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Shikara is the story of resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. It's also the story of a love that remains unextinguished through 30 years of exile. A timeless love story in the worst... Read all Shikara is the story of resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. It's also the story of a love that remains unextinguished through 30 years of exile. A timeless love story in the worst of times. Shikara is the story of resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. It's also the story of a love that remains unextinguished through 30 years of exile. A timeless love story in the worst of times.

• Vidhu Vinod Chopra
• Abhijat Joshi
• Rahul Pandita
• Sadia Khateeb
• Zain Khan Durrani
• Priyanshu Chatterjee
• 738 User reviews
• 12 Critic reviews
• 1 win & 3 nominations

• Shanti Dhar

• Lateef Lone

• Naveen Zutshi
• Aarti Kachru
• Masood Saab
• Shiv's Father
• Shiv's Mother
• Shanti's Father
• Political Leader Yunis

• Colonel Bhattacharya
• Khursheed Hassan Lone
• Shafi Mohammed
• Dr. Lalit Ladru
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• Production, box office & more at IMDbPro

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• Soundtracks Mar Jaayein Hum Vocals by Papon & Shradha Mishra Lyrics by Irshad Kamil Music by Sandesh Shandilya

User reviews 738

• drshahmilind
• Feb 7, 2020
• How long is Shikara? Powered by Alexa
• February 7, 2020 (United States)
• Official Facebook
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• Kashmir, India
• Vinod Chopra Productions
• See more company credits at IMDbPro
• ₹280,000,000 (estimated)

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• Runtime 1 hour 58 minutes
• Dolby Digital

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Shikara Reviews

Cinema can’t merely be a reflection of reality anymore; it must be morally superior. Which is why putting the achievements of Shikara on blast is vital.

Full Review | Sep 8, 2022

Shikara is evasive on many crucial counts, but, judged on purely cinematic parameters, its strengths are noteworthy.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Jul 14, 2020

The aching loss of home,friends &the familiarity &comfort that it brings is a recurring theme, but watch Shikara for the lovely story and you won't be disappointed. The story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits perhaps deserves a more powerful film.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Jul 11, 2020

As a love story, it works at some level, but in the bigger picture, this old-school romance doesn't really grip you and keep you engaged for too long.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 11, 2020

The letters fall on deaf years, which is evocative of the bitter truth that, irrespective of time and religion, the conflict in the Valley is always an 'internal matter'.

Full Review | Feb 11, 2020

The film touches you as Vidhu Vinod Chopra does justice to the direction, though a much hard-hitting narrative is something we continue to wait for.

Chopra's first film in five years is his most restrained yet.

Full Review | Feb 10, 2020

The lead pair, Aadil Khan and Sadia, impress with their natural ease in front of the camera. They do convey the feeling of a couple growing old together, their inner world unaffected by outer turmoil as it is sustained by love.

Full Review | Original Score: 3/5 | Feb 8, 2020

She captures vulnerability and optimism but the reactions are repetitive and unimaginative.

Full Review | Feb 8, 2020

We see militancy being encouraged and supported from across the border, but nothing goes deeper.

Full Review | Original Score: 2.5/5 | Feb 8, 2020

The timing of the film sticks out undeniably like a sore thumb, given that Shikara doesn't situate itself in any context - the lone scribble and chant of "Azaadi" sounds like any other word.

Shikara Movie Review: Sketchy politics blurs an effective love story

Rating: ( 3 / 5).

At what point in a film should a voiceover kick in? And when should it not? In Shikara , cinematographer Rangarajan Ramabadran draws up moments of stirring visual poetry. But they are often interrupted by the protagonist’s stilted, ingratiating voice. In one scene, the camera glides out of a moving car to regard the surrounding vista. We've just been told of an important off-screen death, and as the skyline comes into view, real graves begin to fill the frame. It’s a stunning aerial shot, one of many in the film. But then, Shiv (Aadil Khan), hunched over a typewriter, begins to speak, summarising how, over the years, he’s seen the world ‘turn into a graveyard’. The needless exposition kills the implied beauty, deeply ruining its effect.

