan are on the face of it trying to build bridges.
Tak even managed to persuade political luminaries like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, LK Advani, George Fernandes, Ravishankar Prasad to view Dil Pardesi... at a special screening. "For the first time a Hindi film tries to spread the message of ‘love thy neighbour.’" Amrish Puri who plays a Pakistani brigadier doesn’t want to badmouth his Indian counterpart and is full of respect when he speaks of Indians. Similarly, Indian Army officers don’t utter jingoistic dialogues.
Dil Pardesi... isn’t going to offend sensibilities. The terrorists in the movie (Prem Chopra in an outlandish Osama Bin Laden get up and a suitably mean looking Mukesh Rishi) do utter anti-India dialogues but that fits in with their character,” elaborates Tak.
Tak insists that he couldn’t have thought of a picture-perfect Kareena Kapoor or Aishwarya Rai because they also have the image of “a star. You somehow can’t visualise them as innocent Pakistani girls because they are brand names now. I wanted to cast an established star in the male lead, but somehow most of them also come with the added baggage of muscles. I wanted a hero who looked emotionally vulnerable.”
Tak would have liked to release his film on August 15 but he couldn’t cope with the pressure of facing Salman Khan’s Tere Naam and Vikram Bhatt’s Footpath. “It would have been tough. How can you handle Salman Khan in peak form? My small film would have been crushed. It’s amazing what a lot of difference, a housefull board can do to a small film. Dil Pardesi... needs all the encouragement.”
Let’s hope the audience agrees with him too.
