After Fawad, Humaima, Veena and many other Pakistani celebrities, now our very own Billi Mehwish Hayat has also decided to work in India. According to reports by an Indian Daily, Mehwish is doing a play for Bollywood director Mahesh Bhatt who has always been an endeavor to find common ground between India and Pakistan. Mahesh Bhatt is all set to produce and present a play ‘Milne Do’. A collaborative effort of theater actors from both Pakistan and India, the play is an intense love story between two culturally crossed individuals during times of abject hatred. An Indian actor Imran Zahid will be playing the role of an Indian boy who falls in love with a Pakistani girl. The Pakistani girl will be played by Mehwish Hayat. Palash Sen of the band Euphoria is likely to create the music in collaboration with the Pakistani band Laal.

Imran is currently in Lahore with the play’s director Danish Iqbal. Speaking from Lahore, Imran said, “I am here in Lahore to finalise things for our next theatrical production Milne Do in collaboration with Pakistan theater group AZAD and it will Directed by Danish Iqbal (who directed the theater version of DADDY) and co-directed by Malik Aslam of Azad Theatre. Two bands — one each from India and Pakistan — will also perform live when the play. The team will rehearse together in India and Pakistan; the play will open in March-end in Delhi and then Lahore.”
Adds Mahesh Bhatt,

“I have always maintained that a movie or a play can be a greater vehicle of peace than all the lectures we give. Any message, if communicated through storytelling, touches a chord. We are also trying to do the same. This play will be an emotional transaction between industries on both sides. I have always crusaded for Indo-Pak peace through the cultural space. People used to criticize me when I first released films in Pakistan. But today you have got Pakistani soaps and shows playing successfully in India,” Bhatt said the cultural exchanges between India and Pakistan, which he crusaded for years, will “eventually fulfil the dream of the father of the nation Mahatma Gandhi of the two countries walking hand-in-hand. Not necessarily films, but the theatre is also a good medium through which message could be delivered. Messaging is not necessarily through one route. Yes, cinema has a mass audience. But like cinema, theatre could be one of the ways to make slow inroads into the consciousness of the people.”