Shooting in Sonmarg with Kashmiri girls as extras shouldn't normally have been a problem. But given the current volatile situation in the state, as Junooniyat director Vivek Agnihotri and his lead pair Pulkit Samrat and Yaami Gautam learned, matters could soon turn ugly without warning.
The film's unit, which recently turned from Kashmir, was apparently hounded and assaulted by Kashmiri locals for using native girls in a song sequence. Vivek recounts the horror of it all, "It was all smooth in Sonmarg and after shooting a song where around 20 Kashmiri girls participated, the unit was on their way out of Sonmarg. Their vehicles were laid siege by around a 100 Kashmiri men with burning torches demanding that the Kashmiri girls be handed over to them. Fortunately they had finished their work and were not with us."
He continues, "It's not that the Kashmiris don't want their women-folk to work in films. They're okay with them working in Kashmiri films, but not Hindi films. They hate the government that has ruled them for decades and are looking for a change."
After this incident, the remaining shooting was done under strict bandobast. "We were surrounded by security personnel in Srinagar and Pahalgam. It took us seven hours to reach the airport on the day we were leaving because the Prime Minister was coming that day," shares the director.
In spite of this experience, he is all set to return to Kashmir in February 2015 for the last schedule of Junooniyat. "We were making a romantic musical. But a political thriller was going on behind the scenes," he sighs.
