The idea of romantic love in India

on January 7, 2012

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Shaival Thakkar

“India, on an average is a country which denies people the right to love. But love explodes on the screen.”

- Indian Cinema class notes, SAA, JNU

Ting ting ting ting ting ting
Ting ting ting ting ting ting

Ting ting ting ting ting ting
Ting ting ting ting ting ting

I might have missed out on some ‘ting tings’ but basically, this is the sound of Shahrukh Khan pretending to play a romantic hook on his mandolin and giving cheesy looks to Kajol and the Swiss Cow (video link) in Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge (DDLG). This is also the sound of the messed up subconscious of many young Indians’ idea of romantic love. Whether s/he is a Bollywood fan or not, the average Indian has watched this movie at least a couple of times. This movie tells you that to fall in love with a beautiful Indian girl; you need to make a trip to Europe! (This is very expensive or simply unaffordable for most of us!).


Swiss Cows after a screening of DDLJ. (source: Mandeep Goyal)

When I was in school, as a pastime in free periods, we would take a pencil and put it very quickly through the empty spaces between our fingers and see who could do that the fastest and most passionately. That’s a trick we picked up from Salman Khan’s movie ‘Love’ (1991) (which had the famous song ‘Sathiya yeh tune kya kiya’) where he does the same with a knife(!) as there are some major problems in his love life.

A typical Bollywood thing is for the hero to dance and sing around trees in order to impress the heroine. The average Indian guy cannot sing and dance as well as a Bollywood’s hero. And in case if he managed to get his girl to the nearest park or garden and tried dancing then he would probably be thrown out of the garden by a watchman with those huge scary wooden dandas!. And I don’t think any girl would be impressed by this non-sense. I don’t think even Mother Nature would approve of such antics. Imagine two trees in the Ramoji Film City having a conversation.

[Tree 1:”Man, I’d much rather have monkeys jumping up and down on my branches than these Bollywood actors dancing around my trunk.”
Tree 2: “True, all this singing and dancing business always gives me high blood pressure. I wish they’d do all that underwater or something. I’d much rather die and be turned into paper than live another day to see all this phony-baloney!”]


The Bollywood dance routine has pervaded foreign sanity. (source)

Thank God most of these song and dance sequences are shot abroad! We already have so much non-sense going on in India in terms of silly symbolic politics and lack of infrastructure, that it is a good idea to outsource these silly whimsical song and dance shoots to Switzerland and other such exotic locations.

In fact, I say that most of the Bollywood actors, actresses and directors should stay abroad as much as possible. It’s the next best thing to disowning them completely!! Imagine if I was the immigration officer at one of the airports where a Bollywood team has freshly arrived from a shoot. I would tell the whole bunch of them, “You guys are Bollywood people. Sorry your passports are not valid anymore. You are no longer citizens of India. We have made arrangements for you all to go to either Timbuktu or Antarctica, whichever place you think is more conducive to singing, dancing and stupidity.”

Sometimes, I imagine that in hell, the hottest cauldrons are reserved for Bollywood directors who exploit their audiences. Imagine Yamdoot saying, “Here Mr.XYZ, you can show me your ‘item song’ in this cauldron. It has been waiting for you since a long time.” Furthermore, Yamdoot says, “In your films you always put more emphasis on the beauty of the Indian woman’s physical and behavioural qualities. And you are always demeaning to the self respect of Indian men by making them dance around scantily clad women. You fool; do you know how your ‘item songs’ badly hamper the self-actualisation process of Indian men and women? My colleagues in heaven send beautiful women and men to earth for making love. And all you do is teach Indian men how to scare away lovely Indian women! You know the formula to needs and wants of Indians and keep pulling at their heartstrings. However, you have no clue about the dark secrets of the Indian soul and the hidden wonders of the Indian heart. You leave me with no choice but to deep fry you, you idiot!!”


(source)

I haven’t seen a Bollywood or Hollywood romantic comedy since a long time and I am happy to say that my well-being has really shot up because of it. If one accepts the hard fact that romantic love more or less doesn’t exist in India(even though the symbol of love the Taj Mahal happens to be located in India) and that it’s only an idea which Bollywood uses in order to flourish commercially then life as a young Indian can become easier. Hollywood movies might be better made than the Bollywood ones but they’re just too far removed from India’s social reality. One never sees a Tom Hanks saying to a Meg Ryan, “Sorry Meg, I am a Brahmin and you are a Kadva Patel. I am afraid things cannot work out for us. You’re very sweet but we have to end this here. I know You’ve Got Mail but I’ve Got Caste.”