Cast: Sadia, Aadil Khan Director: Vidhu Vinod Chopra

This awkward tussle — between images and words — marks most of Shikara . Directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the film is dedicated to the 4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandits uprooted during the 1989 exodus. The romantic drama skims through these faces to train itself on a single fictitious couple. It’s a device the filmmaker has used before, tracing the ebb and flood of a relationship through a horrid political churn. Returning to Hindi cinema after over a decade, Vinod’s visual prowess remains robust, though his vitality as a storyteller has softened with age.

At a film shoot (‘Love in Kashmir’), Shiv befriends Shanti (debutante Sadia). They fall in love and, belonging to the same community, quickly get married. Their modest Kashmiri wedding is scored to the sound of Chakri music. It’s also here that the director’s Shakespearean fixation pops up, with Lateef, Shiv’s childhood friend, taking a shine to Shanti’s lady-in-waiting. The innocence of these scenes rings heavy with trepidation. When Lateef’s father, a local politician, sends foundational stones for the newlyweds’ house, you get a sense the film is setting itself up. Tragedy, inescapably, strikes: an insurgency breaks out, and thousands of Kashmiri Pandits are exiled from the valley. Shiv and Shanti are reluctant to leave — but are eventually forced out of their abode, which they lovingly named ‘Shikara’.

Vinod, a Kashmiri Pandit himself, approaches his subject cautiously. The opening half-hour is spent drawing out the cultural unity of Kashmir. There’s little visible animosity among the locals. The militancy, as it takes shape, is traced back to the Soviet-Afghan War, with American guns making their way across the border. On the day of departure, Shiv’s elder brother is gunned down by insurgents. As our protagonist rides back on a motorcycle, soaked in blood, Benazir Bhutto’s incendiary speeches boom across the sky. By ascribing a complex historical event to vague happenstance, Shikara takes the easy way out. In a way, it has to: the film comes at a time of grave political uncertainty in Kashmir, and is clearly disinclined to flame further discord. Still, its overt political correctness comes across as insincere, the creases of time smoothed over by sugary platitudes about harmony and peace. 

This becomes especially apparent when Shiv, cooped up in a refugee camp outside Jammu, starts writing letters to the US President. In them, he says he holds America responsible for the brokenness of Kashmir, as well as his lifelong exile. It’s a cloying device — a possible invention of co-writer Abhijat Joshi, who fashioned similar tricks in Sanju and Lage Raho Munna Bhai . But even as Shikara loses its factual heft, it’s held in place by its central pair. Sadia, playing the wide-eyed Shanti Dhar, is excellent. Her urgent excitability is matched well by Aadil’s burnished, palpable warmth. It’s been a while since we met a Hindi film couple that truly reacts to each other — their dialogues are synergetic, their silences shared. The film loses its footing whenever it moves away from the leads, which happens quite often and costs the screenplay dearly.

Shikara is tentative in its politics, earnest in its design, and ultimately moving in its human scope. Amidst its near-constant movement, it finds time for evocative detail: the slow stewing of rogan josh , for example, or the intricate embroidery on a drape. There’s a frame that’s used twice: a tree, first in winter, then in the full bloom of spring. The characters go through a similar trajectory — from frosty darkness to everlasting light. It’s a metaphor that isn’t spelt out in the film. How I wish the others weren’t too. 

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'Shikara' Movie Review: A Simplistic Nostalgia Piece That Reduces The Kashmiri Conflict To A Binary

Entertainment Editor

Shikara , which advertised itself as the ‘untold story of the Kashmiri Pandits,’ is actually a love story first, set against the backdrop of militant insurgency in Kashmir . The film spends more time drawing out characters that suffered as a result of the militant-led violence than it does in probing the political context that caused it in the first place. As a love story, it works, but as a drama about the plight of Kashmiri Pandits, it’s hollow and has nothing revelatory to say.

Written by Vidhu Vinod Chopra (who’s also the director), Abhijat Joshi and Rahul Pandita , the film begins with a charming meet-cute. Shiv Kumar Dhar, a poet and PhD aspirant, meets Shanti, a nurse, when the two are randomly chosen to play extras in a movie that’s being shot in the valley. It’s an endearing set-up and the film’s two leads, Aadil Khan and Sadia, exuberantly youthful, share an easy chemistry. Chopra takes his time to carve out the tenderness of their new romance and the writing here isn’t just rich with poetic flair but also carries doomful undercurrents.

