The Week India – July 14, 2019

SERIES

@LEISURE

66 THE WEEK • JULY 14, 2019

n the frozen stillness of

the Himalayas a story is

in motion. A tale of two

countries united by beauty,

poetry and music. And divided by war,

bloodshed and turmoil. Caught in the

crosshairs are the people. Like Shehnaz

Parveen, a Pakistani woman who is

imprisoned in India for eight years after

she is mistaken for a Pakistani mole.

She is raped in prison, gives birth to

a daughter, Mobin, and would have

been left to languish if it were not for a

lawyer who was determined to get her

justice. It is the true story of Shehnaz

that inspired the series Kaafi r, starring

Dia Mirza as Kainaz Akhtar and Mohit

Raina as the lawyer, Vedant Rathod. It

started airing on Zee5 on June 15.

“It was just horrifi c to see a little girl

as a jailbird,” says A.K. Sawhney, the

lawyer who inspired Raina’s character.

He met the mother and daughter at

Wagah, when they failed to get de-

ported to Pakistan. Sawhney, who was

publishing a legal journal at the time,

decided to dig a little deeper. He then

met them at the district jail in Jammu,

where they were being held.

Unable to bear her in-laws’ harass-

ment, Shehnaz had tried to drown her-

self in Pakistan’s Neelum river in 1998.

She is not sure how she ended up on

the other side of the border. Suspect-

ed of being a Pakistani mole, she was

imprisoned in a prison in Poonch. “With

matter

Heart

of the

Lawyer A.K. Sawhney

on the real story behind

the India-Pakistan

potboiler, Kaafi r

BY SUMITRA NAIR

Lost in translation

BY VARUN RAMESH

very time The Offi ce is remade

into a regional adaptation, fans

of the original smack their head

in despair. Those who saw the

trailer of The Offi ce (India), too, wept for the

soul of their favourite mockumentary and

cringe-comedy sitcom.

But remakes are bound to have detrac-

tors. When The Offi ce (UK) was adapted

for the US, fans in Britain wrote to the BBC

saying, “The original cannot be re-made”

and “It is just not the same”. The British

found Ricky Gervais’s creation more unique,

fresh, and awkwardly hilarious.

Despite this, The Offi ce (US) ran for nine

seasons; the British original managed only

two. The two are still incomparable thanks

to their unique cultural oddities of language,

setting and humour.

But, it is impossible not to compare the

The Offi ce (India) with the American one.

E

THE OFFICE

(INDIA)

Available on

Hotstar

Rating: 2.5/5

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