Why DDLJ should have flopped

Nineteen years and 1,000 weeks run at Mumbai’s Maratha Mandir make Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge an iconic Bollywood film where the characters portrayed by Shah Rukh Khan and Kajol play the Yash Chopra game, discovering love in the Swiss Alps and reaffirming their commitment to each other in the mustard fields of Punjab.

The passion for DDLJ does not just sit with the fans who continue to show up for the film’s screenings at Maratha Mandir. There are many who love DDLJ – and this includes important critics (Anupama Chopra even wrote a monograph on the film, part of the British Film Institute’s Modern Classics series), who otherwise would question most of today’s Bollywood cinema. 

They would defend DDLJ at any cost. And sometimes it is understandable. Few people want to challenge their teenage years’ memories with Khan and Kajol lip-synching to one of the most romantic Bollywood songs of all times – "tujhe dekha to yeh jana sanam". 

But the romance, the songs, the sights and the charisma of Khan apart, DDLJ is a fairly old-fashioned regressive film that does nothing to change the society. Despite all its modern appearances – clothes, scenes of characters getting drunk, DDLJ’s message is clear – fall in love, dream for sure, but never challenge your parents and your elders. And even when they become totally unreasonable do not ever elope or run away. Because after all the worst parents are still your elders and they deserve respect no matter what may happen!

On the surface DDLJ is a story of two NRI families: one a household run by Amrish Puri who focuses on bringing up his two daughters by strict so-called Indian values – no dating, wearing Indian clothes, and singing bhajans; the other run by Anupam Kher, a hugely wealthy businessman who lets his son Raj (Khan) indulge in every possible vice in London, and rejoices when he fails in college.

The success of DDLJ especially in the UK and the US led Bollywood producers to talk about the NRI market and it opened the doors for many more films that catered to the Indian diaspora. But hardly anyone cared that these films represented very unreal portrayals of NRIs, almost never reflecting on what leads people to migrate and the sadness that is often associated with that. Karan Johar came the closest in his Kabhi Alvida Naa Kehna as he set out to explore love, marriages and infidelities among Indians living in Manhattan.

The responsibility of examining Indian immigrant lives fell on the shoulders of the NRI filmmaker Mira Nair – who wonderfully captured the loneliness associated with immigration in films like The Namesake and Mississippi Masala. For most of Bollywood it was enough that the NRIs would live in opulent homes and dance to lavish wedding songs such as "mahi ve" from Kal Ho Naa Ho!

Kajol’s character Simran came to the UK when she was a baby. Now she is at least 22 – that is how long Puri says he has lived in the UK. But despite the life they have spent outside India, director Aditya Chopra makes no efforts to give any authenticity to his characters.

Simran’s younger sister tries to put on a pathetic British accent. But Simran only speaks like a Mumbai girl and even Khan’s Raj shows no pretense of sounding anything like an Indian living in London. Some will argue that they really should not bother since the audience will come to the theater to watch the stars on the screen. That is all what matters.

Raj and his friends, including an unrecognisable Johar, drink, party, lie - you know all those bad things NRI kids do because after all Bollywood wants you to believe that the west is a depraved and dangerous place to raise your children. But Raj will ultimately be a true-blooded, clean-hearted Indian. He will never take advantage of a drunk Indian girl, even when she is clearly flirting with him loudly singing "zara sa jhoom loon main" on the streets of Switzerland! Raj may fail in his college finals, because that brings comic relief in the film, but the good Indian values in him would not make him run away with the girl he loves.

After all he is Raj, rather Shah Rukh Khan. And Khan the star would never play a non-star-like role. That is until Johar shook up Bollywood’s logic and made Khan have an extra-marital affair in KANK.

DDLJ was released in 1995. 19 years later Bollywood has somewhat changed – at least on the surface. Younger actors are kissing on the screen and even engaging in sex before marriage. This year’s 2 States showed Arjun Kapoor and Alia Bhatt spending a lot of time in bed, in between their intense MBA coursework at IIM, Ahmedabad.

That is Bollywood’s way of showing how modern India and its youth have become. But the protagonists in 2 States also suffer from the DDLJ frame of mind. They refuse to get married until their parents are agreeable to the arrangement.

So even today Bollywood cinema owes its twisted logic to DDLJ. I suppose that is DDLJ’s greatest legacy.