An open letter from a fan: Life lessons learnt from Diwali 2007 releases Saawariya & Om Shanti Om

A talented young writer I follow on Twitter posted a link to an interview with the filmmaker and choreographer Farah Khan where she recalled the actor Rakhi Sawant’s hilarious audition for a part in ‘Main Hoon Na’- it involves a burqa and a bikini! And that got me thinking, amongst other things, about how consistently funny Ms. Khan is and has been, and of some of the hilarious things she has said over the years, in ‘Koffee with Karan’ in particular. I can still recall the actor Tabu, the filmmaker Mira Nair, and the host Karan Johar breaking into hysterical, helpless laughter when Johar asked Khan to give a piece of relationship advice to Abhishek and Ash (their nuptials were impending then), and she asked ‘I’m giving them relationship advice?!’, or when she was asked to react in one word to the following names, and Johar mentioning Ashutosh Gowariker and Khan just pulling a face so hilariously sanctimonious that words were not even necessary anymore. And of course, my personal classic from Season 4 when Johar asked her about a rumour she would like to spread about herself, and she said: ‘Just Spread!’, and Johar coming back with ‘The rumour that you’d like to spread?’

It also made me think how it always excites me to see an interview of hers pop up. I devour them without delay but her films, not so much. But then I was reminded of her film ‘Om Shanti Om’ (also, the memory of OSO to me is entwined, amongst other things, with Season 2 of KWK on it, Deepika Padukone made her first talk show appearance as an actor, Shah Rukh Khan felt his sixth pack should start to make an appearance, and Javed Akhtar and Shabana Azmi looked forward to seeing two different films on Diwali that year- Mr. Akhtar choosing OSO (“I’ve written some songs in it”) and Ms. Azmi going for the rival ‘Saawariya’.) 

Back in 2007, I imagined myself to be an aesthete with a cause (I didn’t have a cause, I just had a colourful scarf), and it goes, therefore, without saying that I saw Saawariya first! The memory of how restless the audience grew slowly, steadily over its running time still breaks my heart a little bit. But then I also saw OSO, and little had I imagined that I would swoon and swoon hard that Diwali not to the tune of ‘Thode Badmash Ho Tum’, but instead to ‘Aankhon Mein Teri Ajab Si Ajab Si Adayein Hain’. I can still feel the wind in my hair and with my then love, the light from the streetlamps as we drove down the bridge that we had driven up and down a thousand times, the taut stomach I held without a care as we made our way back to our student rooms on our Scooty Pep, कितना कुछ केहना है फिर भी है दिल में सवाल कहीं! सपनो में जो रोज कहा है वो फिर से कहूँ या नहीं! still ringing in my ears- we were Tamil speakers with a primary school-level grasp of Hindi, yet every syllable felt loaded with heart-stopping feeling. 

I have not seen the film in over a decade but I can still recall Om clutching his heart as he gets dragged away from Shanti on that red carpet, or when he and his best mate turn on the fans and snow machines to dazzle her for at least one night. I don’t think I can forget the look in their eyes the desperation, the panic, the helplessness separated by a window pane- at that interval point, or indeed when the reincarnated Om realises who the revenging Shanti truly is, and when she, with a tear in her eye, turns to look at him for one last time (does she really, or is it just my memory?) before disappearing forever, justice having been served at last. 

I wonder, briefly, if I would like to revisit the film, but I conclude that it’s probably better that I leave it to the past where it still feels as alive as it does. And it occurs to me that it was in fact Saawariya that seemed to strive to create a dreamy, operatic, spectacular vision of a selfless, innocent first love in all its purity, but it was its masala rival with the glossy six-packs and a chutki of sindoor that somehow managed to be it (again, this is no takedown of Saawariya either- the film, in my opinion, holds up a lot better away from the unsurvivable pressure of that Diwali cinema hall). Mr. Bhansali took as much care as he did with an emotion as simple as first love: Why take a bucket of blue paint to draw with, then drape over it a mile of fairy lights, then drown in silk shawls an emotion as light as a feather, as pure as a stream of water? It broke my heart to admit it then that no matter how sincere one’s intention is, and how dedicated one is in striving to do it, you cannot contrive innocence; you do not beat the love out of someone’s heart like you would the dust out of a carpet: You do it with a light touch, you do it as a matter of fact, you do it with simplicity (maybe even to the point of being simplistic!) and most importantly, you do it with a sense of humour. 

I learnt that you cannot force love out of someone who simply does not have what you are asking for; that you do not seek to try, in order to feel that your love is triumphant, to move your lover to tears: it is much better to make your lover laugh. You do not seek to find a lover who would sit and stare into your eyes for hours on end (if you can get one, great!) but to find a love and be a love that reminds the other when the cards are down that in life, in the end, just like it is in our films, everything should turn out to be alright. Happies. Ending. Par agar theek na ho, toh hoti hai nahi. Picture abhi baaki hai mere dost!’. As the master filmmaker Mani Ratnam apparently tells the younger Mrs Bachchan when she gives a less-than-ideal take, ‘Keep it simple ma!’

And if you’re still reading this, would you care to share a piece of learning (again, I use ‘learning’ for the lack of a better word- it need not be as serious) you obtained from a film? Small as it may, that you still carry with you?

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