Are you sure Tom? Really sure? (source)

When Presidents and Prime Ministers in India or abroad have got healthy personal lives or are married and have families(like Nicolas Sarkozy, Manmohan Singh, Barack Obama) rather than single politicians (like Atal Bihari Vajpayee, Narendra Modi) then they inspire a sense of confidence in the public. Similarly, I feel Hindi film artists who have healthy personal lives or are married (like Mani Ratnam) tend to depict Indian life in a balanced way. Film makers and actors like Karan Johar, Aditya Chopra and Salman Khan might have given hits which have a cult following but the public has never heard of them being very happy or stable in their personal lives, no matter what their sexual orientation is. And that’s why I think their movies are overemotional or whacked out when it comes love. If I want to watch a whacked out love story then I would rather go to Ranvir Shorey, Vinay Pathak & Co. or to Jack Black and Ben Stiller. These guys are really out there with their whackiness.  They haven’t been just sitting around Bandra and suburban Mumbai all their lives.


The author’s true love. (source)

If we want the younger generations of Indians to be more clear headed about romantic love then we should stop projecting the idea of romantic love as something exotic but show it as something that is a part of everyday life and easily attainable. This way they can use their energy in doing other interesting things in life too. And women are just women. We give them too much credit by waxing poetic about their bodily features and behavioural qualities .We put them on a pedestal so high that it gets difficult for them to get back on earth. Moreover, the men have to strain their necks just to look at them. (“Hello there, how about a coffee?”. “Yessssss…..”.“Ok let me get a crane first to get you back down on ground”.)

The average Indian male doesn’t have as many romantic choices as his Western counterpart. He cannot or does not usually go to a pub, exchange numbers with a woman and get to know her better. The average Indian male usually goes to the local downmarket bar after a hard day at work and drinks some cheap alcohol. It’s a bar full of men; there is no trace of a woman in that place.

The average Indian man is also the social security for his wife. And not all Indian women are working women. Unless India has a social security system in place like in the West or unless majority of Indian women do jobs he will remain the social security for his women. Since we Indians don’t have a social security system in place, we end up buying a lot of gold or real estate as a compensation to feel socially secure. And that onus is also on the Indian Male. Moreover, until the time he gets married his emotional life is full of emptiness or unrequited loves and fantasies.

In Mary Shelly’s novel Frankenstein, even Frankenstein’s monster is aware of the importance of love in his life. The monster says, “My vices are the children of a forced solitude that I abhor; and my virtues will necessarily arise when I live in communion with an equal. I shall feel the affections of a sensitive being, and become linked to the chain of existence and events, from which I am now excluded.”(p.115) He is devastated when Victor Frankenstein stops making and destroys the female companion and says, “Shall each man find a wife for his bosom, and each beast have his mate, and I be alone?”(p.133)

It is my hunch that the Indian guys who find love (and that’s not very common) are a less violent species than their counterparts who never find love (and not to mention keep watching porn all their life!).However, that statement is debateable and not universally true in India (about both violence and porn!).(However, the last statement doesn’t apply to the guy who is married to a female wrestler or to the guy who is a porn star himself unless he is narcissistic!). And ladies if you had always been looking for a guide to understanding the average Indian man, then I have just spelled it out for you. It is Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein!!!!


The average Indian man. (source)

65% of the Indian population is below the age of 35. Its young people are important to India. And to understand their imaginative, emotional, and physical needs is also important. It can be argued that it is possible to live without romantic love as a lot of young India is doing currently. However, most of us don’t enjoy that sort of a single life. So, either some of us give up the idea of being loved or some of us continue in the tortuous quest for love. From the point of view of human resources also, if romantic love is a deep seated imaginative, emotional, and physical need which it definitely is then it should be satisfied. That would make for well-loved human beings who will go about their work happily and with a sense of fulfilment.

So, this is my message to the average Indian women:
We are Indian men. We watch a lot of Bollywood movies and our heads get messed up by those ideas of love. Real life is a different ball game altogether. The best we can do is make a living, look after you, drink cheap alcohol and ogle at you every chance we get.

I, for one, would love it if we Indian Men get really bored looking at an attractive Indian woman and think, “Oh, just another good looking, well-dressed Indian woman walking down the street. She’s probably dressed nicely to feel good about herself or to attract the best possible male companion. How boring. (‘Yawn’).”

However, that day is not coming anytime soon. So, till then just tolerate us the way we are. And while you’re at it, maybe try to understand us and love us? Even if we don’t sing or dance as well as your Bollywood heartthrobs? What does the average Indian woman have to say?

No harm in trying I guess.


What? Me? Listen!!? (source)

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