As the couple (both compelling performers) build their new house, amidst a celebration of Kashmiri folk songs and rogan josh, Chopra and his director of photography, Rangarajan Ramabadran, compose their frames with haunting melancholy. Shiv and Shanti’s love-making sequence, shot in a shikara cutting through a narrow stretch of a lake enclosed by weeds, symbolises their freedom that’s about to be snatched away. More crucially, these scenes are shot in the darkness of the night, illuminated by a lamp, ominously foreshadowing the perilous times ahead.

However, once we reach the end of the first half, where the insurgency has triggered a mass exodus, Chopra struggles to manoeuver Shikara , moving aimlessly and repetitively around the same track. The exodus itself is shot with terrifying urgency and captures the dreadful state of affairs with an intimacy often lacking in stories of forced separation. However, barring a couple of news highlights, Chopra doesn’t arm the viewer with enough insight to holistically evaluate the horrific displacement, reducing the conflict to a Hindu-Muslim binary.

The second half of the film is simply the melancholic longing felt by Shiv, who lives with Shanti in a refugee camp in Jammu and teaches young children who’re growing up there. Shikara takes a complex turn when it decides to explore the PTSD felt by Shanti ― the rogan josh is a trigger for her ― but it feels half-hearted as the film settles for a quiet, longing-for-home narrative with a background score that threatens to overpower.

Towards the end, the film spirals into schmaltz and its exercise of restraint in not painting Muslims in broad strokes starts giving up. The ‘good Muslim’ turns out to be a shrewd and calculative man, while the Pandit-with-the-large-heart is able to look past the horrific crime of his best friend-turned-militant.

Despite the tightrope it walks on and occasionally slips off, Shikara is conscious about present-day politics. A chant of ‘ mandir wahin banayenge’ is quickly dispelled by the lead, who says, “ Leader ka kaam todna nahi, jodna hota hai.” The film’s broader idea, of love being the only option in a time corrupted with hate and toxicity, resonates. Now, if only that was enough.

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Shikara movie review: Vidhu Vinod Chopra's account of Kashmiri Pandit exodus is strikingly poetic but seldom urgent

Shikara is a romantic story at heart. But the refuge of love, though a balmy escape, becomes a cop-out when it is upheld as a panacea.

Language: Hindi

Five years after testing waters in Hollywood with  Broken Horses, Vidhu Vinod Chopra now returns to his homeland with his ’love letter’ to Kashmir, Shikara . The film is aptly titled because it establishes the setting in one go. Also, it is a symbolic title because  Shikara is inherently a love story though it is set against the backdrop of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits in 1990.

However, the romance between a Kashmiri Pandit couple Shanti (Sadia) and Shiv Dhar (Aadil Khan), though poetically shot, ends up doing the same damage that Bollywood does, in its whitewashed romanticisation of the valley. The refuge of love, though a balmy escape, becomes a cop-out when it is upheld as a solution, and given precedence over the horrors of the exodus.

In the interviews leading up to the release of Shikara , Chopra had maintained that he has been making the film for over 12 years, and hopes it can stir up the conversation around the return of Kashmiri Pandits in the valley. However, the film indulges in too many romantic trappings for it to come across as a hard-hitting social drama. Sure, there are moments of genuine horror in the latter part of the first half. But the residual feeling after the end-credits roll is that of romance being glossed over as the ultimate solution to every problem in the world.

Love is indeed the perfect antidote to hate of any kind but one wishes the film portrayed the displaced Kashmiri Pandit’s plea with honesty, rather than highlight the compromise to make a home anywhere else on earth. The helpless cries of a displaced Kashmiri Pandit (a real-life refugee who is now dead) saying, “ Mujhe Kashmir wapis le chalo ” (take me back to Kashmir) are definitely more effective than Shanti telling Shiv over 25 years after their displacement, “ Mera ghar toh aap hi hain na ” (you’re the only home I have).

Moving from romance to the timing of the film, there surely is conversation about whether a film that details the struggles of Kashmiri Pandits should release at a time when Muslims are facing threats of persecution amid the ongoing Citizenship Amendment Act and National Register of Citizens uproar. Shikara was scheduled to release on 22 November last year but Chopra claims he postponed it because he did not want to cash in on the then-recent abrogation of Article 370 . Though the timing is not perfect even now, but the question is: When will it ever be? Chopra has waited for over 12 years to tell his story. The issue of a troubled Kashmir has been a constant for decades now, with no close prospect of a resolution. The timing can never be ‘perfect’.

