The recently released Indian film Mardaani, starring the newly-wed Rani Mukherji, will not be screened in Pakistan. The news that’s doing the rounds in Indian circles about the controversy is that when the Pakistan Censor Board asked the film’s producers to have ‘seven cuts’ and ‘blur’ a few scenes, they sat together and came to the conclusion that so much editing would make the story lose its ‘essence’. Therefore they decided not to allow the film hit the cinema screens in Pakistan. The movie revolves around the issue of human trafficking, by the way.

Hmm … seven scenes. You wonder, who from our censor board decided on that odd number!

Published in Dawn, Sunday Magazine, August 31, 2014