Comment

It’s perhaps no surprise that the two Indian films chosen to cross the petulantborder on our right (legally and onto the big screens of Pakistan) are the freshly-colourised 1960 Mughal-e-Azam and Akbar Khan's mint-fresh Taj Mahal-an Eternal Love Story. After all, these pop-historical costume dramas set in the courts of the moghuls in a safely distant past are the stuff of a shared past, a shared mythology if you will.

Life for lovers, especially the star-crossed, may not be a bed of roses: honour killings on both sides of the border are not rare. Yet, the romantic notion of love has traditionally populated our respective imaginations, whether in our poetry or in our cinema. A "love angle" has always been de rigueur in Indian films, especially in Hindi films. Love stories have long been the building blocks of our films, their DNA actually.

Lately, and with greater frequency, love no longer comes with a capital letter. It's shrunk to manifesting itself in item numbers —whether in simulated sex scenes or in vigorous dance numbers that have more to do with upping the cardio levels than the heart beats. Hormones don't get the hearts of present day Madhuri Dixits going Dhak dhak—it's the workouts, silly. As Tina Turner so memorably sang: What's love gotta do with it?

I don't for minute want to blame the film makers: they are only reflecting our quick-fix, multi-tasking times, when our fingers are perpetually in conversation with our cell phones. This is the age of instant messaging, instant imaging (in a blink you can capture and send an image or moment across the seven seas), channel surfing and fast food.

The MacDonaldisation of love was inevitable. SMS is the new language of love-elliptic, abridged, uncadenced. Yet, yet an occasional surprise pops up on the screen-films in which love is centrestage, and slow-cooked. And unsurprisingly, these are love stories set in the past, in more leisurely, less fractured times. Remakes exist in a parallel but infinitely smaller celluloid universe.

Devdas and Parineeta did wonders at the box-office, and new renditions of Umrao Jaan and Sahib Bibi Aur Ghulam, amongst other classics, are being made. Obviously, there is an underlying hankering for films in which love gets back on to its pedestal, larger than life and all-consuming.

There is just one thing about those classic love stories, the ones that caught the imagination and tugged at hearts: they seldom had happy endings.

Unrequited love was a recurrent theme, and sacrifice the most exalted virtue. Think Bollywood: the most successful and memorable love stories have not ended with they-lived-happily-ever. Anticipation always won over consummation. Heroes also had to cry.

The many Devdases, Umrao Jaan, Uran Khatola, Anarkali, through Ek Duje ke Liye and Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak did not end with nuptials: the lovers—or at least one of them, inevitably, died. And, even Bobby was headed that way: Raj Kapoor had shot an ending with both lovers dying but changed his mind at the last minute. Would Guide be so evergreen if Dev Anand had lived? Had Guru Dutt and Waheeda Rahman lived happily ever after on screen would their films be so heartrendingly enduring?

Those were the days—of five hankies movies.More recently Veer Zara hit the spot—the tear glands worked over time, and it was only at the end that the two lovers, in salt-haired middle age by then, were united. Come to think of it one of the most moving love stories made in this millennium was Baghban: Amitabh Bachchan and Hema Malini may have played grandparents in the film but they are separated by their selfish offspring-until the very end. This was a six hankies film.

Think Hollywood: the films that always make it to the lists of best romantic films include Camille, Titanic, Gone with the Wind, Brief Encounter, Anna Karenina and Casablanca. Cupid may have struck but he was always outmaneuvered by destiny.

Romantic love needs to takes its time. It has to be savoured on screen. It has to, like all good cuisine, be cooked slowly over a mulling fire: pressure cookers won't do. You need leisure to love. A wise man once said "Madness is a feeling that you can't love until you have the time. You will never have time until you have loved." The ultimate catch-22situation.

Email:jain_madhu@hotmail.com