There is concern, however, on whether the right wing or their supporters will cite this film as an example of the injustices Hindus have gone through in the past in order to justify the ongoing persecution of Muslims. But  Shikara  can interpreted at a more human level, beyond the surface of religion, to underline that this tragedy should not befall any community, whether Kashmiri Pandits in 1990 or Muslims now.

Chopra seems to have put on blinkers while telling the account of the Kashmiri Pandits. He does not even touch upon the atrocities Kashmiri Muslims are facing for years even though his narrative ranges from the 1980s to 2018. He remains focused on showcasing the plight of only the Kashmiri Pandits. It definitely stems from his personal account, of how his late mother could never return to the valley or how his cousin was killed in the communal riots back then. But his film is a time capsule that should not exist in a vacuum. His choice to tell a myopic story makes for a simple narrative but never a layered exploration of the political underbelly that dominates the valley even today.

Having said that, Shikara is by no measure a propagandist film. Its intention is the most sincere. Chopra’s earnestness to tell a story, that has remained in his heart for decades, shines through. He also makes an attempt to end the vicious cycle of hate by taking creative calls such as not showing the faces of the perpetrators. Hate certainly has no face, as he correctly suggests. But it does have a Taqiyah (Muslim cap) either, as costume designer Sachin Lovalekar demonstrates. That is, however, not an issue since it is a historically established fact that the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits was a communal act.

Chopra also deserves credit for being creatively detached from the film despite being emotionally invested. He gives enough play to Rangarajan Ramabadran’s cinematography (from stunning aerial shots to loquacious wide sots), Shikhar Mishra’s crisp and pacey editing, and Sonal Sawant’s impeccable production design. He uses the technical aspects to complement his narrative, which is a sign of a master in full command of his craft. Though we have seen a less glossier side of Kashmir in recent films like Meghna Gulzar’s 2018 espionage drama Raazi and Vishal Bhardwaj’s 2014 Hamlet adaptation Haider , the nuances in the depiction of Kashmiri culture and atmosphere make Shikara a more lived-in experience.

The director also elicits remarkable performances from the lead actors. Newcomers Sadia and Aadil are Kashmir-born Muslims, and hence, fit well in the familiar environment. They also have commendable chemistry, and display enough heft to carry the film on their shoulders, despite being new to the business. The highlight of Shikara , however, are the ‘junior artists,’ who are actually 4,000 of the 4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandit refugees who bore the brunt of the exodus first-hand. It is unfathomable Chopra managed to make them not only congregate after all these years but also sensitively nudge them to revisit their past horrors and undergo the ordeal all over again. A memorable insight Chopra shared during the promotions of the film was when he asked some refugees to give a second take, only to get a response, “Hum teen baar ye nahi kar sakte. Pehli bar kia tha na 15 saal pehle ” (We can’t revisit the horror again. We already did it once 15 years ago).

Chopra is known for skillfully juxtaposing romance against politics. But what remains amiss in Shikara is a memorable score by Ishaan Chhabra, AR Rahman, and Qutub E Kripa. The music and  songs (particularly ‘ Ae Wadi Shehzadi ’ and ‘ Mar Jaayien Hum ’), written with great imagination by Irshad Kamil, serve the situations well but do not boast of rich recall value. Also, the screenplay by Chopra, Abhijat Joshi (the co-writer of all Rajkumar Hirani films), and Kashmiri Pandit investigative journalist Rahul Pandita (whose book Our Moon Has Blood Clots has hugely inspired Shikara ) has been structured well but as mentioned above, could have achieved greatness with a more holistic perspective.

Rating: ***

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Shikara Review: A heartwarming tale of heartbreaking exodus of Kashmiri couple

Cast- Aadil Khan & Sadia Director- Vidhu Vinod Chopra Genre- Period Drama Certification- U/A Rating- 3/5 stars Review by- Sameer Ahire

It’s been 30 years since Kashmiri Pandits had to quit their own houses and own state due to national crisis and religious fights. This real story was never brought on the silver screen and that was really unfortunate. Maybe, people feared because of its controversial theme and cinematic fictional changes. Director Vidhu Vinod Chopra dared to take this challenge and deliver a suitable & honest product.

