Sharmila Tagore and Shammi Kapoor’s musical shikara romance mesmerized audiences in Kashmir Ki Kali five decades ago.
Today, the valley is troubled and cartoonist Mir Suhail decided to visualise the darkness of eyes blinded by pellet guns through the iconic poster of the film featuring the two stars. Thus, Sharmila Tagore gazes down, one eye hit by pellets, in the recreated poster.
It is one more artistic protest to focus the world’s attention on the effect of small pellets fired by security forces from crowd-control guns that is leaving people blind.
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The number of young pellet victims with eyes badly affected has shot up to more than 300. Several artists in Kashmir are protesting, using creative expression to try and end the civilian deaths and crippling injuries in the demonstrations that have followed the killing of Hizbul Mujahideen commander Burhan Wani on July 8.
“My attempt to recreate the poster, where Sharmila Tagore is hit in one eye by pellets, and Shammi Kapoor has an expression of disgust, is to highlight the pain inflicted on this
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Another acclaimed artist, Masood Hussain, has come up with a series of grey scale posters of boys with shrunken, shikara -shaped pupils, again drawing attention to destroyed eyes.
“It pains to see kids being blinded by pellets. All that an artist can do is stroke the canvas with that pain,” says Mr. Hussain, who has documented the daily life of ordinary Kashmiris for two decades now.
Pellet gun injuries are fast growing in Kashmir: 50 more protesters were hit in their eyes just on Friday. Most of those affected are in the age group of 15 to 25.
Asif Amin Tibet Baqual, founder and chief creative officer of BlackSheep.Works, a communication agency, sparked off a Twitter storm when his anti-pellet campaign generated 20 million impressions on the platform.
Mr. Baqual produced three posters in Braille with messages like: ‘Offensive state apparatus in Kashmir sees to it that dissent doesn’t see the light of day’.
“The anti-pellet campaign ‘kashmirblindspot’ is for the world community. Kashmir, unfortunately, has turned into a blind spot. Braille style is used as Kashmir is talking to ‘blind’ people,” Mr. Baqual said.