Emotional Google ad on partition a big hit

Agencies/New DelhiAn advertisement by Google depicting two childhood friends who are tearfully reunited following their separation during the partition of India and Pakistan has gone viral online, reflecting demands in the two countries for closer people-to-people ties. The 3.33-minute video, titled Reunion, has racked up more than 2mn hits since it was posted on YouTube on Thursday. It revolves around the friendship of two boys who were separated 66 years ago following the subcontinent’s independence from British colonial rule and its subsequent partition. The advertisement explains how the two fictional characters are brought together by younger relatives using Google searches to reunite the pair. After the India-based man tells his granddaughter about how he and his friend used to steal “jhajariya” (a type of sweet) from a shop close to “an old gate” in Lahore, the girl uses the clues to search on Google and eventually track down his long lost friend. She contacts the Pakistan-based friend’s grandson who also trawls Google for advice on how to obtain an Indian visa and the advertisement ends with an emotive surprise reunion in India on the birthday of one of them. Internet users left thousands of comments on social networking sites describing how the advert had brought them to tears and renewed their hopes for improved relations between the neighbours. “Google brought nations together in 3 minutes 32 seconds. The politicians of both countries couldn’t do this in 66 years,” wrote Akshaya Aradhya on Google’s official Facebook page. “Wonderful campaign highlighting all the similarities and shared experiences instead of the differences,” added another user under the name Pakistanis for Peace. The 1947 partition separated hundreds of thousands of families in India and Pakistan. Cross-border travel in initial days were difficult as the two countries, now nuclear-armed, fought three wars. “If it doesn’t move you, you’ve got a heart of stone,” wrote Beena Sarwar, a Pakistani journalist and part of the Aman ki Asha (Hope for Peace) initiative that promotes peace between Pakistan and India, on her blog.It might seem a risky strategy to co-opt partition for a feel-good search engine advertisement. Yet Abhijit Avasthi, head of the Ogilvy India team that developed the ad, said the fact that partition evokes strong feelings among Indians and Pakistanis is one of the reasons the idea was chosen.“Yes, this is a sensitive topic, a part of history with bitter memories” he said. “But that was the whole point, which is to tell people that those memories are in the past, that there is a way to revive your connection with your lost ones.”The spot also tapped into ordinary people’s weariness with the hostilities.“I don’t see much hostility at the people’s level,” said Sanjay Mehta, a 48-year-old New Delhi-based businessman whose family is from what is now Pakistan.But he added that travelling between the countries is not as easy as the ad portrays. “I want to visit Pakistan but it’s not easy to get a visa.”Pakistan and India kicked off peace talks in 2004 which saw the easing of cross-border travel rules but often militant-led attacks in India have become a stumbling block towards normalisation of bilateral ties. While a mobile phone revolution has led to an explosion in handset ownership, the development of high-speed connections enabling Internet browsing has remained slow in India.