La croisée des destins

Well, I've always sort of identified myself as an AngloBanglo.

My dad was born in Lahore in 1929 and my grandparents left Karachi in 1965 almost 20 years after partition because the Muslims had made it impossible for my Nana to continue to run her private school.

The returned to England like so many AngloBanglos where they were too Indian for the white and not Indian enough for the Indians.

Just like they were back in what was then Pakistan and by some account, India itself.

You have to remember that at this point, as depicted in the film, 1947 was the cusp of partition and violence was everywhere. My grandfather told me graphic stories of entire trains of people slaughtered he had witnessed.

Ava Gardner's character has to choose which side she is on but for many AngloBanglos the struggle goes on. We are neither brown enough for the browns, nor white enough for the whites. I now live in Canada but I self identify as English.

The sub text in George Cukor's story has lost some of it's impact over time because few remember the upheaval of partition but for some of us, it bring it back into focus.

More interesting to me is that it was released the year I was born, in England, in 1956.