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The Unromance of Realism
With sexting and instant messaging, relationships have become just that – instant and ephemeral. Books and films have emulated these real-life changes with often not-so-interesting results. Has the romance in art – and relationships – died?
What defines society today is words and connections. What separates this generation from the ones before is the power of the spoken word. We think that technology is what has changed us, made us the people that move faster, think faster and behave fast. While that may be true in some part, what has empowered technology has been content – online jargon for words. Thoughts, bubbles, discussions, emoticons, replies, retorts, criticism, feedback, conversations, investigations, observations, retweets, status updates…the list goes on. This generation has increased communication by communicating less and with fewer words. It faces the task of dealing with information overload while constantly putting out more information. The oxymorons define the mindset of today – a generation that wants everything, wants everything super quick and instantly accessible, and doesn’t really have the time or the patience to sift, read, ponder. That is where texts, BlackBerry messages, tweets and status updates are the de facto means of communication. It is rare for anyone to pick up the phone and have a good old-fashioned chat, in the generation that prefers to stick to a far more impersonal, but rapid form of communication. It has it’s own personal vocabulary: insistent abbreviations – often indecipherable to the uninitiated – and instant communication. You find people with heads bent, eyes darting and fingers moving rapidly in practiced synchronisation: rarely able to maintain eye-contact for more than a couple of minutes, rarely can a conversation run it’s natural old-fashioned course without interruption, as we move into an era of distracted and continuous communication and therefore, erratic and easily dismissed short-lived relationships.Popular culture represents the dialogue and relationships of today: faster, more impatient and often meaningless. Younger film-makers have updated their scripts to emulate real life. While underworld films picked up the nuances of the underbelly through actions and dialogue, romance in the arts has been for the longest time linked to a larger-than-life drama. Case in point: the cinema of Karan Johar or Sooraj Barjaytya. Where they update the clothes and the music, the dialogue often remains over-dramatised and pedantic. While some may argue that romance needs the dramatisation, a striking example to contest the argument is that of Saathiya – where the dialogue is rapid, off-the-street and yet, is a powerful story. There is a strong resonation with the viewer, an easy relatibility, which carries the film from run-of-the-mill to sensitive and meaningful. Farhan Akhtar’s Dil Chahta Hai made the trend a popular one, taken up by film-makers like Kunal Kohli (Hum Tum) and Imtiaz Ali (Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal).It is the language of frankspeak or straightspeak. Where once “You complete me” was the sigh-generating dictum, now, “I need a break” is easily said, without much angst, furor or thought. Quick answers, rapid and sometimes thoughtless decisions and a sense of bubbling impatience mark the dialogues that often don’t lead anywhere special. This is the nature of relationships of today and the conversations emulate them. Easily said, easy to bed and quick to leave – all takes place faster than a thought, and what is left are non-events. How does this make and fill the artistic and aesthetic space of a film? While Kohli-directed Hum Tum talks about a meandering relationship, When-Harry-Met-Sally-style, he pumps the story with events – which hold the weight of the relationship between the protagonists that appears to be going nowhere. In an attempt to emulate real life and their easy-come-easy-go relationships, Kohli’s recent production Break Ke Baad, directed by Danish Aslam, is a slick film that lacks a meaty story, full of 'non-happenings'. Conversations, while witty and fresh, would make a better radio play than a long commercial movie. While this may be a comment on relationships today, the art demands a certain balance between real life and cinematic license – it demands that elements, moments and events become at the very least marginally larger than life, to create entertainment, to be watchable. Ali’s Love Aaj Kal nearly crossed the line to become over-ripe with conversations, in the same quest to describe modern-day relationships. Where LAK teetered dangerously, Jab We Met remained fresh in it’s cinematic