Validating Love!!!

Last time Imtiaz Ali made a movie called Jab We Met, it entered my MBA class as a case study for memetics. Before starting the case study, my professor told us that he selected this movie as a case for memetics cause it’s a movie that has been watched and re-watched ‘n’ number of times by most people in the class, making it easier for a majority to pick minute nuances from the movie. In short, that was the kind of impact that J.W.M had, and personally for me, it’s an all time favourite and can watch it any number of times. That movie simply makes me very happy.

So naturally just like many others I too eagerly waited for Imtiaz’s next movie to release, which after weeks of its release, I finally finally managed to watch it. Now, as far as Love Aaj Kal is concerned, I liked the way the story-telling was done and the excellent grip that the movie had on its screenplay. What was also refreshing was the bluntness the dialogues had. ‘Less is more’ concept was put to use effectively, where in very few words or sometimes no words a lot was said. However, for me this was strictly a one time watch movie.

I was told by many people not to compare Jab We Met with this movie, which I very dutifully did. But after I was done, I couldn’t help but find a common link in J.W.M, L.A.K and as a matter of fact host of other movies .This as I would to call it, is validating love. Now I shall take L.A.K as an example to explain what the whole concept of validating love according to me is. Here, we had Jai and Meera, a modern day couple who dated each other and broke up for all practical reasons, as for them long distance didn’t make sense. Even after their break up they continued to be friends or whatever one may want to call that, with each despite the distance that they were so concerned about. Now lets focus on Meera, she eventually starts dating this too-good to be true type fellow and seems to be happy with until at a certain point in her life she realizes that, oops, I don’t love him at all and in fact love my ex and have always loved him!!! Wow, so her happy realization happens when she is with another guy. Now, moving to JWM, remember the bubbly Geet, isn’t her story the same, when even though she was so head over heals love with Anushuman that our hero comfortably walks into her life only to make her realize that she didn’t actually love Anushuman but loved him.

I am therefore left wondering if love needed validation in real life as against what is constantly sold as a hit concept not just by JWM and LAK but generations of movies. Now since this concept sells and works with the audiences, therefore it may imply that somewhere we relate to it or wish for it. So for a moment lets just imagine that this concept was for real, so how would it work. We are with someone, whom we are ‘supposedly’ in love and you may still want to check that if this is the love of your life so you keep your antennas ticking to validate its reality. This according to me this is totally disgusting and just reminds me how I buy shoes. Ya ya, you read it right, shoes as an example for love, but actually buying a good pair of shoe is like running all rules of validations. After having scanned the entire shop, you get your final shortlists of pairs. You can put one shoe belonging to each pair on one foot each, see which one looks good, feels comfortable, etc etc etc and then pick up the one you like most. So coming back to Geet, only when she spent time with apna hero that she realises that she never loved her boy friend. Ditto was the case with Meera, who according to me is much slower than Geet, as she marries the wrong guy and then realizes comfortably on her wedding day, that she still loved her ex-boyfriend. But I feel that shoe shopping is better, as, if you can’t decide which of the 2 final short listed shoe is better, you can walk away with both, which in case of love, we may not want to do.

But I don’t really think in matters of heart, it is so simple and certain concepts are to be kept reserved for movies alone. This entire concept of validating love just seems very unreal to me But I really wonder what the ‘Mango’ people feels about it. Is validating love for real or simply a ‘reel’ concept? Does it happen to the ‘mango’ people.