In a small clinic in India-held Jammu and Kashmir, a doctor with strikingly long fingernails flicks the trackball of a beeping ultrasound machine, announcing (in bad room acoustics) that both the mother and the baby are doing just fine. Amid the opening credits, whose animation timing needs tweaking, we see that the young bride, Gul-i-Rana (Mariyam Nafees), has a happy, radiant glow. Clearly in her last trimester, Gul can’t wait to get home — she has to make rogan josh for her husband Mir (Abdul Muqeet Khan); but before that she can’t help but share the first images of the baby with her husband. Nearly yanking the file from her mother-in-law (Ghazala Kaifee), Gul snaps a photo of the ultrasound and sends it to Mir. “Here, look at Kabir!” she texts, followed by “When will you come?”

On their way back home, India-held Jammu and Kashmir’s tumultuous politics take a damning turn as the Indian government revokes Article 370, ending the states’ autonomous self-governing status.

Roads are barricaded and detoured, shops are shuttered, Indian army police the streets, the internet is shut off and, soon, when they reach home, sirens — accompanied by dramatic red and blue lights out of a Hollywood cop-movie — blare.

In the span of months covered within its sixteen-and-a-half minutes run-time, the short film, named after the Indian constitutional act, repeats the same question over and over again: When will you come home, Mir?

Two short films from See Prime: Article 370 is a well-designed, crisply shot endeavour that could have been shorter and more impactful. Champa Chambeli has a novel concept that goes nowhere

But it’s not just Gul’s husband who’s missing without a reason (we never find out why). The father of a newspaper boy (Arib), who delivers the paper every day, is also missing. Gul and her mother-in-law huddle indoors, waiting in the dark; their lights, like everyone else’s, cut off as co-writer/director Ibrahim Baloch piles on the drama. Shooting wobbly, shoulder-mounted frames, the camera (from cinematographer Aamir Mughal), peeks from door frames, windows and see-through curtains, voyeuristically looking at the hapless Gul.

The effect is subtle, and with very few lines of exposition, tilts towards an ad film-like feel rather than that of a narrative short. The two songs and a few lines of prose, punched between Gul’s present solitude and flashbacks with her shawl-draped husband, amplify the feeling of a television commercial.

Yes, it’s a well-designed, crisply shot endeavour that’s vastly proficient — and more cinematic — than most feature-length theatrical films Pakistan makes. But it could have been shorter, less derivative of its own shots, and more impactful. Or, in a stark but more fitting creative choice, longer, with more dialogue and dimension to the characters.

Choices, choices.

Baloch tries to pack as much information as possible within the frames. Arib, the paperboy, is beaten in the dead of night by Indian police, who stomp his hand bloody. The word ‘Azaadi’ (freedom) is graffiti-sprayed in big, red letters on a wall at their backs.

Kashmir has always been like this, Mir’s mother tells Gul; her husband — Gul’s father-in-law — has been missing for 20 years. Gul balks at the idea of giving birth in a hostile hell like this. Mir was born during curfews, so will the newborn Kabir, the mother-in-law tells Gul. Little has changed.

In perhaps, the short’s best scene, the first sound Kabir hears fresh out of the womb is the shrieking wail of sirens — not the azaan (the call to prayer). It’s a striking, evocative, emotionally stirring image. One that’s beautifully rendered, but needs just a tad bit more.

A See Prime original produced by Seemeen Naveed, directed by Ibrahim Baloch from a story and screenplay by Baloch and Shuja Uddin, Article 370 is available to stream on YouTube. The short film is unrated, and has no objectionable material.

Champa Chambeli

In writer-director Hisham Bin Munawar’s Champa Chambeli, two men on opposite sides of the border play a wicked game of identity con and sexual teasing. The old man from India is Aravind Vijay Kumar, who hides behind the guise of the sultry ‘Champa’ in hopes of winning over ‘her’ online gal-pal Chameli from Pakistan. Little does he know that Chambeli is also a guy — a swanky, bearded media graduate named Asad Naeem.

Unlike the mischievous, lusty old man, Asad says that he is conducting a social experiment — the screenplay, or the slightly abrupt short-film, with a hardly noticeable running time of 25 minutes, doesn’t substantiate Asad’s claims.

The story doesn’t dawdle on their lies. The two men learn of each other’s identities within the first 10 minutes, become fast friends and, since both of them are flat broke, decide to make individual YouTube channels to promote peace between Pakistan and India.

It’s a novel concept, but people attracted to hate-mongering won’t buy it.

Munawar, who previously wrote and directed Ready Steady No, is an impressive director, and his screenplay is seemingly taut. Both ‘Champa’ and ‘Chambeli’ — and their impressive actors Salman Shahid and Sarmad Aftab Jadran — come across as intelligent, sensible human beings with their own personal gripes with the world.

Through vignettes of conversations, we learn that Asad has yet to find a good job. Aravind, with his children married and settled, wants to save enough to go on a world tour before dying. Given the bills, he knows that the money he likely saves may just be used for his cremation.

The story Munawar tells is a subtle one — but one that’s hardly complete. Shot with a good sense of composition, the edit needs a bit of touch-up; with a few nicks here and a few tucks there, the story would have flowed better.

The end, however, is starkly abrupt. Without closure or contemplation, the story just grinds to a halt, dead in its tracks. One more scene of closure would have made a world of a difference.

Released on August 15 (the reviewer confirmed from the producers that the date was intentional), the story was conceived as a goodwill present to India, and is one of the first of many tales from Champa and Chambeli.

I hope it is, because left as it is, the short film amounts to nothing, save a few laughs from well-meaning fictional characters.

Available to stream on YouTube from See Prime, there is no objectionable material in the story.

Published in Dawn, ICON, August 23rd, 2020