Train to Pakistan (film)
| Train to Pakistan | |
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| Directed by | Pamela Rooks |
| Produced by | R. V. Pandit Ravi Gupta Bobby Bedi |
| Screenplay by | Pamela Rooks |
| Based on |
Train to Pakistan by Khushwant Singh |
| Starring |
Nirmal Pandey Rajit Kapur Mohan Agashe Smriti Mishra |
| Music by | Piyush Kanojia Taufiq Qureshi Kuldeep Singh |
| Cinematography | Sunny Joseph |
| Edited by | A. V. Narayana Sujata Narula |
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Release date
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Running time
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108 minutes |
| Country | India |
| Language | Hindi |
Train to Pakistan is a 1998 Hindi film adapted from Khushwant Singh's 1956 classic novel by the same name set in the Partition of India of 1947 and directed by Pamela Rooks. The film stars Nirmal Pandey, Rajit Kapur, Mohan Agashe, Smriti Mishra, Mangal Dhillon and Divya Dutta.
The film is set in Mano Majra which is a silent village on the border of India and Pakistan, close to where the railway line crosses the Sutlej River. The film develops around the love affair of small-time dacoit Juggut Singh (Nirmal Pandey), with a local Muslim girl, Nooran (Smriti Mishra). Mano Majra incidentally was the original title of the book upon its release in 1956. The villagers are a mix of Sikhs and Muslims, who live in harmony. The Sikhs own most of the land, and the Muslims work as labourers. During the summer of 1947, when the Partition of India was taking place, the entire country was a hotbed of extremism and intolerance. The Muslims in India moved towards the newly formed Pakistan, and the Hindus and Sikhs in Pakistan migrated to refugee camps in India. One day, a train arrives from Pakistan, which carries bodies of all the travellers who have been butchered while they tried to depart from Pakistan. That is when this quiet village is changed forever.
The film was one of the most anticipated adaptations of its time, especially being writer Khushwant Singh's most acclaimed work. According to whom several people in past has attempted to make the film, including Shashi Kapoor and Shabana Azmi, who even developed a screenplay, but owing to sensitivity of the subject, abandoned the project.
Pamela Rooks first read the novel at 17, preparing for the title role of Nooran, which she was set to play in the prospective Ismail Merchant film, which never took off. The novel stayed with her, however, because growing up she had stories of the Partition from her parents. Initially the publishers of the book, Ravi Dayal, was hesitant to give the rights of the work to a new filmmaker, as this was only Rooks' second feature, till Ravi Gupta, Managing Director of NFDC stepped in and a go ahead was given. Previously as her first feature, Rooks had adapted her own novel Miss Beatty's Children, into a 1993 film by the same name, which won her the National Film Award for Best First Film of a Director. For her adaptation Rooks chose a slightly different narrative from the original novel.Thus the film begins with Hukum Chand, the District Magistrate, reminiscing about partition period. Though she has visually translated most of the lines from Khushwant Singh's narrative directly on to the screen.
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