Shikara is based on Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir happened in 1989. Here the story is bounded by a love story of a Kashmiri couple Shivkumar Dhar (Adil) and Shanti Dhar (Sadia Khan). When everything is going great in their married life and they feel settled, the government declares a curfew in Kashmir and they had to quit their own house to save their and their relatives lives. They spend several years in a refugee camp, first in tents and then in quarters given by the government but they always had a hope to go back to Kashmir one day.

Adil and Sadia Khan delivered outstanding performances in their debut. Both of them got every nuance right whether it is looks, accent, body language, detailing etc. People don’t know much about them but I am sure people will remember Aadil and Sadiya for this amazing act in Shikara. The supporting cast includes many people from Kashmir and all of them looks suitable to the script in a cinematic zone.

Shikara is the story of resilience in the face of insurmountable odds. It’s also the story of a love that remains unextinguished through 30 years of exile. A timeless love story in the worst of times. These things had to be shown in realistic manners where Vidhu Vinod Chopra scores high. He kept the detailing accurate and perfectly used all the properties to make the world look real. The era of the 90s, 00s and then 2018 all are formed very well by the production team.

The cinematography of Shikara is Top Class. Probably one of the finest cinematography in recent time. The man behind the camera Rangarajan Ramabadran had a creative eye to see the beauty of Kashmir. Lyrics and music of the film are truly heart-whelming. Music and Background Score team deserves a special mention here, which includes AR Rahman, Qutub-E-Kripa, Sandesh Shandilya, Abhay Sopori and Rohit Kulkarni.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra comes to the direction after a gap of some years but he makes sure that the wait is worth. He dedicated this film to his late Mother and maybe that emotional touch is the main difference between VVC and any other director. Someone else with this film would have gone with fictional changes and spoiled the real tense moments but VVC has done some highly relatable stuff.

He knows that pain and that’s why he could showcase it on the silver screen. The attempt to showcase the struggle and pain of Kashmiri Pandits who have gone through this tough time and are living in other parts of the country now will surely make into watchlist of audience. Overall, Shikara is good one time watch for another audience but very special for some people.

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Shikara movie review: Kashmiri Pandits, with a saffron spin

Cast: Sadia, Aadil Khan Director : Vidhu Vinod Chopra

Writer-director Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s Shikara, that tells the deeply sad and tragic story of Kashmiri Pandits’ forced exodus from their homeland in January 1990, is dedicated to his mother who could never return home.

It’s personal. And a labour of both, love and exhalation.

The tragedy of four lakh Hindus being driven from their homes, jobs, schools, lives and rendered homeless, refugees in their own country by a handful of militants while the state and Centre watched is unfathomable, unpardonable. In more ways than one, it was like the second Partition.

Shikara declares, at the very onset, that it has mostly used real refugees and not actors for an authentic look and feel.

There’s little artifice here, it seems to suggest.

Shikara should have also declared that it has simplified the story to let nothing interfere in the narrative of the tragedy of a people. No complexity, no politics, no crimp are allowed in, not even a suggestion about where the blame may lie. According to Shikara, it doesn’t really lie with Delhi, neither with Srinagar, nor with the Delhi-appointed governor, Jagmohan. It lies with Islam, Pakistan-trained militants, but above all with Kashmiri Muslims who either turned foe or rapacious.

There is, of course, no deadline on telling a story. But the timing of when one decides to tell a story often carries a story of its own.

It’s almost as if Shikara was timed to appear after the abrogation of Article 370. As if to justify yet another tragedy perpetuated by the state.

There is a tinge of obscenity in accusing a people of complicity in a crime when they are under lockdown, muzzled, turned prisoners in their own homes.

In Shikara, Vidhu Vinod Chopra is often at pains to say that he is against hate, any shade of hate. And even adds, for good measure, that “leader ka kaam jorna hota hai, todna nahin”.

But his film fits a certain narrative that’s in currency, one that tries to justify state-sponsored atrocities in the name of righting past wrongs.

