Last week, Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge—the iconic Bollywood film starring the iconic Bollywood couple Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol—celebrated the completion of 30 years. The Yash Raj Films production tells the story of Raj and Simran who fall in love during a European vacation, but must face the hurdles of the villainous fiance, the conservative father and a society that looks down upon love marriages because of the unforgivable reason that they are founded on love.
I was eight years old when DDLJ released. Unlike me, the film has aged well. It became a pop culture phenomenon, and even today continues to play at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir theatre. “For me, Simran is a chapter that refuses to end,” Kajol said about her character. “She represents millions of girls across this country....” I am proud to say that I was one of these girls whose fantasies got a makeover with the film. No longer did we desire class toppers with perfect CAT scores as our future husbands. We’d rather go with bumbling losers like Raj, whose father applauds him and shows him portraits of his loser ancestors when he fails his final year law exam. Suddenly, stealing beer from supermarkets looked cool and dancing in the snow in a skimpy dress looked aspirational. For many years, I thought the epitome of romance was getting drunk and pushing my lover into the pool. And don’t even get me started on that train scene in the end. Anyone who can outrun a moving train dressed in her wedding finery—I can’t walk six steps in a sari without tripping at least once—is worthy of the utmost respect.
But the amazing thing about my fixation with DDLJ is that I did not understand a word of what was being spoken by the characters as I do not speak Hindi. This means that I was mostly guessing what they were saying in each scene. No one who is born post the dawn of the subtitled film can understand how much fun this is. After DDLJ followed a string of Hindi movies I loved watching without understanding—Raja Hindustani, Dil To Pagal Hai, Kuch Kuch Hota Hai and Kal Ho Naa Ho.
Then came the age of the subtitle. In its infancy, the subtitlers were almost as creative as me, seeing how far off the mark they were when it came to certain lines. Some of them were so cringe-worthy, they made you wonder how these brave souls escaped lawsuits from the makers for massacring their dialogues. I must say that when I actually understood these dialogues, I was disappointed. They sounded so much cooler in my head. I realised I had erred on the side of too much theatrics instead of too little. The melodrama quotient in my imaginary dialogues was so high, I could out-mush the king of mush—Karan Johar. Which, of course, is my shout-out to Yash Raj Films and Dharma Productions. If you want cutting-edge romance that can make Mills & Boon look like a ninth grade science textbook, hire me. After all, your films have given me a lifetime of practice.