MUMBAI: Kunal Kohli thinks there’s no real problem between the two Hindu and Muslim communities. In his new film ‘Teri Meri Kahani’ he has played a double-identity game whereby Shahid Kapoor and Priyanka Chopra switch religious identities during the course of the narration. Explains Kohli, “There’re three different pairs of characters played by Shahid and Priyanka. In two of them they play a Hindu and a Muslim character. But they swap religious identities in the two sections.’
While in the first story situated in 1910 Shahid plays a Muslim lover-boy named Javed and Priyanka a Hindu girl named Aradhana, in the second story that unfolds in 1960, Shahid stars as a strugging music composer named Govind while Priyanka plays a Muslim actress named Rukshar.”
In this way Kohli wants to show how the religious identity and the problems that ensure thereof are of no consequence to him as a moviemaker. Argues Kohli, “Why do we consider it a problem? It is not! As a thinking Indian and a responsible filmmaker it is my job to show that the so-called differences are all a state of the mind. That’s why I made the religious identity inter-changeable in my film. The two halves, the Hindu and the Muslim are changed in the two different segments of the film. I feel cinema needs to wean society away from prejudices and what better example of communal amity than the movie industry?”
Interestingly Kohli has named Priyanka as ‘Radha’ after his daughter in the segment of his film set in 2012.
