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Pankaj Butalia

Shadows in the Dark

    RELEASE

    1999-09-21

    BUGET

    N/A

    LENGTH

    104 min

    Description

    Ill-fated love set against the epic canvas of India's partition into Hindu Indian and Pakistan. Lajma, a beautiful school teacher with greying hair, leaves Pakistan for her childhood home in India. There she discovers that the home is in ruin, her aging aunt is half senile, and her cousin Gautam is bitter and defeated. Flashback to 1947 when India splits in two - a proud old Muslim man, along with his grieving daughter-in-law, take in a couple of impoverished Hindus, Chand and Bhagwati, into their home. Later, Chand's mute sister Lajjo arrives with her young daughter Lajma. Suffering from some unnamed past trauma, Lajjo is eventually sent to an asylum, leaving Lajma with her uncle. Lajma recalls her aborted relationship with the childhood friend and her inability to understand what her lover was going through, as well as her lover's inability to acknowledge a latent bisexuality. But the most difficult memory to deal with is that of her mother, brutalised during the riots.