Watching a few documentaries in the South Asia Film Festival ‘05 has been a good experience for me. I have always been fascinated by the way documentary makers so easily capture the life into a movie. It looks so easy when we watch but when we consider about making it, its a really difficult task to get the theme and to visualize it.
This year, I wanted to watch a few. Team Nepal by Girish Giri, a reporter whom I knew, was the first choice and My Brother, My Enemy by an Indian and a Pakistani film makers the second. Probably because one deals with the football and other has a little bit of cricket on the theme. Team Nepal turned out to be a very interesting one while the answer given to me by the Indian director of My Brother, My Enemy during the question-answer session was superb.
My question after watching a Pakistani travelling to India and talking with Indians and an Indian travelling to Pakistan and talking with Paksitanis was simple: ‘It looked like Indians are more friendlier to Pakistani than Pakistanis to Indian. Is it true?’
Kamajeet Negi replied: ‘I think its just that Pakistanis are more frank and Indians more diplomatic.’ A great answer, I believe.
India and Pakistan being two biggest neighbors to Nepal have always been important to us. A few years ago when the two countries tested the nuclear weapons, I quickly rushed to internet to find out what would happen to us if they use it. It was so horrible to think about them using at each other.
India is always suspicious of Nepal because they believe the ISI, the Pakistani secret agency, is using Nepal against India. Its not good for a country like ours surrounded on three sides by India.
At regional level we are missing a few things to. SAARC is an excellent forum to discuss issues of regional co-operation but the India-Pakistan conflict has frequently slowing the pace of its growth. Sportswise, Nepal should already have played One-Day Internationals in the Asia Cup if the conflict between two countries hadn’t postponed it for many times.
Due to the conflict, not only they are harming each other but the whole of the region is suffering. It would be nice to see the conflict between them resolved.
‘It won’t happen, if it happens what our politicians talk about during elections,’ an Indian in the documentary said (not the exact words but similar meaning). I felt so sorry.