experience, particularly through the crispness of dialogue and emotion.Deepika Padukone’s character, Aaliya, in Break Ke Baad is not lovable in the traditional sense – much like Sonam Kapoor’s Aisha, she is unintentionally selfish and possibly doesn’t deserve the good guy. The industry buzz has it that Zoya Akhtar’s debut film Luck By Chance missed it’s calling because the protagonist, Vikram, was not a nice guy. We don’t feel empathy for the characters and don’t wish them to reach a happy ending. And that is dangerous ground for a film to enter in the romance genre. And it is also rather disturbing seeing that these characters have been picked from real life. Is it true, then, that we prefer the traditional romantic notion of characters that may be slightly misguided, but are nice? Even if that is not real life? So as dialogues get updated, people shouldn’t?Two recent books speak a local language, but in entirely different ways. Anuja Chauhan’s Battle For Bittora speaks real politik – the language of local and honest-to-good (sense the irony) politics, seen through the eyes of a girl of this generation. There is amusement, cynicism and wonder. While the romance remains honest to chick lit, and the dialogues are basic, matter-of-fact and emulating real life, it is the clever writing and story that lifts this novel from being mundane to a page-turner. Where Chauhan’s effortless writing excites, first-time writer, Rhea Saran’s Girl Plus One is trying too hard, as are her heroines, to become a desi Sex and the City. Saran is not wrong in suggesting, rather obviously, the fact that Indian girls today are openly emulating Manhattan’s popular TV series; however, Saran misses Candace Bushnell’s witticisms that make all the difference between real life and drama. Would a real-life Carrie really talk in continuous innuendoes? No. She simply finds a corelation between her column and her life.However art is updated to make it believable and real, it is obvious that the artistic license must be used to lift the dullness of real life to a heightened sense of real-life drama. In creating a believable sense of inclusion in a person’s daily, often mundane life, while bringing art into our homes, drawing rooms and bedrooms, we need to maintain a certain distance that allows us to appreciate the nuances of every character, story and relationship. These elements need to interesting and memorable, and often, real life is not. That doesn’t mean we need to regress and run around trees dancing amid roses, but it does mean that we need to assess the dramatic intent of the medium: does the film justify being larger-than-life? Does the book deserve to be printed and propped up on the ‘New Arrivals’ bookshelf rather than be a basic online blog? All in all, while pointing out the casual and matter-of-fact manner of everyday relationships, are we missing the romance in the written word and the spoken dialogue? And are we losing the romance in relationships?And that leads me to question - do we want the old-fashioned nature of romance, or does that not matter to us anymore? Does a quick sext or a couriered designer bag charm us more than an old-fashioned hand-written note with a love song? Are we so accustomed to sentimentalising love and romance that we are unable to accept it in it's matter-of-fact form anymore? If the written word stands for the way we think, then are we changing so dramatically that we question and often thwart sentimentality in its old-fashioned sense? Do we love, or do we 'like'? Or are we confused because it is 'too complicated'?Imtiaz Ali: Happily Never After
Published: Verve Magazine, Verve Men, February 2010
Photograph: Colston Julian; Illustration: Bappa
Director and scriptwriter of popular romantic dramas Jab We Met and Love Aaj Kal, Imtiaz Ali, does not know whether happily-ever-after exists, “since the world is designed for relationship disasters. When people decide to get together, it is not a cerebral decision or a love formula, it’s an instinctive one. The one that got away occupies a person more, and anyone who is accessible becomes ordinary. No relationship can satisfy all the needs of a person. There is a reason why love stories end when they do”. In all his movies, the director believes that if we had the opportunity of seeing what were to happen a few years down the line to his characters, post the kiss-and-make-up; we would not be guaranteed a happy ending. So in a piece of wicked cross-scripting with Sitanshi Talati-Parikh, he plots a volatile fictional love story concocted with the unrelated characters of his two films, to see what would happen if Kareena Kapoor and Saif Ali Khan’s characters, Geet (Jab We Met) and Jai (Love Aaj Kal), actually met!
