Mystery #2
Fawad was there in the film as your co-star, but everybody just abandoned him during the film’s release, given the controversy. I can understand Karan Johar’s predicament as a producer, but what about the cast, and his Bollywood ‘friends’? Did you not speak to him, or did you lose touch?
Anushka: I’d never been in touch with Fawad to begin with. We only interacted on the set, and that’s about it. So there was nothing new about it, in that sense, after the incident took place.
Did you feel terrible about the situation, though?
Anushka: We didn’t feel it would turn out the way it did. Everybody had worked hard for months on the movie, when things were very different, and now we couldn’t have been held responsible for a changed (Indo-Pak) situation. But things between India and Pakistan have always been iffy, so this self-censorship on the part of filmmakers to not work with Indian artistes was weird in its own way, no? I wouldn’t want to comment on the issue, because it can get misconstrued. And it’s a much larger issue than a film. All I know is that I come from an Army background. My father was in the infantry, I’ve sat next to my mother and seen her glued to the TV screen during the Kargil War, when my father would call us once in three months, and we didn’t know where he was. I’ve seen it that close, so I can understand how people must’ve felt. But the issue itself is beyond two people’s conversation on it.