In 1987, young Shiv Kumar Dhar (Aadil Khan) meets sweet Shanti Sapru (Sadia) at the shoot of a Bollywood film in the haseen vaadiyan of Kashimir.

She is training to be a nurse and he is a writer, poet and soon-to-be professor.

When they meet, she is clutching a book of his poems and he, on the insistence of a director’s assistance, grabs her hand.

They have a cute, short courtship after which they marry, in the course of which it is established that Shiv’s best-friend, Latif miyan, is soft on the heroine’s bestie.

Shiv and Shanti want to build a house for which his bestie’s dad, Khurshid saab, sends stones after stopping the construction of his own house, thus establishing a utopia where all was well and Kashmir was indeed a paradise.

But Khurshid saab, a Muslim leader, is killed, and Shiv, who now teaches at Srinagar’s Amar Singh College, is whisked away to meet his friend who is being guarded by boys carrying automatic assault rifles.

“Go to India, sell your house and go to India,” he is told.

“Pindi Pindi, Rawalpindi,” the conductors of buses scream.

J&K Commander Force puts out hit-lists of Hindus who must leave or face consequences.

Some prominent Pandits are killed, including Shiv’s Naveen bhaiyya and, on the night of January 18-19, 1990, Shiv and Shanti leave for Jammu with other Kashmiri Pandits, abandoning on the way a calf.

In the refugee camps, there’s government apathy, inefficiency and insults heaped by trucks carrying tomatoes while an old man can’t stop wailing about returning home, to Kashmir.

And then, many years later, a man comes to Shiv, asking him to sell his house. That’s the day Shiv writes his first letter to the President of America.

Shikara, in fact, opens when Shiv is writing his 1,664th letter to the US President on his typewriter in his 28th year in the Muthi Refugee Camp. Though this is a recurring theme in the film, it’s not quite clear to me what he says in those letters apart from telling George Bush and subsequent US presidents that the guns they sent to Afghanistan are being used to kill Kashmiris.

In these letter-writing scenes, Shanti often suggests to Shiv to share stuff from their personal lives, some happy news as well with the US president, as if he was their friend, reading Shiv’s letters, interested in their lives, waiting for the next one even if he’s unable to respond or help.

There is a particularly troubling melancholy to the dogged discipline of letter writing, posting and repeating the exercise without a response or riposte from someone you think has the power to change things, better your life.

It carries a hint of being driven to quiet madness by a tragedy, apathy and yet an attempt to clutch onto some dignity in the relentless, scholarly appeal.

Shikara has a few such tiny but brilliant vignettes that are cinematically quite clever, powerful.

The film, written by Abhijat Joshi, Rahul Pandita and Vidhu Vinod Chopra, uses these to layer the story, and make the unbearable bearable.

But the film’s real power comes from the love story of Shiv and Shanti who hug and clutch at each other every time something bad happens. They are not just shielding and protecting each other, but there’s almost a belief in that action that the sheer power and tenacity of their grip around each other will dissuade the storm coming their way.

As Shiv and Shanti move from the tent to an 8x8 pucca apartment, we see how she quietly deals with her own trauma, or shares his. And when they move around the presidential suite of a hotel in awe and finally sit in the bathroom, next to a bathtub decorated with rose petals, it’s their bond, their love which makes their yearning for their home very touching.

Shikara’s casting, by Indu Sharma, is inspired. Apart from people from the Jagti refugee camp, many of whom have a blank, forlorn wait in their eyes, it’s Kashmir-born Aadil Khan and Sadia as the leads who really bring a breeze of the Valley to Shikara.

Both are good and the rough, amateur edges they have, obvious in between scenes where they don’t have dialogue, is actually very fresh, very charming.

Sadia has a bit of Leela Naidu and Swaroop Sampat in her, and Aadil has an old world charm born out of not just good looks, but decency. Together, they add a moral sting to this tragic tale.

Often, writers and directors who want to tell big, sweeping, epic tales of historic proportions, turn that into a backdrop, placing front and centre a love story. It’s the easiest way to humanise a story, to give a face to a tragedy. But in those choices, in who those characters are, what they say and do, they also sell a world view and make a statement.

The problem with Shikara is not that it wants to tell the story of a people forced out of their homes. But that it paints the common Kashmiri Muslim as a colluder, an active one at that.

