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Love Aaj Kal!

Suresh Nair
Monday, August 10, 2009 18:57 IST
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I thoroughly enjoyed Love Aaj Kal with its interesting blend of subtle old-world love with loquacious new-age flings.

For those who haven't yet contributed to the film's box-office collections, it is about two Saif Ali Khans -- one romancing Deepika Padukone in the new millennium by spending lots of money on coffees and long-distance phone calls, the other travelling long distances in the 1960s to woo a Brazilian disguised as a Punjabi kudi.

I'm already looking forward to a sequel where the director widens the generation gap and shows us a love story set in the future where the lovers never actually meet but fall in love online and announce their break-up by simply changing their relationship status on Facebook.

This will be in contrast with a love story set in the prehistoric era, where the caveman gave the phrase "let's go clubbing" a whole new meaning when he would approach a girl, hit her on the head with his wooden club, and drag her by her hair to his cave. This was centuries before women would dare to bluntly ask a guy, "Are you hitting on me?"

Love Aaj Kal also reminded me of my misadventures in love. Like the time when I was 13 and turned religious overnight on discovering that a girl I had a crush on went to the neighbourhood Ganpati temple every Tuesday. Why? To bump into her week after week -- through sheer timing -- to simply register my presence in the periphery of her vision and elicit a smile. In those days, we were less ambitious.

Years later, when I could muster the courage to hold hands and date the woman who would later become my wife, we didn't have a Barista or Cafe Coffee Day, leaving me with no option but to take her to Udipi restaurants where the aroma of sambar was hardly conducive for romance. Not surprisingly, I still don't know the difference between espresso, cappuccino, and latte -- since they all taste the same to me.

Love aaj makes everything kal look like a waste of time. Like, did you know that the famous painter Pablo Picasso had a lover named Fernande Olivier, who wanted to marry him but couldn't locate her estranged husband and obtain the necessary divorce, only to discover decades later that her husband had actually died just after she had first met Picasso? Madonna would laugh at her.

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Readers' comments:
Suresh, you really had a bad day before you saw this movie, I guess.
Tuesday, August 11, 2009 17:43 IST
Dave, Mumbai
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