Remembering You, My Self! - My Thoughts on Dil Chahta Hai (2001)

I went by my old school today, a good many years after I left it to enter the world of naked ambitions and dangerous dreams. I must have been there for about some time but all I remembered was a young boy running, playing and having fun and then, as if on a kind of a hunch, I moved on, a little ahead, to the playground where there was no longer a ground and hence of course no one to play and then in a mood of quiet contemplation and deep remembrance, a little ahead of the ground to that small, old quaint natural but forgotten amphitheatre where we used to rehearse for plays. All of us: Kamal, Javed, Surendra, Akhil, Akram, Mahendra, Apurva, Girish, Deepanshu and so many others that now I only can smile and remember, scenes float of my eyes in memory of all who were there but who are not any more ...

A lot of water has flown below the river to remember it all and still not enough will ever flow as long as I am here in this world before I can say, it has been all forgotten. We used to call it Eden - Eden, the place, where our dreams lie still; Eden the place where our hearts lie still; our ambitions, our hopes, our romances, our loves, our pains and frustrations, our tears and our smiles; our deepest secrets and our profoundest happinesses; our most crushing of defeats and our most exalting of successes - it all lies there; there in that groove called Eden (I still remember it and I think I will always will) and Like Eden, we were exiled from that land of promises and happiness to out here in the world .... not that I mind this world, but I could give a lot for that small piece of land and that time 4 PM to 6 PM that we rehearsed for plays - plays that remain alive now only in the certificates that we won; the snaps that we took and the memories that stayed.....

I came home, lost in deep thought and then switched on the TV in that strange mood that one has when he's remembering the past days and what do I see on TV! Dil Chaahta Hai .... a movie released towards the time when the dream was fading out but which captured in it's beautiful canvas a story that I could never write; though I thought I wrote almost all the scripts then .... it was a movie I did not direct; though it was a part of my life out there on celluloid .... it was a movie I did not act in, though it was a role I had played again and again and then again.... that's what Dil Chaahta is for me.... not a movie, but a remembrance of a past I lived in.... it's not about the plays I talk when I talk of Dil Chaahta Hai; it's those friendships, those close relationships... the ones that remained and the ones that were destroyed .... it's an episode that always plays on packed houses in my heart and I guess will always, whether I am 30 or 90....

Dil Chaahta is not a movie in the actual sense of what a movie stands for in Indian (or at least Hindi Cinema) but to be frank Dil Chaahta Hai is a movie and has better claim to being a movie than many others that call themselves so..... Dil Chaahta Hai has no formula; no heroes rising out of a canvas to save damsels-in-distress; no heroines, for whom it is required to flutter their eyelashes and act stupid while the hero rescues them; there are no negative characters either or any characters for that matter... only people.. people, you and I would meet on the streets and recognize.... To add to it, no story also ... yes, I repeat, no story also... incidents that happen on a daily basis and are continuing to happen on a daily basis and will keep on happening on a daily basis are not a story; but still it manages to sear your heart - because it speaks from the heart and it is from the heart and it relates to the heart and one can find himself in one of the characters of the movie, whether he's from Bombay or Bhilai.... though to point out, the story is more in tune with urban sensibilities than rural ones... it depicts the urban India and is quite far from the rural landscape....

Dil Chaahta is a story (as long as we can call a collection of incidents to be a story) of 3 friends and their different diverging paths in life; which diverge totally but are still converged due to the depth of the bond of friendship that exists between them....

Aamir Khan plays the role of a happy-go-lucky, ever-mischievous, prank-loving with no thought of tomorrow, highly immature Akash with the brilliance that we have come to expect from the consummate performer of his stature... the performance is well-nuanced and his and every prank of his is made to either warm your cockles or irritate you no end.... Akash does not care for love; to be more precise he does not have time for love and goes around playing around with love; Love to Akash is what a simple spell would be to a Death-Eater; frivolous, not to be bothered with, a pastime and nothing more but when Cupid strikes, none could be more intense or serious that Akash; then the fangs are bared, the claws come out, the eyes set in and then he fights with his back to the wall but inch to inch, neither giving one away easily not letting one away without making the price costly - quite like a few fellows I have seen or met in life.... and Aamir makes sure you remember him for each and every one of those guys you have ever met.... Just like Vicky - a guy I knew!

