Haider (inspired by “Hamlet”)

(Spoiler alert — do not read on if you haven’t seen Vishal Bhardwaj’s Haider (2014))

The thing about Haider is that it is a haunting story, one that stays with you long after you’ve left your seat, a story which I’ve been hearing since age four.

I still remember the day fondly. My uncle had promised me and my two eldest cousins that we would go see The Lion King (1994) in theaters, probably the earliest movie-going memory I have. Little did I know that it would be a magical retelling of Hamlet (my dear English teacher Mr. Grossman deserves the honor of letting me in on the secret during his Great Books class, when we were reading Hamlet). Simba’s uncle, Scar, murders Mufasa and takes on Mufasa’s throne as king of the Pride Lands. Simba’s mother remains at his side as a powerless queen. Simba ultimately returns to his abandoned home to exact justice and take on his rightful role as king.

For all the parallels to the original text, there are important differences. For one, The Lion King is most definitely a comedy — one in which terrible things are ultimately resolved. Simba regains his kingdom, Scar is killed off (not at the hands of Simba, but the hyenas), and Simba and Nala are married and have a cub. Oh, and Simba’s mother never dies nor does she willingly marry or get romantically involved with Scar. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern, the two “fools,” aka Timon and Pumba, are not spies but true friends to Simba.

So why is The Lion King important? I once wrote an essay on how Vishal Bhardwaj’s Hindi film adaptations differed from the original Shakespeare text and why. His deviations are not random. Vishal Bhardwaj is an artist — he not only directs; he also writes, composes music, and even sings. He brings out the best in everything he touches.

So how does Haider deviate? Haider takes pieces of The Lion King, fuses it with the brutality of the original text, and makes the most critical choice of all: like Simba in The Lion King, Haider does not ultimately kill his uncle and “exact revenge.” The hyenas end up killing Scar. And in Haider, Haider’s mother ultimately maims her husband and curses him to certain death a la Star Wars, burning legs, crawling, and all.

The beginning of Haider shows the return of a son forcibly sent away. Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are manifested in two Salmans who gyrate their hips to the famous tunes of Maine Pyaar Kiya and Hum Aapke Hain Kaun. They appear guileless, foolish, and provide comic relief; they indeed reveal their true selves as vicious spies capable of violence. Haider hesitates to kill his uncle, Khurram (Claudius), the first time as he is praying, just as Hamlet hesitates to kill Claudius as he prays, too. Khurram has his trusted advisers, such as inspector Pervez Lone (Polonius), whose daughter, Arshia (Ophelia), loves Haider.

An aside — the red scarf

Arshia, deeply in love with Haider and also a dutiful daughter, gifts her father Pervez a red scarf. The red scarf is present when Haider commits his first act of killing, the murders of the two fools; it is what leads Pervez to Haider and Haider to kill in the second instance. And it is that same scarf that Arshia, who had unwittingly knit together murder, unravels. And when that unraveling is done, she shoots herself. Ghazala (Gertrude), Haider’s mother, wears a red dupatta / female scarf before she dies and kills, too.

Back to the story

So all that makes sense. A remarkable adaptation, replete with Yorick’s skull, gravediggers, a dying Laertes, translated lines (Hum rahein ya na rahein?), and all that.

But what remains unanswered are the motivations of characters and that final scene, the one in which Haider chooses not to exact revenge and kill his uncle. But in a way, that choice was halfway take away from him by his mother; his uncle will certainly die but not because of him. What can we believe? Why would Ghazala take it upon herself to accept the role of suicide bomber — is potentially killing her husband’s killer enough, despite her feelings for Khurram (Claudius)? Does she think she can singlehandedly end the violence? Does she hope to free Haider by freeing him from the choice of exacting revenge? Is this how militants are born — through dramatized retellings of motivations and stories? Doesn’t Haider have all the ingredients—loss of a parent, vulnerability to any explanation—to be the perfect militant, to be used adroitly by Roohdaar (The Ghost)? Is Roohdaar merely spinning a tale, knowing that a fellow prisoner had a son named Haider (and a few more odd bits) and needing nothing else to trap Haider into his red, bloody web? What has Haider gained? What has he lost? And what have we?