by BHAWNA JAIMINI
Behind the carefully constructed Mubi facade of frames from half-watched films of Abbas Kiarostami, Majid Majidi and David Fincher, I am still very much rooted in Hindi cinema. Hindi films are what I grew up with and it was only in my early 20s that I discovered world cinema – which I very much enjoy – but nothing, in my opinion, feels more home than a good melodramatic, colorful, emotionally intense commercial Hindi film that tugs at the strings of your heart every time it has a Shahrukh Khan delivering dialogues you know you will never be spoken to in your entire life. Yet, the make-believe world feels very much a part of this existence.
2021 has been a year where I had to turn to the cinema of my growing up years. I was desperately looking for refuge from the grim reality of the second wave that engulfed us all and took a few too many along. Every few nights I found myself searching for film titles from my childhood and adolescence to relive moments of hope and love and happy endings – something that was so nowhere to be found in the real world. I found catharism while sobbing over the hospital scene in the ending of Kal Ho Na Ho and discovered perseverance in the lyrics of zindagi ki yahi reet hai, haar ke baad hi jeet hai (Such is the cycle of life/There is victory to be found only after loss) in Mr. India.
Hindi cinema – not the Rohit Shetty kind high on testosterone cinema – has perfected the art of giving us happy endings, sometimes even against all logic. So here I was, using one Hindi film after the other to tell myself that everything will fall back into place and all magic will be restored to the world in due time. However, there was one film that filled me with anxieties even though it ended on a rather happy note.
It was Yash Chopra’s Veer-Zaara.
I was 13 when the film released in 2004. Chopra was coming back to direction after a hiatus of seven years with a star ensemble that was at the peak of their careers.
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