Such a character as Akash always needs a gullible person to play his pranks on and that's what he gets time and again in his friend - Sameer.... Sameer is the exact opposite of Akash; if Akash id confidence personified, Sameer is the personfication of Confusion galore... If Akash plays around with Love and considers as an idle pastime, Sameer swears by love; actually, by many loves (you see, he keeps falling in love and out of it with a frequency that only reminds me of the frequency with which we change Chief Ministers in Goa and UP); where Akash is the one who plays pranks on others, Sameer is the one who is often the butt of all the fun and the pranks as well... But there is one thing common to both - they both are still Immature... Sameer is a darling and I am sure, many of the girls would find him so and who else could play it better than Saif Ali Khan. Saif is exceptionally earnest in his award-winning portrayal of the hopeless romantic; needless to say, this was one of the movies that gave him a headstart and brought him back to stardom; making him finally one of the Khans of the Industry....

And... then there is Sid aka Siddharth; a guy in a class of his own - actually he's not a guy, he's already an old man masquerading as a young man... Sid is mature, practical but imaginative and knows love for what love is, relationships for what relationships for what relationships are, truth for what it is and the world for what it can be.... I don't think Sid was ever young, I guess sometimes, he was born at that age and he always remained at that age and I do not think he would ever be any age other than that... Mr. Mature & Dignified; but also very mischievous; ever ready for a prank but never the prankster himself..... a soft guy, one girls would be proud to take home as future beau ... a real softie ... and who could play him well - more than Mr. Mature & Dignified himself .... Akshaye Khanna gets a real brilliant characterisation and plays it to perfection in an award-winning performance

And then, there are the snobs - the smart, dashing guys who were really pains in the many places, mentionable and unmentionable, but still had all the girls and all the bikes and all the babes, just around them ... the ones who reminded us of the fact that Man was once an Ape and Girls still preferred them to the suave and sophisticated ones that we had become in the course of evolution .... the 'Apes' who always got the 'Grapes'.... and Ayub Khan, in one of his best performances ever, makes an excellent portrayal of one of their ilk, Rohit... it's sad that an actor of his calibre could not make it in the industry - if any deserved stardom, he was one of them.. but then, sometimes Life deals out a difficult hand.... Girls sometimes just see the hearth and not the heart!

Preity Zinta as Shalini plays the role of a simple girl-next-door as effervescently as she can... but to be fair to her, there is hardly anything she has to do that can taste her histrionics.... Still, she manages to hold her own against some heavy power-acting by the guys mentioned above and also is able to convey a girls' side of the story effortlessly..... there is very less opportunity for her to perform but Preity manages to catch those moments effortlessly and her chemistry with Aamir is brilliant and her reluctance with Ayub well-captured... Many would be out with forks when I say that Ayub has a meatier role than Preity but trust me, once you see the film for what it is, and not for the lead pair, you will find that Ayub dominates even in absence and Preity ends up competing with Aamir in presence and Ayub in absence... a brilliant directorial trick, Farhan!

Sonali Kulkarni plays her role as a no-nonsense modern girl-with-a-simple heart with quiet aplomb and proves the dictum that actresses act; they do not need to model.... however, her characterization is a victim to the heavy-on-brotherhood plot of the movie.... for she does not manage to remain etched in memory once the lights have been dimmed and the curtains drawn - still, it would be wrong to say that her performance is not appropriate to the occasion... Suchitra Pillai, on the other hand is unable to make a lot of capital out of a strong chance to put her mark on the movie, although she does try hard..... sometimes way too hard!

