Bollywood removes Pakistani stars in homage to vanished Rafales of ‘Operation Sindoor’.
India recently pulled a Paul Heyman on Pakistan turned heel. As a consequence, all Pakistani celebrities who ever worked in Bollywood have pulled a John Cena, because you can’t see them.
Since the ceasefire, Bollywood is erasing Pakistani artists from all posters, thumbnails and marketing materials across their platforms. It’s created this digital bizarro-world where characters disappear mysteriously. This Twilight Zone-esque parallel universe of Bollywood where no Pakistani artist exists, and hence, the remaining characters interact with empty air molecules or their narratives shift dramatically, is an amusing idea that could be a lore of its own – a fictional contemporary version of 16th century North Carolina’s Roanoke Colony.
Strange disappearances
The first casualty of this strange phenomenon was Mawra Hocane, who was removed from the poster of her 2015 film Sanam Teri Kasam on Spotify.
Sanam is gone, guys. Now the film should be just called Teri Kasam since the poster now only shows Harshvardhan Rane, standing shirtless and with his back half turned, brooding over a splash of colours as if is being forced into an arranged marriage with the red paint and asked to pose for wedding photos. Ismail please!
It’s a good thing Saru’s father held his nerdy daughter’s funeral early in the film. The man was ahead of the times and saw Saru ghosting Inder and possibly eloping with Cena. Poor, shirtless Inder. But hey, at least, no one pinky swore to marry him and died right after signing the nikkah certificate.
Ali Zafar… I mean Luv’s brother (not Danyal Zafar) didn’t steal his ‘brother ki dulhan’. Imran Khan (no, the other one) and his wife lived happily ever after since Zafar didn’t exactly ‘Luv’ his dysfunctional family and kept his distance. I say, good for him.
In Om Shanti Om, Javed Shaikh never got into an accident that killed Om Prakash Makhija. His wife gave birth to a son but they didn’t name him Om Kapoor nor called him OK The child was named Osama Baksh. They call him O. Bey, and he obeys his parents. The tragedy, however, is that Shanti Priya never got justice.
In Tamasha, Ranbir Kapoor later met Sandy (Shanti Priya’s doppelganger) in Corsica. But RK never recovered from his trauma, because his father left a long time ago. He continued his 9-5 and never became a theatre director.
In another chapter, Adhyayan Suman never touches Humayun Saeed’s heart with his song. It’s not that Humayun has no emotions, he just didn’t attend the concert since the Jashn wasn’t big enough and Backstreet Boys cancelled their appearance last minute.
There’s no Zaalima to romance with Shah Rukh Khan in Raees track’s thumbnail either.
Fawad Khan, on the other hand, disappeared entirely out of Milli’s life. Milli turned out to be the 41st doctor to quit treating the king and never met or fell in love with the Rajasthani prince. She was later kidnapped by filmmaker Anurag Kashyap but rescued, and went on to Maskali her way through life.
Meanwhile Fawad got sick of the royal lifestyle. For a while, he considered stealing his brother’s manuscript to publish under his own name and become a famous writer, but his conscience didn’t allow him. Kapoor and Sons lived not-so-happily ever after, despite Fawad’s absence.
Fawad, though, went on to become a successful DJ but never met Alizeh (Anushka Sharma). She never became his aadat. My guy Ranbir played the long time and eventually convinced her to marry him. She pretended to be in love with him for the rest of her life, which, fortunately for her, wasn’t very long.
There’s also a possibility that Bollywood uses AI to remove Pakistani artists from entire films but the actors behave as if nothing has changed. Neither the audience nor the cast can hear them, but they pretend they are there. I mean, if we can play along with R-Truth’s Lil Jimmy, this shouldn’t be a big deal.
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