{"id":4353,"date":"2016-07-09T12:20:04","date_gmt":"2016-07-09T06:50:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/13.201.39.237\/?p=4353"},"modified":"2026-07-17T21:02:24","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T15:32:24","slug":"hamid-review-kashmir-post-pulwama-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/13.207.105.184\/?p=4353","title":{"rendered":"Hamid: The Movie on Kashmir We Need"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

T<\/span>his weekend a small movie with a big subject will have its much-awaited release. <\/p>Hamid<\/span><\/i>, which is set in <\/span>Kashmir<\/span><\/a>, was scheduled for a February 15 release but was wisely pushed after the Pulwama attack. It has come to us now in this post-Pulwama world, where we are fresh off the high of an almost-war, waiting keenly for <\/span>Pulwama: The Movie<\/span><\/i> to tell us that we won it. <\/span>\n\nI can imagine the abject frustration of this war-hungry moviegoer as he watches <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i>, days after the conflict with <\/span>Pakistan<\/span><\/a>, when all he wants to do is rocket-bomb the fuck out of the bad guy so that he can stand up and cheer, even if it makes him spill his popcorn. But sadly <\/span>Pulwama: The Movie <\/span><\/i>will take time. Until then, there\u2019s <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i>. <\/span>\n\nNow <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i> will really piss him off. Instead of the deeply satisfying narrative of the good guy versus the bad guy, there is a gentle tale of a child\u2019s yearning for his missing father. Instead of looking at Kashmir as a land locked in <\/span>war<\/span><\/a>, it looks at the real, throbbing human beings who are bound together painfully in a region that has long passed its threshold of pain. <\/span>\n\nHamid<\/span><\/i> is the story of a soulful eight-year-old coming to terms with his father\u2019s disappearance. Hamid holds himself responsible for it. His <\/span>insistence on a cell phone sends<\/span> his father into a night from which he never returns. As his <\/span>mother<\/span><\/a> retreats into her grief, Hamid finds himself alone \u2013 with nothing but the cellphone and his faith in a benevolent God who seems to have, for some reason, taken his father. He does what any practical eight-year-old would do: Call God and request for his father\u2019s return. <\/span>\n

The truth is that boys like young Hamid will probably lose their innocence and turn to violence, trapped as they are in this endless wait for their fathers.<\/blockquote>\nThis phone call of faith rings in the life of a bitter CRPF jawan, Abhay, a soldier who is fighting this exhausting war under the weight of a dead child on his conscience. Abhay doesn\u2019t know what to do with his anger, except direct it at young <\/span>stone-pelters<\/span><\/a> who deeply resent the army. A seething, clenching Abhay \u2013 essayed by a superlative Vikas Kumar \u2013 begins engaging with the child, and their conversations form the narrative thrust of the movie. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nHamid<\/span><\/i> is essentially a story of violence but you don\u2019t see it. And yet, you feel its full force because it focuses on a particularly gruesome brand of emotional violence that marks the stories of Kashmir\u2019s \u201cdisappeared\u201d <\/span>men<\/span><\/a>. Even the actual disappearance of Hamid\u2019s father, a gentle boatmaker and poet, comes to us in a soft scene where he is walking into the night as his son watches him from their house. You already know, without a single violent shot that this man is going to a place where he will endure unspeakable things. <\/span>\n\n\"hamid\"\n
\n

There are no bad guys \u2013 only good people caught up in a terrible story that is much larger than them and you have no fucking idea who to blame.<\/p>\n

Image Credits: Yoodlee Films<\/p>\n<\/figcaption>\n<\/figure>\n\nFrom here, <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i> begins to focus on the real violence \u2013 the infinite abyss that the <\/span>families <\/span><\/a>of disappeared people deal with, as they struggle for closure which they never receive. For these families, death is a kinder ending because these undead live forever. <\/span>\n\nAbhay can sense the edges of this abyss every time Hamid calls him. He struggles with the responsibility of Hamid\u2019s innocence. He knows that Hamid stands at a dangerous crossroad \u2013 the world of revenge will beckon him to the other side where the stone-pelters meet and from there another life will begin. Abhay, like a dutiful hero, tries to find the whereabouts of the missing <\/span>father<\/span><\/a> and at the interval you hope that our hero will triumph. That he will help track down Hamid\u2019s father and risk everything to ensure the happiness of one child. But <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i> is not that kind of a story. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nHamid<\/span><\/i> does not offer us any heroes or <\/span>villains<\/span><\/a>. There is no vindictive man holding Hamid\u2019s father so that our hero can set him free. There are no bad guys \u2013 only good people caught up in a terrible story that is much larger than them and you have no fucking idea who to blame. That is the truth, and <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i> sharpens its lens on it with an empathy that is breathtaking. <\/span>\n\nThe truth is that a CRPF jawan has no access to the black dungeons into which these men disappear. The truth is that boys like young Hamid will probably lose their innocence and turn to <\/span>violence<\/span><\/a>, trapped as they are in this endless wait for their fathers. The truth is that the chances of Hamid\u2019s father being dead is far higher than him being alive. The truth is that it is kinder to set them free. \u00a0<\/span>\n\nIn perhaps the most moving scene of the movie (and there are too many to count) young Hamid \u201cburies\u201d his father. He takes his father\u2019s missing papers, the shattered cell phone, and frayed <\/span>photographs<\/span><\/a> and puts them deep into the land, which has claimed him. This is his act of freedom, of unchaining himself from the fate that awaits him. And that is the best that boys in the Valley can hope for today. <\/span>\n\nIt is only when you watch <\/span>Hamid<\/span><\/i> that you realise how utterly hopeless our situation really is and how we have no fucking clue how to end it and that it may well be <\/span>time<\/span><\/a> to do what young Hamid did\u2026 call God. And hope like hell he answers the phone. <\/span>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hamid is a gentle tale of a Kashmiri child\u2019s yearning for his missing father. It is essentially a story of violence \u2013 you don\u2019t see it but experience it in full force. Hamid focuses on a particularly gruesome brand of emotional violence that marks the stories of Kashmir\u2019s \u201cdisappeared\u201d men.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":8,"featured_media":4356,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3114],"tags":[7783,31,7784,347,264],"class_list":["post-4353","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bollywood","tag-hamid","tag-kashmir","tag-post-war","tag-violence","tag-war"],"yoast_head":"\nHamid: The Movie on Kashmir We Need<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Hamid is a gentle tale of a Kashmiri child\u2019s yearning for his missing father. 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