What would Bollywood be without its love stories? Simple, it would be anything but Bollywood! From the time when romantic love on-screen meant keeping a platonic distance from each other to the digital era of no-holds-barred passion between the sheets, the good, old romance has evolved organically in its many-splendoured forms in Hindi cinema. It has been a fascinating journey of love on celluloid. On one hand, die-hard romantics have sung innumerable paeans to love but some seemingly misogynistic souls have also denounced mohabbat as a bekaar, bedaam ke cheez (worthless thing). In fact, love has been the common thread between the diametrically opposite worlds of formulaic flicks and realistic cinema.
Here is a not-so-sneak peek into the Bollywood-exclusive world of love where dilwala gets the dulhania in his arms and diljala ends up with a bottle of daaru in hand. Enjoy a mushy ride ahead!
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Love knows no caste
Love looked pristine in Hindi cinema during the pre-Independence years, when a besotted young couple crooned Main ban ki chidiya banke ban ban bolu re, far from the prying eyes of an evil society, in Achhut Kanya (1936). But Ashok Kumar is a Brahmin and Devika Rani, an untouchable in the film. Yeh shaadi nahin ho sakti! The zalim samaj (cruel society) has since ruined the lives of thousands of screen lovers.
Rich Boy-Poor Girl
If caste did not separate the lovers, there was always a big divide over economic status to spoil their party. Raj Kapoor made the most of the rich-poor divide. His leading ladies epitomised love in the most sensuous way. One dangled in his arm in Barsaat (1949) to give birth to the famous logo of R.K. Films; another went under a freezing waterfall with nothing but a sheet of mist (kohre ki chadar) wrapped around her in Ram Teri Ganga Maili (1985).
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A feather touch
If Raj Kapoor played the lovable tramp to woo the women he loved, Dilip Kumar portrayed the tragedy king to perfection, often a loser in love who ends up mouthing dialogues like Kaun kambakht bardaasht karne ko peeta hai … (Devdas/1955). Pity, he did not pay heed to the women by his side who forewarned him about the threat of cirrhosis of the liver. But he had a passionate side as a lover, too. As Salim in Mughal-e-Azam (1960), he just had to tickle the face of his Anarkali (Madhubala) with a peacock feather to set the bar for a lover so high that it became impossible for anyone to raise it further in Indian cinema.
A guide to romantics
With his toothless smile and a mischievous glint in his eyes, Dev Anand made his heroines go weak in the knees in the 1950s, at times by innocuously holding their aanchal. But he had saved his best for Guide. The iconic 1965 movie based on R. K. Narayan’s novel tackled adultery at a time when love meant merely a platonic ride on a shikara in Dal Lake. Koi samjhne naa samjhe, Rosy zaroor samjhegi, Dev Anand’s class act as Raju Guide redefined love in Indian cinema.
Love on the meadows
Bollywood was veering towards tragic tales of love with the dense classics of Guru Dutt like Pyaasa (1957) and Kagaz Ke Phool (1959) but love stories took a new hue with the advent of Eastmancolor cinema in the sixties. A tomboyish heroine leading a bunch of college girls on an excursion would run into a local Adonis, accompanied by a bumbling lackey. While others wasted their time on the trip, our lovers would explore the paradise at Gulmarg and Pahalgam to leave the audience clamouring for more.
No tears, please!
Girls sent him letters written in blood and smooched his Impala parked outside his bungalow in Bombay. All of that happened simply because he played a lover boy to perfection. When he sang Mere sapno ki rani in Aradhana (1969), every girl wanted to catch that toy train to Darjeeling. Rajesh Khanna depicted love like no other actor on the Indian screen, whether he was serenading his woman with a herd of elephants or offering a handkerchief to her with his magical words, “Pushpa, I hate tears!”
Kothawala love
Dumped by his lady love, the jilted ashiq had only one getaway to wipe his tears, a nearby kotha where a kind-hearted courtesan not only performed mujra to rejuvenate him but also applied the salve of her unspoken love on his deep wounds. The tawaifs may have disappeared from the love scene in the millennial era today, but in many a love story they were the proverbial good Samaritans who provided home, hearth, and, of course, heart to all the jilted Devdas of the world.
Aayega aanewala!
The reincarnation tales of lovers woven around to-and-fro journeys between the previous and present lives have been an intrinsic theme of Bollywood’s love stories for many decades. From Dilip Kumar to Shah Rukh Khan, almost every top hero has played his part in the love tales interspersed with rich, haunting melodies. The theme may have gone out of vogue these days but you cannot keep a tried-and-tested subject down for long. Just wait!
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Never love a stranger
Pardesiyon se naa ankhiyan milana! Never love a stranger, the old wisdom cautioned every girl but they flouted the rule to invite trouble. Once the dark clouds loomed on a stormy night and she got stranded inside a godforsaken cave with a pardesi, they had to take a call to take love to a forbidden level. The problem arose after the pardesi left the very next day, leaving the damsel in distress to realise a few weeks later the true meaning of saavdhani hati, durghatna ghati! Nine months later, she had to land in a big city to hunt for the man who had sired the baby in her arms.
