[Spoiler alert]
One of my FB groups challenged the male members to write about when they have cried. In the interests of striking a blow against toxic masculinity, here's my confession.
As a rule, I don't watch tear-jerkers. I can't handle them. My favourite genres are science fiction, superhero, rom-com and comedy.
But there's one movie I keep going back to every once in a while when I'm by myself, and no one can see me dabbing at my eyes with a tissue. This is the Bollywood movie 'Dil Hai Tumhara' (My Heart is Yours). In the words of the little girl in 'Cheeni Kum', this movie is not "sad-sad", it's "happy-sad". There are some extremely touching scenes in it that I love to go back and watch over and over, and it's impossible to stay dry-eyed.
For those who don't know the story, Sarita (played by Rekha) is a married woman with a daughter. Her husband secretly has a mistress and a (younger) daughter through her. The husband and the other woman die in a car accident, but before he dies, the husband makes Sarita promise to bring up his daughter along with their own. Sarita does so, but can never bring herself to show love to the other woman's daughter. This continues right into the adulthood of the two girls, the elder girl Nimmi (Nirmala) played by Mahima Chaudhry and the younger adoptive one Shalu (Shalini) played by Preity Zinta. All that Shalu wants is the love of her mother, but she never gets it.
In spite of the mother's coldness to her adoptive daughter, the elder girl is very loving towards her sister, and this is reciprocated. The scenes between the two sisters are very touching. Towards the end, the mother also realises her adoptive daughter's worth and completely softens towards her.
The romantic parts of the movie involving Arjun Ramphal are quite silly and not moving at all. It's the scenes between the sisters, and between the adoptive mother and daughter, that always get me.
These scenes do something to me:
1. The backstory with the background song "kabhi hasna hai, kabhi rona hai; jeevan sukh dukh ka sangam hai" (One must sometimes laugh and sometimes cry; life is a mix of happiness and sadness) shows how the two girls were brought up differently by Sarita, and how the elder one makes up for the lack of love shown by the mother.
9:20 to 13:00
2. How the sisters seem to fight but are very close.
20:00 to 23:40
3. An extended scene with lots of drama. Sarita believes Shalu is trying to steal Dev (Arjun Ramphal) from *her* daughter Nimmi. She reveals that Shalu is not her daughter, and accuses her of trying to do to Nimmi what Shalu's mother had done to her. But Nimmi remains loyal to Shalu, and is even willing to give up Dev for her. Shalu in turn decides to sacrifice her love for the sake of her sister's happiness, and pretends that she loves someone else (Sameer, played by Jimmy Shergill).
It's interesting that the man in the triangle is treated as an inanimate object in this movie ("You marry him. No, you marry him!")
2:05:17 to 2:14:10
4. My favourite scene, where Shalu goes to Dev's father played by Alok Nath. She gets him to agree that Dev and Nimmi's wedding will go ahead in spite of the soon-to-be-public scandal of her own "illegitimate" birth. Sarita overhears the conversation and realises that Shalu has been loyal to both herself and Nimmi. They are reconciled.
[Aside: Alok Nath was exposed as a creep during the #MeToo movement in 2018, and his appearance in this movie was one of the usual benign "nice daddy" roles with which he had everyone fooled for years].
2:32:25 to 2:42:35
And this post wouldn't be complete without the song 'Dil Laga Liya':
(Creating this blog post was very pleasurable, and only cost me a couple of more tissues when watching those clips.)
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