Mahira Khan, who will be making her Bollywood debut in the Shah Rukh Khan starrer ‘Raees’, has finally shared her views about the ongoing tension between India and Pakistan. The actress is one of the many Pakistani artistes, who have been banned by the Indian Motion Picture Producers Association (IMPPA), from working in India till the relations between the governments of the neighbouring countries are favourable. This move was made as the aftermath of the Uri attacks.
While many Pakistani actors have chosen to keep mum during this tense period, Mahia expressed her views by sharing a post of fellow Pak artiste Alizay Jaffer. The post, which is a personal account of Jaffer’s experiences of her time in India, and the friendships she continues to maintain with her pals who love her still the same. She starts her post by saying, “It’s strange, this affinity with India. I find myself getting increasingly upset at the abuse and hatred tossed from one border to another, with little rationale apart from the 69-year-old chips on our shoulders. These chips have, over time, turned into boulders, and who doesn’t crumble under the weight of those?”
Further elaborating this ‘strange affinity’ towards the country, she shares how even as Pakistanis, she, along with many others, have found themselves rejoicing together when a Ranbir Kapoor film does well, and praying together when Amitabh Bachchan isn’t at the peak of his health. While icons like Kishore and Rafi carry their (Pakistani) history in their monuments and that the Pakistani language carries them in its roots.
She goes on to say, “We, as nations, are constantly trying to please the West, who doesn’t really care about us.” She writes, “Come to think of it now, it isn’t strange at all, this affinity with India. Our proverbial Lord and Master, the gargantuan power that rules us, ‘The West’, is an absentee parent; one we’re constantly trying to please but one who never really loved us anyway. If there is anyone for us, it’s each other. What’s strange is our reluctance to acknowledge this.”
Jaffer ends her note saying, “It is comforting somehow, that when I messaged one of my closest friends across the border, expressing concern over the destructive megalomaniac tendencies of our governments, he responded and said, ‘It doesn’t matter what they do, you know I will always love you’. It is comforting somehow, that in 20 years’ time, if you look away from the textbooks, and turn to your ancient scriptures or your holy books, it won’t take you long to see that since time immemorial, there is only one message they are trying to convey, only one message we should be paying attention to; and that message is Love.”