A Thousand Weeks of DDLJ

Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge is a thousand weeks old.

That’s a long time.

To put it in perspective, a thousand weeks ago, Narendra Modi was a small-time politician in Gujarat, Kohli was eight years old, Vinod Kambli still had a future and I was in first year.

My how days fly.

And yet it seems to be just yesterday that we were introduced to the great patriot Baldev Singh (Amrish Puri), who tracks pigeons from Punjab so great is his desh-bhakti, but who, despite the deep rumblings for mitti ki khusboo, never visits his desh, perhaps because he is too busy looking at “goree teeetli” and drinking Black Dog, (Ok wrong film), his wife the beatific Lajjo, an anthropomorphism of ghee and aloo parathas, their well-fed daughter Simran with a proclivity for dancing in the rain in itsy-bitsy skirts,  Raj Malhotra, the character that would be played by the actor, Shahrukh Khan, for the next twenty years in more or less every film, and his father, played by Anupam Kher, who would beat Sonia Gandhi hands down as the parent of the century.

It seems to be just yesterday that DDLJ came into our lives.

As is the fashion today, it is deemed very cool to diss 80s and 90s Bollywood, not just for the technical shoddiness, but for being “politically incorrect” and “downmarket”.  DDLJ, I am told, is a particularly insidious narrative that sanitizes “Hindu patriarchy”, with much to be read into the “handing off” of Simran from  Baldev Singh to Raj Malhotra, and the fact that the character Raj Malhotra chooses to not “rebel” against the regressive status-quo but instead finds his place in it.

Now I want to say a lot of things in response, but I am not going to, for the simple reason that I cannot be objective about DDLJ.

So I brush these barbs off with a gallant “bade bade deshon mein aisi choti choti baatein hotee rahetee hai”.

So yeah. It’s not a cinematic classic. Kajol screeches, Shahrukh Khan hams,  and so do many other people in that hyper-animated bubbly style that was typical of the age and which still survives in New York Life insurance ads and the story is predictable and trite and it did inspire a zombie apocalypse of NRI Punjabi movies for more than the next decade.

I will give you that.

But that does not make it any the less great.

For it was the tapestry from which, those of us that were young in the 90s, stole bits of our life.

When we wanted to propose but were afraid of ruining a friendship, we would do it “as a joke”, gauge her reaction, and then laugh it away if things don’t look too good.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

When we wanted to test the waters, we would do the whole “What if you have fallen in love, with someone like me?” hypothetical scenario-playing.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

When the girl walked away in a Durga Pujo pandal after making an eye-contact or two, we would lean against the bamboo barricade and whisper to the heavens “Palat”.

Just like they do in DDLJ.

Did I forget anything?

Of course I did.

The music.

“Na Jaane Mere Dil Ko Kya Ho Gya” for that time you saw her dance in the college fest. “Yeh dil ki baat apnee dil mein dabake rakhna” for every crush that dare not be revealed. “Jadoo sa jaise koi chalne laga hai, main kya karoon yeh dil machalne laga hai” for those wet-wet-towel-clinging twinkle-toe moments.

The sound-track of our hearts. That’s what it used to be.

And now, now it has become a time-capsule, to gaze at and fondly remember.

For frozen in it, are moments from a thousand weeks ago, of bunking classes and going  in a group to Priya (or Naveena) to see DDLJ first week, of ooh-ing and aah-ing, and then having egg roll on the way back, with my head in the cloud, a spring in my step, and a whole world ahead to dream in.

Here’s to how we used to be.

Here’s to the next thousand.