Down with dil-wil, pyaar-vyaar
Yeh bekaar bedaam ke cheez hain...the angry young man played by Big B growled in Yesudas’s voice to look down upon mohabbat as sheer waste of time in Trishul (1977). The leading ladies were often reduced to mere props in the era of multi-starrers in the seventies but the era of a rebel with or without a cause can still be credited with having raised the bar of boldness in love with a fleeting scene of a brooding Bachchan in the bed with Parveen Babi in a smoking hot room.
Three is not a crowd
Two gentlemen vying for the love of one woman or two girls seeking the attention of the same guy? Bollywood may have done the love triangle to death since Dadasaheb Phalke’s time, but it remains the best bet for the industry to ensure footfalls at the theatres even today. Raj Kapoor made it fashionable with Sangam (1964), inspiring the rest of the industry to repackage the old wine in a new bottle. In film after film, one of the three ended up sacrificing his life, which was a certainly better option than having to receive the guests at the wedding reception of his best friend who got the girl at his expense.
Hide thy wrinkles
Age has not been a bar in Hindi cinema. Teens infatuated with women old enough to be their moms, lecherous oldies lusting after pretty young things or the sundry Mrs. Robinsons on a hunt for young men…Bollywood has experimented with just about everything in the name of bold love stories. Such themes were rarely tackled with sensitivity, primarily intended to titillate a section of the audience that never seemed to mind, especially in the morning shows.
Blow hot, blow cold
The guy must have belonged to a poor family but unemployment was never an issue for him. He always had a guitar on his shoulder to woo the prettiest daughter of the only billionaire in town. (The larynx of Kishore and Rafi and compositions of Shankar-Jaikishan and Pancham, of course, helped!) When Kashmir became out of bounds in the 1990s, our romantic hero explored the Tulip gardens of Holland and the peaks of the Swiss Alps, where he wore heavy woollens while singing romantic ditties to his lady love, often shivering alone in a skimpy ghagra-choli.
Dyed-in-the-wool aashiqs
Love for many years was not considered to be a teenager’s play in Bollywood until Raj Kapoor enlivened the proceedings with Bobby in 1973. Bored with the oldies playing romantic leads with no remorse, the audiences finally had a love story that set the template for the hit youthful romances. Love Story (1981), Ek Duje Ke Liye (1981), Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (1988), Maine Pyaar Kiya (1989) and Dilwale Dulhania Le Jayenge (1995) took the franchise to another level. In these films, the protagonists did not have to dye their hair or hide their wrinkles to look younger, which was a big relief for all of us.
No-holds-barred passion
Bollywood remained coy for many years when it came to showing love-making sequences. With strict censorship in place, they had to take recourse to innovative symbolism. Two flowers caressed each other, lights went off or the camera simply meandered into the ceiling of the room with a classical alaap heard from the background. All that changed in the 1980s. The audience had a taste of new Bollywood when Anil Kapoor made love to Dimple Kapadia in the haystack in Janbaaz (1986). Two years later, when a woman censor board member objected to a prolonged kissing scene in Dayavan (1988), film-maker Feroz Khan had famously asked her if such things did not happen between a husband and a wife in real life. That was the closest the commercial Bollywood could think of getting close to reality.
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Millennial’s Ishq
Enthused by the response by the millennial audiences to the out-of-the-box themes, Bollywood began to experiment with new shades of love stories in the past two decades. From Dil Chahta Hai (2001) and Life In A Metro (2007) to The Lunchbox (2013) and Badhaai Ho (2018), it looked at love with fresh perspectives. Dum Laga Ke Haisha (2015) was about the love of a body-shamed girl while Shubh Mangal Savdhan (2017) was about the erectile dysfunction of the male lead. The success of all these films underlined the fact that Bollywood love did not necessarily have to revolve around the trees on a hill station anymore.
Dollops of realism
Bollywood always looked obsessed with fantastic, larger-than-life love sagas which had nothing to do with real life. But then, film-makers such as Hrishikesh Mukherjee, Basu Chatterjee and Sai Paranjape portrayed love stories with such humour and sensitivity that they looked real even at the height of the popularity of mindless action flicks. Paranjape’s Chashme Buddoor (1981), in fact, had a humorous take on the way Bollywood depicted romance on the screen down the years.
The other love
Gay and lesbian characters were invariably portrayed as stereotypical caricatures on celluloid for many years until a stunning Fire (1995) hit the audiences like a tornado. The theme of same-sex love had evoked howls of protests from the so-called puritans back then. Bollywood has since travelled a long distance, making progressive films like My Brother Nikhil (2005), Shubh Mangal Zyada Saavdhan (2020) and many more. In the recently-released, Chandigarh Kare Aashiqui, Vaani Kapoor plays a trans-woman. What a journey Bollywood has had in love!
(This appeared in the print edition as "An Affair to Remember")
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