Every good movie has a heart-wrenching climax, similarly as Ayesha jumped into the well; a

silent prayer of mercy escaped my lips, something took a leap inside and presented me with a
paradoxical array of questions. Who am I? A mere “Pakistani” wasn’t sufficient for Ayesha;
would it deem adequate insomuch for me? “I’m a Pakistani”. The statement in itself renders me
open to criticism in one way or another. Somehow, it seems deficient as an identification tag.
Add in the fact that I am a Shia Punjabi female– you have a recipe for a life time of bigotry.
What makes likes of me better than Ayesha? Be it Shia Punjabi, Pushthoon, a Sikh, Ahmadi or a
Christian, when you dwell within these geographical boundaries, you are stigmatized one way
or the other. All these are Nation’s unto themselves which have distinct ideas about who they
are, who the other is, and what kind of state they want to be living in and thus, an ever-
widening gulf emerges; implicating that ‘Nations’ indeed cannot be shackled together by
geographic demarcations.

The drama unrolls during 1971; Zia-ul-Haq is in power and Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto is about to be
hanged. The air is thick with insecurity while the average Pakistani tries to place his or her
worth in a country where Prime Ministers are convicted and hanged upon official decree. While
the masses struggle to come to terms with Bhutto’s hanging, Zia Ul Haq starts his notorious
“Islamization”. Thus begins an era which changed the whole socio-political landscape of our
country forever and left us anything but “United, Faithful and disciplined”.

“Khamosh Pani”, under the setting of Panja Sahib near Hassan Abdaal, encapsulates the whole
scenario of the post-partition grievances of residents from both sides of the border. The life of
Ayesha scenically portrays the lives of millions of women whose worlds were wrecked apart as
retribution to the antagonism the partition left us with. History institutionalizes the atrocities
women folk are subjected to as a result of conflict between religions, nations and creeds. After
the partition was declared, females were made to jump into wells to ‘save the honor’ of the
men folk. ‘Aazadi’ was merely a candy presented as solace to a child before cutting his hands
off to lead a life of a beggar. Ayesha’s life has been restricted by the choices the men around
her have preordained for her. Her father wants her to jump into the well, her brother wants her
to forego the life she has built for herself and return to India, and finally her son who wants her
to declare to the whole community that she is a Muslim; a community in which he is compelled
to become an Islamic fundamentalist. Was it really the ‘baaghiz’ (rebels), ‘chaurz’ (robbers) and
‘luteyraz’(looters) that posed the women of divided India with trepidation or their fathers,
brothers and sons? Who really was the ‘outsider’ for them? Forcible conversions or ‘marrying’
into the faith was the only path they were left with if they were fortunate enough to escape
murder, abduction or sexual infringement. And even if they escaped all three, they could never
return their families as they had bought shame by being ‘used’ and polluted. From the movie

The movie draws a sublime comparison of the dilute similarities between the 1947’s Islamic
Republic of Pakistan, and the one mushroomed in Zia’s regime. Although Ayesha had survived,
the past was still haunting her and she had flashes of the well she was made to stand on the
edge of by her father. Her story bears testimony that the plight of a wandering woman is but,
the well dug by the keepers of her morals and her values. Similarly Saleem’s attitude towards
the woman he had long intended to marry with the consent of both their families changed tides
as he accused her of “corrupting” him. The walls within which the women dwelled were
reinforced with enough rubble and stone as to never be knocked over by their frail fingers.

Once the stone was set in the foundation of our country, the role of women in society has been
ordained similar to what it was back after 1947. Be it Mukhtaaran Maai or the Balouchi lady
doctors raped by military men due to ethnic disparity, we ordain it as their ‘right’ or worse
shrug it off and say ‘she asked for it’. The question is, when do we start imbibing what is wrong?
How many Ayesha’s or Mina’s have to be sacrificed before our nation comes to terms with
where they wrong and where they are wronged? How many times before ostensible
‘democrats’ get us to perform our religion in a certain way to make us realize the true nature of
Islam and nationhood? With all due questions and the paradigm of socio-political policies
thrusted towards us, we are yet swathed with this pseudo of Nationhood that we practice, yet
do not understand. From where I stand, I see Pakistan’s overall political structure being
trampled by paralyzing the ethics and values of our society by the politicians and military alike. I
see a weaponized society, abundance of drugs, burgeoning of Madrassah’s and the sudden
influx of the Afghan refugees which confounded the problems. And as the movie came to a
close, Ayesha’s final words kept ringing into my ears with sheer melancholy:

“I’m alive and a Muslim convertee. How will father go to the Sikh heaven? And what heaven is it
that I am going to enter, Sikh heaven or Muslim heaven? For all these years you were happy
with me dead brother, let me find peace in my own world now”.

References:

M e n o n , R i t u . " R e c o v e r y , R u p t u r e , R e s i s t a n c e : I n d i a n S t a t e a n d A b d u c ti o n
o f W o m e n d u r i n g P a r ti ti o n . " E c o n o m i c a n d P o l i ti c a l W e e k l y . 2 8 . 1 7 ( 1 9 9 3 ) :
WS2 of WS2-WS11. Print.
A v a i l a b l e a t : http://www.jstor.org/stable/4399640. [Accessed at 29.4.2011]

(Note: The Article cited above is a good read. Probably the only reason my thought paper got
delayed at least 30 minutes. I hope you find time to go through it :).)