Shikara is a 2020 Indian Hindi-language romantic drama film produced and directed by Vidhu Vinod Chopra. The film is based on the Kashmiri pandit exodus of 1990. The story revolved around the love story of Shanti and Shiv Dhar, who are Kashmiri Pandits in the backdrop of the Exodus of Kashmiri Pandits from Kashmir. The book Our Moon Has Blood Clots by Rahul Pandita has inspired many parts of the movie.
Plot
September 2018 (present) The movie starts with an aged Shiv writing a letter to the President of the United States explaining to him the situation of Kashmiri Pandits who are living like refugees in their own country. It turns out that he has written several letters since the year 1990. His most recent letter received a response from POTUS and inviting him over to a presidential suite in Delhi. He along with Shanti leave for Delhi. In their palatial room they see a movie DVD, Love in Kashmir, and recalls their first meet, marriage in Kashmir and forced exodus to Jammu.
Flashback
1987 and 1988
On the set of Love in Kashmir, a young college professor and Ph.D. student Shiv Kumar Dhar meets a medical student Shanti Sapru. They soon becomes friends with each other in their very first meet out of their love for poetry and Shiv being the author to newly published "Shikara". Soon they falls for each other and Shiv proposes Shanti with the help of his best friend Lateef Lone, an aspiring cricketer and the son of a local politician who is like a fatherly figure to Shiv. Soon they get married in a traditional Kashmiri Pandit ritual wedding and Lateef falls for Shanti's best friend Arti (who's also a medical student).
1989
They soon build a huge mansion with the help of Lateef's father and names it "Shikara" (owing to their first night spent on a shikara). The entire community including Hindus and Muslims live together in harmony. Their first marriage anniversary arrives and Shiv's cousin, Naveen, a doctor gifts him a typewriter to write his thesis on it. However their happiness was short lived as Lateef's father, a politician who is out for a rally is fatally injured and gets admitted at Naveen's clinic. It is stated that the police attacked him on the behest of the current central government (though nowhere in the movie any evidence of this situation is presented). However he dies while being shifted to a multi-speciality hospital for his surgery. Lateef cannot bear the loss of his father and crosses the border to Lahore to get trained as a militant. This incident changes the peaceful valley.
1990
Shiv notices a lot of students from his class missing. Shanti is also made to cover her head and remove her bindi by a group of people during a bus ride. It is there she finds out that there are direct buses from Lal Chowk to Islamabad and Lahore. She even witnesses a shootout that kills 6 police officers trying to stop young men from boarding these buses to militancy. Shiv is kidnapped by a few of his missing students and taken to meet Lateef who is now leading a group of militants against the Kashmiri Pandits. He warns Shiv to leave the valley before it is too late, and he is only doing so since they were friends in the past. Shiv still believes that the Kashimiri Pandits are safe, and all these changes are temporary. However, he had misjudged the situation. A hit-list is released warning all Hindu Kashmiri Pandits to leave Kashmir valley in a month. Soon Kashimiri Pandit houses are burnt down. Naveen gets killed in the chaos in front of Shiv's eyes leaving him shocked. Shiv and Shanti, along with the rest of their family manage to escape to Jammu. The couple that once resided in a huge mansion is now reduced to living in tents. They see rich and affluent Kashmiri Pandits struggling to get something as simple as tomatoes. It is at this moment Shiv starts writing letters to the POTUS (George H. W. Bush at the time) by the typewriter gifted by Naveen to tell them about refugees miserable condition.
1992
Shiv completes his Ph.D. and decides to take a new job at Punjab University. However Shanti encourages him to teach the local refugee students. Soon he gets a call to sell his house "Shikara" at a hefty cost to the local Kashmiri Muslims to which he denies remembering Lateef's father and Naveen's deaths and he accidentally finds Naveen's coat being worn by one of the brokers which Naveen promises to gift him after he completes his Ph.D.