Ten years after Jab We Met (about eight years after Love Aaj Kal). Geet is married to Aditya Kashyap and they have two children. Jai and Meera are also married. There is a crisis of the “end of excitement”.The Characters
GEET, the essential free spirit, chafes under the boring normalcy of her life. She finds that Aditya Kashyap has changed – or maybe this is who he is – an industrialist who has a lot on his plate. He can’t take off anytime he chooses; having children has also changed the equation. While they balance each other out, she is haunted by the fact that now she doesn’t have a place to reach; without a destination, there is no journey. She is deeply disillusioned by the fact that she has no train to catch, nowhere to run off to with wild abandon and therefore no major thrill that keeps her going. There is a vacuum inside her, working its way towards a silent depression. Something sparks off a renaissance....ADITYA doesn’t like the fact that his wife, Geet, talks to everyone with unnatural friendliness. This is a part of who she is, and he can’t change that, but it bothers him. He tries to bring a semblance of order in her life, but she constantly resists it. While she needs this stability to balance her out, she tends to react violently to it. Work keeps him so preoccupied that he finds he has less time and patience to pander to her impulsive needs.JAI always believed in the concept of a live-in relationship as opposed to marriage. His love for Meera keeps him going, but the inability to walk out at any time, to experiment, to go with the flow, or change direction if he so desires, makes him feel shackled. The pressures of life are building up and he’s just looking for an escape route.MEERA can’t seem to understand what is bothering Jai. She keeps reminding herself that this marriage is what he wanted – he had come looking for her. The fact that he may not be happy worries her, but she doesn’t know what she can do to fix it. She decides to wait and watch for an opportunity when things can go back to normal.The Situation
Day 1
Geet is driving, with a lot of pent-up rage, to pick up her kids from school. She is manoeuvring the Mumbai traffic, amid construction, while simultaneously on the phone trying to negotiate keeping her maid who suddenly wants to quit. She has woken up early to make aloo parathas for Aditya. Her frustration has been building up for a while but she just doesn’t have the nerve to tell Aditya, “I can’t do this anymore, this is not me!” Suddenly as she is distracted, her car slams into an island, and shudders to a stop. She fumbles, trying to start it while continuing to talk on the phone. The traffic piles up behind her; loud curses can be heard in the background, accompanied by a lot of disgusted gestures.A car slides into position next to her, a window rolls down and a disgruntled man (Jai) looks at her, saying, “There is a reason why women shouldn’t drive. Why don’t you do something that suits you more…like look after your home, and leave driving to men?” That chauvinistic statement gets Geet completely riled up – the years of dissatisfaction and disillusionment with marriage are simmering under the surface waiting to explode. She gets out of the car to scream at him. Jai has already driven past, the window is up – with the noise of the traffic and his music in the car, he can’t hear her. She can be seen in his rear-view mirror getting smaller and smaller.She gets back into the car, manages to start it, slams the door and drives after Jai furiously. He enters a tall office building, and the elevator door is about to close behind him, when she wedges a foot into the door. She starts yelling at him, abusing him, trying to get the pent up fury out of her system. She follows him into his office, still yelling about the woes of her life – domesticity, the children, a husband who’s forgotten how to live life. The entire office is looking at them. Suddenly, realising where she is, she flushes a deep red, turns around and leaves. Jai’s visibly shaken; he doesn’t know what hit him. He needs to make a pitch before a very important client, and he can’t perform because he’s so nervous. Stammering and suddenly not his usual confident self, he doesn’t paint a convincing picture. He loses the account...and is completely shattered.Day 2
Driving to work the next day (at approximately the same time he’d met Geet the day before), Jai, feeling really miserable, suddenly notices her waiting in her car for her children. He immediately swerves to a stop, running over to her to give her a piece of his own mind. His problems are mounting: EMIs, a wife who’s threatening to leave him, the competition…. He ends his tirade with, “Maybe I have a wife who’s a bigger bitch than you are.”[This is the excitement they are both missing in their lives. An escape from their own problems. Both Geet and Jai are people who would want to breathe more air, do more and say more than their partners.]The next time they see each other, it’s like they’ve known each other for a long time…. Their vivaciousness and outgoing personalities leave no awkwardness between them. She needs to go back home to Aditya, but Jai suggests an excuse that works well on husbands, she thinks for a moment and gives into the thrill of a new experience, continuing their conversation over another cup of coffee.Next Week
Jai has an anniversary coming up and Geet needs to shop for Aditya’s birthday. They decide it’s an excuse good enough as any to shop together. Jai confesses that his wife has hated all the gifts he’s bought her in the past, that she’s a very sensitive kind of woman. “She would be happy if she thought that I thought about the gift!” Geet thinks it would be fun to help out, while Jai can help her choose something for her “fuddy-duddy boring industrialist-type of husband”.And then...
