On the eve of Gadar, June 13 -- Ek Prem Katha's 25th anniversary, Ameesha Patel has shared something she rarely discusses publicly. Pakistani women, she told NDTV, called her crying in the years after the film's June 2001 release. Some of them named their daughters Sakina, after the character she played in Anil Sharma's film.

The detail lands differently 25 years on. Gadar was set during the 1947 partition of India, built around a Sikh truck driver named Tara Singh and a Pakistani Muslim woman he falls in love with during the chaos of displacement. Ameesha Patel's Sakina was caught between two countries and two families, and the responses the film drew from across the border suggest that the character's appeal cut through the political w...