BOLE

BORN TO DIE !!!!!!!
Saw Bole a few months back and have been wanting to write on it since then, but somehow was struck by a writer’s block! Few would have heard about Bole, a Pakistani movie, which in spite of having a very new and relevant issue to discuss, failed to reach the masses
The story of a typical conservative Shea muslim family of Pakistan, of a Hakeem, is in flash back as a narration of the heroin, the eldest daughter of the Hakeem sahab. The girl is addressing a press conference just before being hanged, as a confession of her crime and pleading guilty of a murder.
The hakeem had almost lost all his patient clientele and was living a hand to mouth existence. In spite of the incapacitating poverty, he refuses to use contraception and continues to give birth to kids calling them, Allah ki inayat! After several infant deaths he still has seven daughters most of whom are not permitted to study. The eldest (the heroine)is married off, to a widower, more than double her age, due to lack of money, but she soon returns home .She often objects to her father’s desire to have a son, pleading for her weak mothers deteriorating health, but all in vain. The mother gives birth to her thirteenth child, who is a eunuch, and to avoid shame in the society the old man decides to keep him in doors.
Life goes on with daily struggle for survival, but the man still not relenting to permit the girls to work. With great difficulty the eldest daughter manages to send the second to college. The Hakeem, tries to supplement his earnings by teaching Koran,and when he gets a lucrative offer from a Kanjar to teach his sons, he initially refuses as the kanjar was sunni, but later is forced to accepts it, as a last resort. The kanjar is a pimp who uses his wife for prostitution and is disappointed with life as he has three sons and no daughters. The second daughter falls in love with their neighbours doctor son ,played by the Pakistani singer Atif Aslam. The father vehemently objects to the marriage as they were sunni muslims, but the sisters help them to get married.
The last child is brought up as a son and grows with his sisters and they discover that besides having a great flair for painting he has an altered sexuality towards homosexuality. With an intension to keep him occupied he is sent to work under a profession poster painter, where he is soon molested by men around him and battered and left in an isolated place. A eunuch, who has been following him, rescues him and brings him home. When the Hakeem comes to know about all this he gets wild, and in the rage of anger he kills the boy. The family panics to save the man and the local Havaldar asks for a bribe of rupees two lakhs for the same, by showing the murder as an accident.
Cornered to the wall, the Hakeem approaches the kanjar for help, who agrees but with a condition .He knows about the hakeems tendency to have daughters, so he offers him to be a surrogate father, to make the kanjar’s wife give birth to a daughter, for use in the flesh market in future. In desperation the Hakeem agrees and has a secret nikah with the kanjars wife. The plan succeeds and a girl is born. While the kanjar is happy and Hakeem relieved of his loan, the wife is unwilling to hand over the girl for future exploitation. She asks for help from the Hakeem, but when he refuses, she brings the child to his house and tells the story to his wife and daughters who accept and hide the child, and when the Hakeem tries to get rid of the child, even at the cost of killing if needed, the daughter kills her father and surrenders, for which she is given death punishment. A lady journalist, with great difficulty manages to talk to the President and convinces him to revoke the punishment, to which he agrees, and the hanging is stalled. The two elder sisters help the other sisters to study and the family raises the baby girl as a part of the family.
The movie has a strong storyline and a good screenplay, which have touched a vast range of social evils, mostly in name of religion, like, avoiding family planning, large number of children, gender discrimination, no education for girls, domestic violence, mismatched marriages, flesh trade, socially unacceptable altered sexuality, sexual abuse, intra religion hatred and above all total disrespect to woman and practice of every possible wrong in the name of religion. The songs are good, specially hoona tha pyaar.................The movie was however very weak in cinematography and direction, probably due to lack of expertise and financial limitations, reducing it more like a Tele film.
I wish the movie is remade in India, by some responsible film makers to raise this very relevant question that if killing is a crime, then isn’t giving birth to children without the capability to bring them up and refusing to provide girls a healthy childhood and opportunity to grow, a BIGGER CRIME !
Brig Sanjay Kapoor ,Kolkata