And what does one say about Dimple Kapadia? This woman is hot! Really Hot! she sizzles on the screen on the hot potato and not only grabs her scenes but also stamps herself indelibly on the canvas of a movie which was not supposed to be very kind to it's female actors... Dimple however stands tall and performs as tally as expected. Her characterization as Tara could have created a lot of negative vibes in a society just opening up to mature women in relationships but Dimple manages to grab the bull by it's horns and gives a sterling performance, one rarely seen nowadays by actresses her age, if we leave out Rekha and Sarika and of course Shabana Azmi.... Suhasini Mulay impresses in a cameo as a woman who is faced with a delicate situation of having her son love a woman of her age and confused about how to wean away her son from a woman, who in her opinion is just not right.... their scenes together (Dimple and Suhasini) are a classic show of performance.

Farhan Akhtar, in his directorial début makes one of the most sensible movies to come out of our industry in the recent past..... the scenes herald a maturity that belies the young age of the director and at the same time does not appear heavy on the brain... To be frank, this is no heavy-duty classic in the making - no Mother India, no Mughal-E-Azam, no Sholay.... still it has a class of it's own as one of the best coming of maturity movies in Hindi Cinema.... It's not easy to make a movie of every-day common occurrences, Indian cine goers at their best are fickle and unpredictable but that Farhan chose such a difficult subject for his first film is itself worth appreciation....

Music is one of strong points of the movie. Thankfully, the musical trio of Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy do not try to compose a preachy friendship ditty and thus save the soul of the movie from descending into pits of formulaic fare - not that I have anything against such ditties but they would be as out-of-place in Dil Chahta Hai as would be a Dr. Frankenstein in The Fall of Troy.... The music has a new sound and a beautiful feel to it... Some of the songs are worth singing and re-singing again and again and then yet again....

Songs like Tanhaiyee are just awesome.... the feeling of loneliness is so well-described that you end up remembering certain periods in your life, when such bouts of loneliness assail you and for those of us who never moved on, they remind of a certain hollowness that remains....

Khawab Mein Dekha Tha Maine Ek Aanchal,
Apne Haathon Mein;
Ab Tootey Sapnon Ke Sheeshe Chubhte Hain,
Inn Aankhon Mein....

Sonu Nigam has rendered this song with a pain that can only be imagined and Javed Akhtar has used pain and tear as mortar to create an abiding, haunting song of memories remained and loves lost....

Other songs are also well-made; notable examples would be Shankar Mahadevan, Shaan and K K singing the youth anthem - Koi Kahe, Kehta Rahe in a manner such that it smells of youth spirit and in yet another song, Shankar Mahadevan gives words to the thought of every guy or girl in college in the title song....  thoughts that we would not be away from the friend that we make in our school and college days, thoughts that would be broken no sooner than the moment you cross the final doorstep....

Udit Narayan and Alka Yagnik, two of the best singers of the 1990s, come together in a teasing song about love and it's pros and cons (Jaane Kyoon ...) .... As usual, Udit dominates with his clear and effortless singing.... One of my favourite singers of the 1990s, Kavita Krishnamurthy demonstrates yet again, her awesome skills in a beautiful duet with the talented Shaan in the song (Woh Ladki Hai Kahaan...?) while the young Srinivas is mellifluous in the romantic "Kaisi Hai Ye Ruth?"....

Dil Chaahta Hai.... what? Actually a lot.....

There is a young child here, somewhere, within me, still remembering those days and smiling at those moments that will remain forever etched in memory but will never be back.... I still remember that kid, who shares my name walking to and from those days of daily meetings, that today have been taken over by others, who will vacate it for some others tomorrow; walking along in a carefree manner; for him at least, the journey is not hard, the promises not difficult and the pain not visible...

Not for me for him, my heart sometimes may yet say....

Dil Chahta Hai, Kabhi Na Beete Ye Chamkile Din
Dil Chahta Hai, Hum Naa Rahen, Kabhi Yaaron Ke Bin...

Dil Chahta Hai!