Veer-Zaara



Veer-Zaara is a 2004 Bollywood film starred by Shah Rukh Khan, Preity Zinta, and Rani Mukherji. It tells a Star-Crossed Lovers story with the troubled story between India and Pakistan as the background.

While working for a Pakistani government commission for review unsolved cases pertaining Indian prisoners, Saamiya Siddiqui (Mukherji), a rookie lawyer specialized on human right cases, takes interest in an Indian prisoner (Shah Rukh Khan) only known by the number 786, who has jailed on accounts of alleged espionage and has spent the last couple of decades without speaking. When she visits him and calls him by the name he originally claimed to be, Veer Pratap Singh, the stoic prisoner finally speaks. He then tells his story.

About 20 years ago, on 1982, Veer, then a Indian Air Force helicopter pilot, rescued a Pakistani woman from an accident. The woman was Zaara Haayat Khan (Zinta), the young daughter of an influential family in Lahore, who was in India to carry out the last wishes of her deceased Sikh nanny of scattering her ashes in the Sutlej river. Veer decided to help Zaara bring her nanny's ashes to said sacred place and perform the last rites; in exchange, Zaara agreed to accompany Veer to his birth town for the Lohri festival.

After meeting his family spending time together, Veer and Zaara fell in love with each other, but then Veer discovers that Zaara is in an arranged engagement with one Raza Sharazi, the son of an influential man that can help her father's political career. Veer nonetheless confess to Zaara before she boards back to Pakistan with her fiancé, fully aware that they may no see each other again and that she may not share his feelings. He realized that she actually loved him back when she let him to keep one of her anklets.

Back in Pakistan, Zaara became horribly heartbroken, as she realizes that not only she loved Veer but that he loved her in a way that no one else could reach. Her maid, horrified by the increasingly sorry state of her mistress, secretly contacted Veer to urge him to come to Pakistan to met Zaara for a last time so both could have some sort of closure. Veer immediately quit the army and dropped everything to go to Pakistan and see Zaara; unfortunately, he arrived in the middle of her wedding rites, which she abandoned just to hug him. Zaara's mother met Veer and convinced him to separate from Zaara in the sake, a condition to which both lovers agreed. But Raza, feeling humiliated, paid some policemen to arrest Veer and incriminate him on account of espionage. As the only person who could vouch for him is Zaara, and doing so could bring her into unneeded scandal, Veer just let himself to rot in jail for two decades.

Back in the present, Veer accepts to be defended by Saamiya, on the condition that she does not contact Zaara or her family. Saamiya accepts, even which it makes an already complicated case even more so, what with her former boss being the state attorney. But when Saamiya travels to Veer's hometown on India to search anyone who can confirm his identity, she instead finds Zaara there...


 * Arc Number: 786, the prisoner number assigned to Veer, which incidentally is a sacred number for muslims
 * Because You Were Nice to Me: the only reason Veer accepts to speak and eventually to be defended by Saamiya is because she called him by his actual name and treated him with basic decency.
 * Disposable Fiancé: For all his machinations to ensure so,
 * Happily Married: Veer's aunt and uncle.
 * Honor Before Reason: Veer tries to defend Zaara's honor to all cost, to his own detriment. Also Zaara's family, who went the extra mile to ensure the same.
 * Indians With Iglas: Veer. Despite leaving the service to go to Pakistan as a civilian, his previous army affiliation played a role on his imprisonment.
 * Reports of My Death Were Greatly Exaggerated: the bus Veer was supposed to take him back to India had an accident and all the passengers died. Because of his arrest circumstances, his name was still in the bus' manifest, so to his relatives on India he was legally dead. Veer preferred that to the angst of them knowing that he was imprisoned.
 * Tragic Keepsake: two decades later, Veer still keep Zaara's anklet on his hand.
 * Sad Bollywood Wedding
 * Star-Crossed Lovers: the titular characters.
 * Wide-Eyed Idealist: Saamiya.
 * You Are Number Six: Veer while a prisoner in Pakistan.