The film shows two types of Kashmiri Muslims — one who turned to militancy and killed Hindus, and the other who, at least on the surface, tried to save their homes, but did so only so he could take them over.

There is no third type of Kashmiri Muslim in Shikara. But there is a cow. Calf, actually, lost, sad and abandoned. The film weeps for the calf, but not for the thousands of Kashmiri families who have, since 1990, lost a son, a husband, a father, a relative, friend or neighbour to bullets that sometimes come from militants and sometimes from the Indian Army.

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Shikara Movie Review

Shikara Devesh Sharma , Feb 7, 2020, 09:09 IST

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• The Indian Express Shubhra Gupta We see militancy being encouraged and supported from across the border, but nothing goes deeper.
• Livemint Udita Jhunjhunwala She captures vulnerability and optimism but the reactions are repetitive and unimaginative.
• NDTV Saibal Chatterjee Shikara is evasive on many crucial counts, but, judged on purely cinematic parameters, its strengths are noteworthy.
• The Quint Stutee Ghosh The aching loss of home,friends &the familiarity &comfort that it brings is a recurring theme, but watch Shikara for the lovely story and you won't be disappointed. The story of the exodus of Kashmiri Pandits perhaps deserves a more powerful film.
• The Times of India Pallabi Dey Purkayastha As a love story, it works at some level, but in the bigger picture, this old-school romance doesn't really grip you and keep you engaged for too long.
• The Hindu Kennith Rosario The letters fall on deaf years, which is evocative of the bitter truth that, irrespective of time and religion, the conflict in the Valley is always an 'internal matter'.
• Hindustan Times Monika Rawal Kukreja The film touches you as Vidhu Vinod Chopra does justice to the direction, though a much hard-hitting narrative is something we continue to wait for.
• Scroll.in Nandini Ramnath Chopra's first film in five years is his most restrained yet.
• Filmfare Devesh Sharma The lead pair, Aadil Khan and Sadia, impress with their natural ease in front of the camera. They do convey the feeling of a couple growing old together, their inner world unaffected by outer turmoil as it is sustained by love.
• Arré Poulomi Das The timing of the film sticks out undeniably like a sore thumb, given that Shikara doesn't situate itself in any context - the lone scribble and chant of "Azaadi" sounds like any other word.

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'Shikara' review: Sketchy politics blurs an effective love story

At what point in a film should a voiceover kick in? And when should it not? In Shikara, cinematographer Rangarajan Ramabadran draws up moments of stirring visual poetry. But they are often interrupted by the protagonist’s stilted, ingratiating voice. In one scene, the camera glides out of a moving car to regard the surrounding vista. We’ve just been told of an important off-screen death, and as the skyline comes into view, real graves begin to fill the frame. It’s a stunning aerial shot, one of many in the film. But then, Shiv (Aadil Khan), hunched over a typewriter, begins to speak, summarising how, over the years, he’s seen the world ‘turn into a graveyard’. The needless exposition kills the implied beauty, deeply ruining its effect.

This awkward tussle — between images and words — marks most of Shikara. Directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra, the film is dedicated to the 4,00,000 Kashmiri Pandits uprooted during the 1989 exodus. The romantic drama skims through these faces to train itself on a single fictitious couple. It’s a device the filmmaker has used before, tracing the ebb and flood of a relationship through a horrid political churn. Returning to Hindi cinema after over a decade, Vinod’s visual prowess remains robust, though his vitality as a storyteller has softened with age.

At a film shoot (‘Love in Kashmir’), Shiv befriends Shanti (debutante Sadia). They fall in love and, belonging to the same community, quickly get married. Their modest Kashmiri wedding is scored to the sound of Chakri music. It’s also here that the director’s Shakespearean fixation pops up, with Lateef, Shiv’s childhood friend, taking a shine to Shanti’s lady-in-waiting. The innocence of these scenes rings heavy with trepidation. When Lateef’s father, a local politician, sends foundational stones for the newlyweds’ house, you get a sense the film is setting itself up. Tragedy, inescapably, strikes: an insurgency breaks out, and thousands of Kashmiri Pandits are exiled from the valley. Shiv and Shanti are reluctant to leave — but are eventually forced out of their abode, which they lovingly named ‘Shikara’.

