I loved DDLJ when I first saw it. I saw it twice in a single screen hall and once with my niece dancing in the aisles. People in the hall were laughing, cheering. The way they would have when Raj Kapoor’s Bobby first hit the screens in the 70s and as Shahrukh Khan once famously said, moved love stories from the world of men and women into the space meant for boys and girls.
But though you can watch Bobby even now without noticing one regressive note in it, DDLJ does not look that good on closer inspection. Bobby was about rebellion. DDLJ about negotiating with tradition. Bobby was a love story between the son of a Hindu aristocrat and the daughter of a Christian fisherman. Both Raj and Simran were NRIs with only their upbringing setting them apart.
Bobby spoke about what happens to kids when parents are self-absorbed and selfish. DDLJ basically endorsed the patriarchal mindset where a woman’s izzat comes before her freedom to choose a life partner. Where marriage can be arranged between two strangers. Honour killings are a fact both in the UK and in India and yet DDLJ seems to tell you that if you persist long enough, parents will relent and set you free to chase the train to happily ever after. They will unclasp your hand and say, ‘Ja Simran..jee le apni zindagi.” This line seems particularly parochial when you compare it to the one Bobby’s Raj throws at his controlling father, “We are your children but our life is our own.” There is a stupidly suicidal jump into swirling waters at the end of Bobby to escape authority that was perhaps a cinematic ploy but the film’s message was clear. Children have volition. And the right to fall in love. With anybody.
Hum Aapke Hain Kaun and DDLJ brought us back into the fold of parental control and blind obedience. This is not to say that figures of authority are always wrong but they are not always right either and such was the impact of these films on our collective psyche that they spawned an entire genre on television helmed by Ekta Kapoor where women basically ceased to be individuals and became pawns, goddesses, vamps and designated role players. DDLJ was a good entertainer but it should never have become the social influencer that it became because of excessive marketing that saturates our TV sets and mindspace. Raj and Simran had their moments and I even remember writing a piece about them many years ago but in retrospect, the characters should not have been made into prototypes. The film was manipulative as it tried to inhabit the permissive mores of the young in the West and the stifling world of traditional totalitarians, tried to titillate with a hero who dangles a woman’s bra in her face but then tells her later that he knows what a Hindustani girl’s izzat means to her.
It was well-enacted, had several well-orchestrated moments but it was not about the power of love but of falling on your knees in the face of authority with the hope that it will dust you, wipe your tears and send you off to live the life of your dreams. I also loved the recent Pretentious Review of DDLJ on YouTube and breathed a sigh of relief that at least now people are beginning to poke holes in the mythology surrounding the film.
Sad that from Raj and Bobby, we devolved into Raj and Simran and we also have a Big Boss winner who after showing off ripped abs and having a little scene with a co-contestant on national television, now says ,”I will marry the woman my mother chooses for me.” When inter-religious marriages are being associated with going away from ‘ghar‘ and love jihad, Obama could have chosen a better film to woo us with. He could have said, “Hey re saiba, pyar mein sauda nahin” or better still, “Mujhse dosti karoge?”
with Reema Moudgil works for The New Indian Express, Bangalore, is the author of Perfect Eight, the editor of Chicken Soup for the Soul-Indian Women, an artist, a former RJ and a mother. She dreams of a cottage of her own that opens to a garden and where she can just be