The Death Of Romance

World cinema can be appropriately divided into two halves, namely, Hollywood and Bollywood. While critics believe that Hollywood is all about original and out of the box concepts coupled with technical brilliance, Bollywood on the other hand is about drama, dance, music and yes, love! Love builds an important part of our life and our movies too. It is believed that Indian cinema stands on two major pillars – love and music. And if we were to name the two major pillars of the domain of love, it would be the impeccable Rajesh Khanna and Yash Chopra. As we lost both these legends not too long back, there was this instant debate that popped up in our mind. Is this the end of an era? Is this the end of romance? While the entire nation slipped into grief and would have needed something spectacular to come out of it, what better than living the good old times that we were gifted by these two great artists.

They made love look lovelier.

There are actors of supreme finesse, performers of terrific command and then there is, yes, there is and not was, Rajesh Khanna. With twinkle in his eyes, limitless confidence in his mannerisms and dressed neatly in his customary kurta pyjama, he swept the world off with his charm. Unreal it was to enjoy the superstardom he did. Like Amitabh Bachchan in one of his famous blog posts mentions, “His generation and the generations that follow, shall never be able to describe, or understand his phenomena. The word 'superstar' was invented for him, and for me it shall ever remain his, and no others.” But far within this stardom laid an actor, an actor who presented love on screen like never before. Whether it was the Air Force Officer Arun Varma singing Mere sapnon ki rani atop an open jeep in Aradhana, or Sunil’s love over the societal norms in Daag, be it the insecure lover Kamal in Aap Ki Kasam or the selfless lover Anand Babu in Amar Prem, Rajesh Khanna was never him in all these memorable roles but the lover that we all are. And perhaps that is why we loved him because he loved just like us.

It wasn’t that Rajesh Khanna was the first actor to present love on screen, there were legends like Dev Anand, Dilip Kumar and Raj Kapoor who had shone in this domain. But there was something inexplicable in him that struck a chord with all the movie watchers. As far as stardom goes, no actor in that generation enjoyed the status he did. Girls leaving their homes behind and getting married to photographs of Rajesh Khanna, writing him letters with their blood and painting his swanky white car with smudges of lipstick never happened to anyone else. And when Rajesh Khanna was struck by oblivion and faded out with time, movie making wasn’t abandoned but love sagas came to a standstill (fans would call it the death of romance while theorists would call it the shift in trend). And when Rajesh Khanna, fondly called Kaka, left for his heavenly abode, there were reportedly 1 million people who came down on the streets of Mumbai. There would have surely been a lot who had come in to catch a glimpse of the other stars that were present at the sombre occasion but those who came in from far lands like Singapore, California, London and many more had come in for their unconditional love for the Superstar, the love he showed us on screen. You get what you give and he took it all with him on his final journey. Death of romance? Not really. Perhaps a never ending love saga.

Some stories are written by the Almighty himself, one such story is that of the famous story teller, Yash Chopra. Born to a family which boasts of the great B.R.Chopra (his second brother), Yash Chopra didn’t take long to realize that cinema was his calling. Starting as an assistant to his brother, he soon took over the reigns, going on to create ripples with some very bold and ahead-of-times subjects. His first few movies were indicative of the fact that this maker was going to be different. If his movies revolving around religious sentiments, partition of India and hard hitting social drama were anything to go by, no one would have actually guessed that this man would offer anything other than impactful, hard hitting and bold subjects. Then came the formula of ensemble cast, the extremely famous lost and found formula and the most assuring of them all, action cinema which of course established Amitabh Bachchan as the angry young man.

Yash Chopra had always been a man on search for newer themes, ones that would speak our mind, ones that would at times show a lot of ‘we’ and the others that showed what ‘we’ dream to do and only live through the silver screen. Even the great maker himself wouldn’t have known that the genre he next attempted was a domain that would define him or in fact, he went on to define. And even when he showcased love on screen over and over again, he constantly brought to us newer and different shades of love, ones he hadn’t shown us before and that inimitable trait of his to do something very different with the same domain always made him what he eventually went on to be – the King Maker of Romance! If it was polygamy and the attached societal hindrances in Daag, Silsila showed us the story of an extramarital affair. In Darr, Yash Chopra presented a very refreshing subject of an obsessive lover who could go to any extent to get his girl of dreams and in Veer Zaara, we saw eternal, unconditional love, the kind which lasts the test of time. Every time the master brought love on screen, he gave us new reasons to love him all the more. And while he anyway wouldn’t have directed any more after his swan song, Jab Tak Hai Jaan, his passing away was a loss that the world of cinema couldn’t have ever prepared for. Many of us believe that with this, love would never be the same on screen anymore. His contribution to romantic cinema was such that perhaps love could be taken out of our movies but Yash Chopra couldn’t have been taken out of love. Perhaps he would have just sang out, “Main yahan hoon, yahan hoon, yahan hoon, yahan..”

Those who love deeply never grow old; they may die of old age, but they die young. Some would remember them for having ruled the box office for decades altogether while some would remember them for having ruled a million hearts. But as the years pass by and thousands of films keep being made every year, all of these would be achieved by someone or the other. What would separate the two then? Firsts are always special, be it the ‘first superstar of the nation’ or the ‘first or the only filmmaker to have actively made and directed films for five decades.’ And in arguments many with our parents over who is better, we would admit deep down that there wouldn’t have been this present had there not been this glorious past. Only a few would know that Yash Chopra’s production house (Yash Raj Films) was coined after the initials of the two greats themselves, Yash Chopra and Rajesh Khanna who got together in the former’s maiden production venture, Daag. None would have known that this partnership might not have reappeared too many times later but the partnership remained forever. Their passing away for many is the death of romance in the Hindi film industry and it wouldn’t be completely wrong to say so, since pumping in that kind of life in today’s cinema has become an almost improbable task. At the end of this piece, while we become nostalgic about these two stalwarts and look at the far end, they would be looking at us from above and saying, “Arreh, Yeh Bhi Ek Daur Hai, Woh Bhi Ek Daur Tha..”