Vinod, a Kashmiri Pandit himself, approaches his subject cautiously. The opening half-hour is spent drawing out the cultural unity of Kashmir. There’s little visible animosity among the locals. The militancy, as it takes shape, is traced back to the Soviet-Afghan War, with American guns making their way across the border. On the day of departure, Shiv’s elder brother is gunned down by insurgents. As our protagonist rides back on a motorcycle, soaked in blood, Benazir Bhutto’s incendiary speeches boom across the sky. By ascribing a complex historical event to vague happenstance, Shikara takes the easy way out. In a way, it has to: the film comes at a time of grave political uncertainty in Kashmir, and is clearly disinclined to flame further discord. Still, its overt political correctness comes across as insincere, the creases of time smoothed over by sugary platitudes about harmony and peace. 

This becomes especially apparent when Shiv, cooped up in a refugee camp outside Jammu, starts writing letters to the US President. In them, he says he holds America responsible for the brokenness of Kashmir, as well as his lifelong exile. It’s a cloying device — a possible invention of co-writer Abhijat Joshi, who fashioned similar tricks in Sanju and Lage Raho Munna Bhai. But even as Shikara loses its factual heft, it’s held in place by its central pair. Sadia, playing the wide-eyed Shanti Dhar, is excellent. Her urgent excitability is matched well by Aadil’s burnished, palpable warmth. It’s been a while since we met a Hindi film couple that truly reacts to each other — their dialogues are synergetic, their silences shared. The film loses its footing whenever it moves away from the leads, which happens quite often and costs the screenplay dearly.

Shikara is tentative in its politics, earnest in its design, and ultimately moving in its human scope. Amidst its near-constant movement, it finds time for evocative detail: the slow stewing of rogan josh, for example, or the intricate embroidery on a drape. There’s a frame that’s used twice: a tree, first in winter, then in the full bloom of spring. The characters go through a similar trajectory — from frosty darkness to everlasting light. It’s a metaphor that isn’t spelt out in the film. How I wish the others weren’t too.

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"Very Heartening": Sunil Gavaskar's Massive Praise For Rohit Sharma After 68-Run Knock vs LSG

Mumbai indians lost their last game of the ipl season by 18 runs against lucknow super giants..

Mumbai Indians lost their last game of the IPL season by 18 runs against Lucknow Super Giants. Following the game, former Indian batsman Sunil Gavaskar heaped praise on Rohit Sharma's 38 ball 68 runs innings, calling it “very heartening.” The match between Mumbai and Lucknow was a dead rubber clash as both sides had already been eliminated from playoff contention. Lucknow put up a total of 214/6 on the back of a blistering innings from Nicholas Pooran who scored 75 runs off 29 deliveries.

“Well, that was such a nice thing to see. Because look, we know that Mumbai Indians can't qualify, but to see Rohit Sharma, the Indian captain for the T20 World Cup starting in about 15 days' time, batting the way that he has, it's very heartening. That's exactly what you want. You want Rohit Sharma to be setting the team off to a good start, so that the lower-order batters can come in and finish it off, potentially getting 200-plus every time they play,” said Gavaskar while Speaking to Star Sports Cricket Live.

Despite the huge total, it was the former MI captain, Rohit Sharma, who gave the five-time champions a great start to the encounter. Sharma came to bat as an impact player and scored 68 runs off 38 deliveries to give his side the perfect start to the game despite them going on to lose by 18 runs.

Rohit Sharma will now head to the United States of America on June 24 with the first batch of players who will be representing the country at the T20 World Cup starting on June 1 (June 2 as per IST). The second batch of players will be the ones who are representing their respective franchises during the playoffs of the IPL. The second batch will be joining the squad after the conclusion of the tournament on May 26.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

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In Srinagar, Shikara Ambulance Ferries COVID-19 Patients Across Dal Lake

• Published On: June 22, 2021

A resident of Dal Lake in Srinagar, Tariq Ahmad Patloo contracted COVID-19 in August 2020 but was unable to get medical attention. In fact, Mr Patloo faced social boycott, and no one helped him to get to the hospital in the city, which is only accessible by boat. Now, the boat owner himself has built a floating ambulance or shikhara ambulance to help COVID-19 patients in the community reach hospitals. He also provides masks, oxygen cylinders and sanitisers for free.

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