That Sunflower field in a Snowglobe !
Recently DDLJ had finished their 1000 day run at maratha mandir.
A 1000 shows.
The sheltered young something girls there will have enough material/equity to go forth in life. Just like it did for the rest of us 20 years ago. The lot of us were between the age bracket of 12-18 then when we visually consumed this pseudo refined cocktail, an exotic love story with passion and tradition in tow.
“Jaa simran jee le apni zindagi” was a liberating line for many young girls then. They wondered “ why don’t we find men like that ?, who’ll be brattish and rough on the outside but is traditional and so passionate at his core. Perfect combo of good boy hidden in bad boy cover.”
The parents thought “if our daughter brought home a chap like that we'd be happy to oblige. What a good boy, sanskari !”
The guys were like “when will Kajol’s towel drop ?“.
That was twenty years ago.
Now most of them are in their mid 30s.
Reality played out other versions for our Simrans (anyone who wants raj).
Scene #1:
Simran marries Parmeet to oblige her father . Raj and Simran start an affair.
Scene#2:
Raj and Simran marry but Raj is more Parmeet than Raj, so he and Anaita, Simran’s pal from the Euro trip, have an affair. Simran and Raj divorce.
Scene#3:
Raj is killed off by Amrish Puri and Parmeet Sethi gang. Simran marries Parmeet, she ages into a semi bitter fake smiling mother like Farida Jalal and has a daughter who…..thereby starting a cycle again.
Scene#4:
Simran has ambitions and aspirations of her own and she feels trapped with a traditionalist but nice guy Raj . They split she goes travelling and looking for a job.
Scene # 5:
Raj does Mandira Bedi and Simran walks in on them. And then it all goes to shit.
In the last five years there have been almost 11000 cases of divorces filed and 8000 heard.
And almost all of them were between 27-35 years of age or younger.
A 1000 shows of ddlj in maratha mandir, if we are going at 400 seats, minimum how long does it take to reinforce an idea of an ideal into an impressionable protected teenager’s mind ?.
If this were freakonomics then I’d have to theorize and statistically research how the rise of divorce papers filed between (2010-2015) is indirectly proportionate to the sale of DDLJ tickets between (95-2000)
Now somewhere in there, are probably a bunch who now in their 30s mothers, wives,divorcees and prospective spinsters, while washing dinner plates or working through a complex excel sheet can spout off lines to ddlj without batting an eyelid if it came on TV.
Choices and consequences, when you’re living in denial , what’s the point ?
Maybe somewhere deep in their subconscious, as they go through reality posing for family photos or are under some man jackhammering away, these women are simran, probably still in that sunflower field, hugging Raj one moment and nothing the next. “…Usse kaho mere saamne toh aayein…” while she bitterly wanders around in that sunflower field looking for the evasive Raj, probably within a snowglobe.
Then maybe if we zoomed out, one might see other people trapped in snowglobes of young/peppy sitcoms like friends etc, all placed nicely along a shelf in the living room of your mind.
Many men have tried to be Raj maybe not because they wanted to and probably because had to.
They tried other versions in Rahul,Aman etc (from other such movies) over the years to stand out amongst the Rajs.
And even though they could keep up the facade long enough …they couldn’t possibly figure the rest of him out.
They tried and failed. They stuck to the towel scene and got done with that.
“Kaisa hai kaun hai voh jaane kahaan hain. ”
Some women built this grand illusion around him, his professionalism, his sexual behaviour, his emotional quotient, intellectual quotient etc. The archetype who’d rescue them from themselves. Or their own prisons.
Sometimes I wonder, just for the sake of this bunch who’ve held onto the elusive Raj all their lives, if he’d let go, maybe Simran — and the rest of us — could finally walk out of that snowglobe.