During the Partition of India in 1947, a Sikh Punjabi named Umber Singh loses just everything and is forced to leave his homeland. He obsessively wishes for a male heir. When his fourth daughter is born, Umber convinces himself and his wife to raise the girl child as a son throwing up complications aplenty.
Though it's an odd hybrid of gender parable, displacement meta-text, ghost tale and unlikely romance, Qissa packs enough punch to make up for its thematic disparity.
Early promise of a poised and substantial piece gets undermined by a final, inexplicable leap into the paranormal -- an odd denouement for a narrative centered on the very real and corporeal issue of gender-based violence.