They continue to meet; putting in the effort to look better, in response to the passion and electricity the air. They connect at various levels – they find their childish pursuits a great diversion, which their spouses would not. They gravitate towards each other. Neither wants to commit, but they believe that they have found their soulmate in each other. They are too volatile to actually be able to have a fulfilling, stable relationship together – and they know that. They are both people who are constantly in conflict, it is difficult for them to reach resolve – but they thrive in the conflict.The Spouses
ADITYA, when he sees the change in Geet, senses that something is not right. He begins to look back at their life and see what’s missing, what is eating away into the Geet he fell in love with. He never confronts her or makes her uncomfortable, but makes an effort to be more attentive. Geet, for her part, can tell that he knows or is aware that something has changed. She finds its oddly disconcerting that he continues to be there for her – often suggesting doing things that she loves, which makes her feel guilty and confused about her feelings. She wants to come out and talk to him about it, but something holds her back – the fear of hurting him. She wishes he would react with anger or violence – not this silent niceness. It makes her feel like a bitch. In the middle of the night, having no one else to talk to, she frequently calls up Jai.MEERA instinctively knows when Jai is unhappy or is not being faithful, especially with the increasing calls late into the night coming from Geet. Meera’s way of dealing with it is very matter-of-fact. She invites Jai out to his favourite restaurant, dresses up in his favourite outfit; and in the middle of the wine and meal, asks him directly, “Jai, I think you’re seeing somebody…just tell me about it.” Jai looks taken-aback and then decides to come clean. He talks about Geet – a girl whom he has been hanging out with, but insists that there isn’t anything serious between them. “I didn’t tell you because you’d be upset…but I can see I’ve upset you anyway. I’m sorry. But if you say the word, I won’t see her again.” Meera looks at him for a minute and says, “If I ask you not to see her, then I’m making her your lover, so do what you want.”The End
It appears to be a doomed love story of two people who can’t get rid of each other. Geet and Jai are the kind of people who consume each other – a relationship that scales the heights and plummets to the depths, making it a nervy ride. They make each other more insecure and it leads them to miss the stability provided by their spouses.Jai meets Geet to tell her that they should stop seeing each other. Geet reacts explosively – talking about how much they are actually made for each other, and how they are not being unfaithful at all. They deliberate breaking up often. Eventually, in the midst of an emotional scene, Geet perks up with a suggestion – if they must end it, then why not with a bang – something that matches their personality? And she reminds him about the trip they had spoken about taking together...
