In Another Life

How 90s Bollywood ruined me.

I was alone the last time I flew to Canada, and as usual, a nervous wreck while waiting my turn at immigration. (Something I have written about here.)

There was a young woman at the immigration desk, maybe 30 or 32. She had brown hair, freckles on her cheeks and wore stylishly large round glasses. She asked me the basic questions: purpose of visit, duration of stay, what my parents did and where they lived. What were my plans for the next ten days in Toronto, she asked, and when I said, ‘mostly eat’, she cracked a smile. She liked Vesta too, she said. Yes, even the shaky barstools and weak coffee.

Image source

She asked if I was married, and before I could say Yes, I had said No. She asked more questions. I answered, but I was distracted. Why had I lied? I wanted to slip in a clarification, something casual between answers. I’d have liked to at least add that I had the sweetest twin girls, but coming up with a backstory that neatly explained their mother’s absence (especially one I would not later feel compelled to report to Tara), that too on the fly, was out of the question. I did not try.

I read the name on her badge - Sophie something. The Q&A had been replaced by a two-way conversation, and those waiting in line behind me were eventually summoned by officers at other counters. She did not live far from my parents, she said, and handed me my passport.

Having crossed over into the country, as I came down the escalator to the baggage belt, I tried to process what had happened. Did she doubt my claims? Was she being friendly? Was she… flirting?

I looked out of the terminal windows. It was dark, the sun yet to rise. I was replaying the exchange in my head when someone tapped me on the shoulder. It was a different woman in official Canadian Immigration uniform. She gave me a piece of paper with a phone number on it. ‘It’s from Sophie’, she said, and pointed to the floor above. Standing up there in the distance was my interrogator. I cannot say for certain but I got the feeling she was smiling at me.

---

Sophie and I met for coffee a few days later. We sat on a park bench and talked. The second time, we went for a walk. It was cold and she put her hand on mine, a hand too warm for me to turn away. The third time, we had lunch at Vesta and went to a bar for a drink after. When we finally drove up to a cottage on Muskoka Lake, we were so exhausted from the week before that we fell asleep on the carpet. I disliked techno but was fascinated by her obsession with it. I did not, however, understand her obsession with peanut-flavoured spicy ramen, which she bought in packs of six at a time and ate for dinner twice a week.

By the time I moved in with her, there were plants in every corner of the house. I have nothing against house-plants, but I couldn’t sit on the old armchair in the living room without her beloved String of Hearts overhead tickling the back of my neck. Once, in the middle of a movie, Sophie got so sick of me complaining that she stormed out of the room and came back with a pair of pruning shears. ‘This is how I do it…’, she said, most agitated, taking off a few inches, ‘…next time just do it yourself.’ I was soon appointed the resident pruner.

Image source

It was a chilly January morning when she and I landed in Delhi. As we came out of the terminal, I saw three figures emerge from the fog. One tall woman with a cricket bat in hand. Two little kids in oversized hoodies and pigtails carrying ropes and packing tape. I left my baggage cart and tried to run. They chased me down. Runi, Juni and Tara then proceeded to tie me to a railing next to pillar number 10. Tara screamed, the children beat me over the head with their Crocs, the crowd of spectators grew larger. There was no sign of Sophie.

I rubbed my eyes. The baggage belt came into sharp focus. My suitcase was the last piece of luggage on it. I looked out of the terminal windows again, sunlight feebly leaking onto the upper walls. I checked my phone - almost 7am. I desperately needed to crash.

---

I wonder how attraction manifests in the minds of others, but I have always been like this. When I find myself attracted to someone, the resulting fantasy can broadly take one of two forms: the purely sexual kind, or the head over heels, madly in love, janam-janam-ka-saath kind. The latter being the more common, recurring one.

A school friend, to whom I once confessed my secret desires 25 years ago, interrupted me to say, “We all have crushes, why do you do mohabbat?” Since this obsessive way of experiencing attraction and desire is somewhat atypical for my generation, ‘why’ is a fair question.

A lifetime of influences and experiences, I suppose, but here’s a theory: romantic Bollywood films of the 90s have fucked with my head.

My parents acquired a VCR and a small film collection when I was a baby, and gave me unlimited access to the same set of films for the next several years. The first movie I remember watching is Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak (QSQT). An adaptation of Romeo and Juliet, it is the story of star-crossed lovers from warring families who must not fall in love, but do. The recent college graduates run away and set up home in an abandoned temple. Raj collects firewood in the day, Rashmi teaches herself how to cook. When the family sends a killer to hunt down Raj, the thought of self-preservation barely crosses their minds. So long as they can die in each other’s arms.

Romeo and Juliet is the classic, tragic love story, and I liked QSQT very much on each of my fifteen viewings, but perhaps someone should have considered how such prolonged exposure to the film would impact a toddler’s hopes and dreams.

In the years that followed, I made my way through Maine Pyaar Kiya, Hum Aapke Hain Koun, Rangeela and others, multiple times.¹ As a 6-year-old watching Darr, I admired the unflinching commitment SRK’s stalker felt towards Kiran. Soon, there was DDLJ and the collective hysteria around me (including from my 12-year-old sister) confirmed my hunch about love. Just after I got to middle school, Kuchh Kuchh Hota Hai released, which in hindsight, is an absurd film. The adhurapan (incompleteness) of Anjali’s pehla pyaar (first love) was so devastating that she dropped out of college and never returned.

Image source

This early introduction to romance taught me a few key lessons: first, attraction was not fleeting but weighty and all-consuming; second, if you fell for someone, all else became irrelevant; third, heartbreak was undeniably the end of the world.

By the time Dil Chahta Hai came around and it felt normal for the characters to date more than one person in their lifetime, I was in a relationship. It was too late to reverse my conditioning.

The company I kept as a child only made matters worse. At home, I was stuck living with a happily married couple. At school, many of my close friends dated for years. Of the 13-odd couples (that I know of) that left school with the promise to marry, 4 are still together. Another 4 eventually tied the knot, without ever having been romantically involved in school.

Perhaps it is no big surprise, then, that I entered my first serious relationship at age 13. Or that I have spent 23 of the next 24 years in long, exclusive commitments. Or that while waiting for my bags in Toronto, my mind constructs a second life with a pretty stranger.

It has been forever since my last rewatch of QSQT, but I still seem to be leaning towards mohabbat over crush.

1. I watched my fair share of thrillers and action films as well - Mohra, Border, Jo Jeeta Wohi Sikander, Baazigar - but thankfully I don’t walk around trying to beat up bad guys.