Zoon
Zoon is wonderfully evocative of the beauty and violence of Kashmir, geo-political flashpoint between India and Pakistan. Several themes are intertwined in a layered structure-the dynamics of film-making, the onset of insurgency, a tender love story made tragic due to the opposing faiths of the lovers, betrayal and cowardice, and finally a quest for truth and redemption.
The backdrop uses fact-fiction to resonate with readers and centres around events that overtake a Bollywood crew whilst filming a bio-pic on the life of Zoon, 16th Century Kashmiri queen and poet better known as Habba Khatoon. Her lyrics of loss, composed when her husband the king is exiled by the great Mughal Akbar, still echo in the Valley five hundred years on.
Against the highly engaging details of the making and remaking of the film, interrupted for a decade due to a terrorist incident which devastates the lives of all it touches, is the finely etched characterisation of the heroine Joya. Sensitive and afraid at the turning point of the book, she struggles to find the courage to redeem an unforgivable act of betrayal. In doing so she hopes to reach out to the love she lost. Joya’s Kashmiri lover Rashid, comes to represent a lost generation of Kashmiris whose normal life is irrevocably shredded by violence. The supporting cast of characters who make up the plot are as individual and memorable.
Joya gives the film Zoon a contemporary adaptation; the poetry becomes an anthem for the present-day women of Kashmir. A once peaceful region where Hindus and Muslims co-existed peacefully descends into a landscape of recurring violence as fundamental Islam takes root. The women now depict an immediate reality on screen, as present-day Zoons, they borrow her words to express their resilience and strength and sadness. The completed film becomes an offering in atonement to the immense grief caused to Rashid. It also speaks of the enduring power of poetry, surviving in the oral tradition for five hundred years, when kings and conflicts are long forgotten.
