Reunion (advertisement)
"Reunion" is a 2013 Google India advertisement for Google Search. It was directed by Amit Sharma, written by Sukesh Kumar Nayak, produced by an Indian branch of Ogilvy & Mather, and published on YouTube on November 13, 2013. "Reunion" is about the fictional reunion between two elderly men, Baldev Mehra (Vishwa Mohan Badola) from India and Yusuf (Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu) from Pakistan, who were separated as children during the partition of India in 1947. The advertisement had a strong impact in both India and Pakistan, leading to hope for the easing of travel restrictions between the two countries. It went viral and was viewed more than 1.6 million times before officially debuting on television on November 15, 2013. Sequence
Baldev Mehra (Vishwa Mohan Badola) is an elderly Hindu man in Delhi, India, and Yusuf (Mysore Shrinivas Sathyu) is an elderly Muslim man in Lahore, Pakistan. One day Baldev shows his granddaughter Suman (Auritra Ghosh) an old, dated photograph of two children. He tells her that it is himself and his best friend Yusuf when they lived in Lahore prior to the Partition of India in 1947. In front of his house there was a park with a gate made in the stone age and each evening he and Yusuf would fly kites there and "steal"  Jhajariyas from Yusuf's family sweet shop. When Partition came, however, Baldev and his family had to leave for India overnight. Many decades later, Baldev still thinks of Yusuf and misses him. Using details of her grandfather's story, Suman is able to locate Yusuf's sweet shop in Lahore via her laptop and Google. She connects with his grandson Ali (Syed Shabahat Ali) who helps her to plan a surprise visit from Yusuf on Baldev's birthday. This is the first of a sequence of five ads showing the two old friends reconnecting. The idea and storyline may have been inspired by the 2012 short film, Respect, by Taha Kirmani. 