am not a DDLJ addict and yet everytime, it is playing on TV, I catch a moment or two. Seems like yesterday. “Come fall in love’’ said the posters of Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge. Yet, this landmark moment in popular culture is twelve years old. More than a decade since Shahrukh Khan hammered a piano with his fists, joined the stone-carved Amrish Puri in his morning ritual of feeding the pigeons with tentative sounds of “aao…aao.”
Twelve years since he called the Swiss police, “Kutto…kamino..Al Pacino!” Yet DDLJ is no Sholay, 500 weeks of uninterrupted run in Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir notwithstanding. Not even Raj and Simran can hold a candle to the mythology of Gabbar Singh.
Still, DDLJ was arguably the only definitive love story of its time before Jab We Met gave us a more real version of accidental love on a train.
It was arguably the only film of its time in which love felt like love. Not misguided lust. Not disillusion. A cruel joke bleached of all idealism that the Bhatt noir has reduced it to. DDLJ was a magical moment of cinematic Nirvana in which everything was meant to be. And even though it was inspired in large bushels by Sooraj Barjatya’s school of filmmaking (Didi Tera Devar Deewana inspired the tune of Tujhe Dekha To Ye Jaana Sanam) and Nasir Hussain (Ruk Ja O Dil Deewane was inspired by Bachna Ae Hasseno in Hum Kissi Se Kam Nahin), yet it is now a cinematic milestone in its own right. DDLJ addressed the conflicts of Indians abroad, bringing to fore the irony of a Punjabi businessman feeding nostalgia and a brood of pigeons on the Trafalgar Square and expecting a young daughter brought up in England to conform to rural Punjabiyat. It also made us notice how tradition snuffs out a girl child’s aspirations sometimes. The music if not great was instantly hummable and Chopra showed a great flair for song picturisations. And for creating romance out of virtually nothing. We still remember the portentious moment when Raj and Simran pass each other unknowingly on a London street. Simran dancing in the rain willing the love of her life to appear just as a sweat and rain drenched Raj is playing rugby miles away. The moment Simran almost misses her Eurorail and Raj pulls her up. We see a telling close up of the clasped hands and know that something has begun. The moment Raj discovers that Simran is betrothed to a man she has not seen and asks her what she will do if she falls in love with someone…someone like him. The moment on the bridge when he wills her to `palat’ and she does. And the way he clucks his tongue in a `No’ when she asks him if he will attend her wedding. The moment when Simran stands frozen amid the milling crowds of a subway station. The delectable ghost of Raj following Simran home after her trip to Europe. Waving to her in the silence of the night. This was love and how we loved it! Raj was the prototype on which Shahrukh Khan moulded many subsequent performances. He was a rogue pinching beers, a great buddy son but most of all every young girl’s dream come true. Floppy hair, goofy grin, bruising wit that could in an instant become beguilingly tender. And rock solid integrity. We loved Raj when he moons over Simran over a beer and we loved him when egged by his father, he lands up, leather jacketed, armed with beer cans and a lethal plan, amid the mustard fields of Simran’s ancestral village to woo her brood of relatives and steal a few moments of romance. Who can forget the moment when a repressed, miserable Simran runs into his arms to the strains of Tujhe Dekha. Kajol in DDLJ was not a typical Hindi film heroine. She was Simran. A middle class Punjabi girl caught between her heart and her father’s code of life. An undone upperlip, naturally wavy, almost ungroomed hair, a less than perfect body but a sedate dignity, emerald eyes oozing love and pain and a quiet beauty that glues us to the screen. And yet there was more. The funny love track between Himani Shivpuri and Anupam Kher. The intractable Amrish Puri softening up momentarily to sing, `Aye Meri Zohra Zabin,’ a bloody lipped Raj breaking Puri’s will in an intense eye lock from a receding train till Puri sets Simran free to follow her heart. And when we see the clasped hands once again, we know we have come home just like Simran. And that the ride was worth every minute. In DDLJ, the Indian audience savoured a bonafide romance that made one want to celebrate life and to go fall in love. No wonder it is still running somewhere.
