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The movie is about a young, brace legged, eight year old Parsee girl named Lenny (Maia Sethna), whose beautiful nanny, Shanta (Nandita Das) is admired by all the men in a circle of friends. She slowly comes to love Hasan (Rahul Khanna), a masseur, who is Muslim. She likes, but does not love, Dil, who is also a Muslim (Aamir Khan), known as "Ice Candy Man". Her life is pleasant in a wealthy Parsi
household ruled by Lenny's kind mother and officious father. When a
train of Muslims arrives at the local depot and all the passengers are
found murdered, the various sects turn against each other, and the city
is soon aflame. For Lenny, the trouble first appears in her Lahore home
when a quarrel erupts between Mr. Singh, a Sikh neighbor and Mr.
Rogers, a British Inspector General of Police, who have come to dine
with her parents. Bitter words metamorphose into slogan shouting mobs
and arson. Angry Hindus storm through Lahore one day, and angry Muslims
the next. Still, it is all far enough away from Lenny's uneasy but
untouched home where her mother, Bunty, teaches her to waltz and Ayah's
crew of admirers continue to meet in the park as before. The once
charming Ice Candy Man turns into a near madman, one of the many
roaming the streets of Lahore with vengeance and murder on their minds.
The Muslim Masseur, Hasan, the only voice of reason amongst Shanta's
admirers, implores the group of friends to "stand by each other". A
love affair between him and Shanta, blossoms amidst the carnage and
Lenny is privy to this fragile relationship between a Muslim and a
Hindu. A film which gracefully establishes the beauty of peace and
crudely depicts the tragic loss of it, Earth concludes that the most
painful kind of betrayal is that which occurs within the family. |
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