A city arguing with a screen
A story like this usually begins with a split screen.
On one side, a movie that never pretended to be real. On the other hand, a city that never quite decided what story it wanted to tell about itself.
Somewhere between the two, people take offense as if fiction were an act of biography, as if a frame on a screen could rewrite their memories.
The reactions drift in familiar patterns.
Dhurandhar is best understood as fictional ragebait, the kind that predictably draws heat simply by existing.
A film releases, and suddenly everyone becomes a guardian of national honor, even those who spent the morning scrolling dance clips from the same industry they now condemn.
It’s strange how quickly a work of imagination becomes a mirror people try to polish, or break, depending on what they fear it reflects.
The louder the disagreement, the more it reveals an ache that was already there.
There are layers beneath the noise.
Karachi, vast and restless, carries contradictions few want to speak plainly. I would know, I was born there.
The polished corners that make it to Instagram feel like stitched patches rather than the fabric of the place. Most of the city moves under a weight built over decades, a mix of neglect and resilience that defies tidy narratives.
Fiction doesn’t have to tell the truth, yet it brushes against something real when it unsettles people who know the ground better than the screen.
What complicates everything is the gap between what people want shown and what they know is true.
A city can be beloved and broken at the same time, but admitting that feels like betrayal. So the argument becomes about movies instead of memory, about Bollywood’s intentions instead of the lived texture of the streets.
It’s easier to defend an idea of home than the uneven reality of it.
Maybe that’s why the outrage feels both misplaced and inevitable. Fiction stirs something people recognize but don’t want named.
A film is just a frame, yet it nudges attention toward what already sits in the corners. And when the noise fades, the city remains exactly as complicated as before, layered with beauty and grit, refusing to be reduced to either one.