There were also ordinary people who acted themselves into the script. In one of the film’s sequences, Kher, who plays Kashmiri shepherd Subhan Kakh, gets into a conversation with a few village elders in a barber’s shop. “We requested a few villagers to pose for us. One of them had assisted as a labourer in a Bollywood film in 1970s. But they had never watched a movie,’’ Kamal said. “When Kher sahib delivered his dialogue, the villagers started a conversation, oblivious that a script had to be followed. Kher tried to stop them but they didn’t understand. We continued shooting and it came out very nicely’’.

Not just the local people, the moody landscape and its surprises added to the film. In a scene, Tahaan was to be idling by a pond when another character would throw a stone into the water to attract his attention. “We found the pond completely frozen. We didn’t know what to do but Santosh (Sivan) asked us to carry on. And once the stone fell on the frozen surface of the pond, it made a different sound,’’ Kamal remembered. “Nature was playing magic with our script.’’

There were a few scares for the crew—Kher’s car skidded off a snow-laden stretch in Chandanwari where the road to Amarnath cave ends—but in all, they had a good time and predictably fell in love with the beauty around.

Sivan, though, said he found the grandeur of Kashmir’s landscape predictable. He wanted to look beyond. “When I looked through my camera, it was strange, unsettling. There was no violence while we were shooting but I could feel that strange mist of conflict. Kashmir’s beauty looked wounded,’’ he said. “The most amazing aspect was the people, ordinary people. Little kids would flock around whenever we were shooting. I have never seen so many children. And I saw a lot of hope in their eyes.’’
This film, Sivan emphasised, is a simple human story. “It is about the life of a boy, his family and a Kashmiri village,’’ he said. “It is also a prayer. A prayer that this beautiful land comes out of its tragedy and one day when the Tahaans of Kashmir grow up, they live with dignity, honour and peace.”

... contd.