Imtiaz Ali: The Chemistry In The Script
Published: Verve Magazine, Features, September 2009
Photograph: Ankur Chaturvedi
He’s smart, casual, with unruly locks that women want to tame and is completely unmoved by his own success. Kareena Kapoor believes he redefined her career with the role of Geet in Jab We Met. Award-winning writer-director Imtiaz Ali speaks to Sitanshi Talati-Parikh about his disinterest in love stories and not being a good writer, hot on the heels of his latest film Love Aaj Kal
Verve's Bollywood Style Awards 2008
Published: Verve Magazine, Features, February 2008
Text by Sitanshi Talati-Parikh
Photographs by Manmeet Bhatti
After a long era of homegrown costumiers dressing movie stars of yore, fashion designers styling glam queens has become de rigueur in today’s Bollywood. From unique kitsch to contemporary chic, Verve awards three veteran couturiers for their distinctive Indo-retro costumes that set the screen ablaze in 2007 and recreates these trendsetting looks with model Amrit Maghera
Anuradha Vakil for Sonam Kapoor
In the romantic, lyrical tale described over four fateful nights, the screen comes alive with intricate attention to detail in the ambience of Saawariya. Fantasy woven into the fabric of traditional designs enhances Sakina’s (Sonam Kapoor) mystical quality, as she flits in between the surrealistic frames. Designing with the outlook of ‘poetry in motion,’ Anuradha Vakil, known for her work in fashion design that is deeply rooted in Indian crafts, completes director Sanjay Leela Bhansali’s vision. Understated designs, which shadow the intricate background sets, are actually realistic and wearable. Empire waistlines and floating anarkalis in classic colours (primarily black and white) have become the rage. Drawing from kathak and the Islamic arts and culture, there is a predominance of antique fabrics, appliqué and ikat weaves and kalabottan embroidery. Vakil shed her initial skepticism at designing for a commercial film, when she discovered the artistic vision of the film.
Niharika Khan for Soha Ali Khan
In a film that takes the audience back to the 1950s, to the era of black and white cinema, Khoya Khoya Chand, a story of on-set romance, subtly plays with the mood of the time. Niharika Khan (along with Ashima Belapurkar) tracked back to film magazines, old movies, footage, and survivors from that decade, meticulously developing the evolution of the 50s’ silks and baggy pants to the chiffons and drainpipes of the 60s; indemnifying the teased hairdos, and svelte sari-draped divas. Khan tapped into real life sources, like those of her mother-in-law, Begum Para, her mother’s friend, Waheeda Rehman, and ’60s glamour doll, Saira Banu, making diligent use of valuable resources like old pictures (especially those of Madhubala) and her mother’s saris. It is not surprising then, that the styling is reminiscent of divas from that era – Nadira, Nargis and Meena Kumari. The movement in time is also symbolised by the colour palette: the earlier half of the film restricts itself to muted hues and black and white, while the latter half erupts with a burst of colour, as the cinema transitions to Technicolour.Ethnic Fusion - Jab We Met
Manish Malhotra for Kareena Kapoor
As the small-town girl, with spirit and a refreshingly optimistic outlook on life, completely unaware of street corner whispers and conventional norms, Kareena Kapoor carried off this eccentric look with aplomb in Jab We Met. Manish Malhotra, exercising the artistic freedom given to him by the director, Imitiaz Ali, boldly dressed Kareena in patiala pants in a fusion concept with a mismatched T-shirt and traditional hoop earrings, which have gone on to become a cult statement. As he describes it, “The blue singlet was peeking through her shirt, and her character, Geet, is someone who would shed the shirt and jeans for a patiala and ganjee – the transition is easy, not requiring any deviation.” The outfit was designed keeping Kareena in mind – her slim figure, height and darkened hair complemented the ensemble. In the latter half of the film, when the character is in Shimla, though Kareena would have preferred dresses, both the director and designer were in agreement that a simple salwar-kameez would work best, staying true to her small-town roots.
And work well it did....
Manish Malhotra for Deepika Padukone
Celebrating the ’70s in multicoloured tones, bling and outlandish evocations, Manish Malhotra had fun going vintage with bright colours, skintight churidar-kurtas and bouffant or long straight hair to boot. Being brought up on an intense dose of ’70s films, Malhotra got the opportunity to recreate this vision in Om Shanti Om. Farah Khan, who shares his passion for the era, didn’t think twice before selecting him as the costume designer. Khan wanted to be exact, and even modelled the looks on actresses like Hema Malini, Rekha, Mumtaz, Leena Chandavarkar and Helen, before opting for the final designs. Malhotra loved dressing up Deepika Padukone, whom he describes as, “a beautiful young actress, with a great figure. We could mould her into the look we wanted.” He is thrilled to have recreated history, particularly in the multi-starrer song, which was an exciting challenge in itself. The retro style is now so popular that a commercial line celebrating this look is soon to be launched!
