The Google ad on India and Pakistan displaying heaps of love is so good it makes it too clever. It takes what is now an an irrelevance and wrings false tears out of it. So do all the soaps on Indian TV. Of course, we love schmaltz and emotion and there is nothing wrong with it. But let not that gallop into the past be eulogised as some sort of tangible yearning for love on both sides of the border.

I cried, too, not only for the delightfully slick and simple visual effects and the smart, scripted storyline  but also for the rope of opportunity that has slipped out of our hands in an inimical 60 years of let’s pretend we are friends. Yet its very simplicity also annoyed me because there was no peg to hang it on.

It reminded me of a shiny cap on a rotting tooth. There is no sincerity in the relationship between the two neighbours. We have collectively corrupted it. On a one to one old friends from that generation are like book ends, with only memories.

The new generation does not even have that prop. Yet, it does very little to change the equation. So, we all find refuge on choreographed ‘feel good’ what might have beens like this film. There is nothing wrong in it. There is, as a matter of fact, a lot of right and such a deep reflection of our guilt and stupidity these three generations that we filter it through this sort of catharsis…because that is all it is…an old, dated, cliché that is so well done it is almost sterile…and the tears dry up into a sludge of regret…just a passing shower. Ask yourself;why did you cry? If you cannot find a suitable reply….???

Even though the premise is not new the film is a hands down winner but I’d get it tested for doping…

Check out the ad here